Reaching Out...

I was recently sent a link to an article in The Australian, on a survey completed by the UK Innovation Research Centre at the University of Cambridge and Imperial College London, on "Knowledge Exchange between Academics and the Private, Public and Third Sectors. The survey, which elicited 22,000 responses, made for interesting reading.

It turns out (in the UK anyway) that academics are engaged in a wide range of interactions with a wide range of partners in each of those sectors - 40 per cent of respondents worked with the private sector, 53 per cent co-operated with the public sector and 44 per cent with a third sector such as charities. I guess the big question to be asked here is, how much did this happen, and is engaging once in the last 3 years sufficient for an academic to give a 'yes' answer? In the case of this survey, I suspect it is, but for my liking once every three years could hardly be called engaging.

Whether that may or may not be the case, one thing was obvious from the survey - academics do seem to have motivation for Knowledge Exchange, albeit for different drivers - improve teaching, greater insights, test practicality etc., rather than making money. However, there are a few constraints to them doing so, the largest being lack of time and university bureaucracy. Academics can't do everything (as I've said before), and as the authors point out, after teaching, administration, outreach etc:

"There may be little capacity left within the university system for a greater level of interaction between academics and external organisations. Simply too much pressure may be placed on universities, or the academics within them, to engage with others and achieve economic impact. Furthermore, such pressure could undermine some of the core strengths of many universities in particular if it leads to less basic research."

This, coupled with the fact that the initiation of external activities was done by Technology Transfer Offices only 24% of the time, suggests the need for special/improved expertise in this area - just as Sir Peter Gluckman has mentioned in several speeches this year, and as Mark Dodgson points out in 'The Australian':

“There are implications for technology transfer and commercialisation offices. These should better reflect the diversity of their home institutions' missions and be much broader in the range of interactions they support. They have to ensure their commercial transactional approaches do not deter academics from initiating conversations with external parties."

I wonder what the results of such a survey would be in New Zealand? Perhaps the academics amongst you could think about who you've approached externally in the last 3 years to ensure your research has impact?

Technology Transfer at Univeristy of Virginia

In a post last week, I talked about the Minister's views on RS&T policy, and mentioned that it is not just about "making it easier for business to be in touch with universities", it is ultimately how the two interact that will be important. I have recently been informed about the University of Virgina Patent Foundation (UVAPF). Their role is to see research conducted at the university commercialised - something they are very successful at doing.

They have specialists in science, business, and patent law to help protect the inventions of their researchers. They then get these inventions out into the world by licensing the technologies to industry and start-up companies. Their philosophy here is simple: maximizing deal flow. They do this largely by having realistic expectations from industry and short transaction times. As a result their technologies are out there - they have over 350 active licenses, assess approximately 200 inventions per year, and have generated about US$85 Million in license revenue for the U.Va.

While NZ universities are a lot smaller, and don't generate nearly as many inventions as the U.Va might, I think the modus operandi of the UVAPF is something we can learn from here in NZ. I have myself witnessed some brilliant technologies falling by the wayside, in part due to unrealistic expectations of industry by universities, essentially a lack of adherence to the principles so central to the way the UVAPF operates.

The goal of most researchers I think is for their research to ultimately be used for public good. Being open, fair and fast are conducive to making this happen. After all, surely it is better to have something out in the world being used, than something sitting on a scrapheap with nobody seeing any gain.

The Clean Industrial Revolution

I have just finished reading the brilliant new book by Ben McNeil, called "The Clean Industrial Revolution." Ben is a climate scientist and economist at the University of New South Wales in Australia. As the subtitle suggests, his book is about how to grow prosperity in a greenhouse age.

Which was quite timely, considering cabinet announced on Monday their plans for a revised Emissions Trading Scheme. I was always a wee bit hesitant to wade into the whole carbon tax/emissions trading scheme debate because I had not made my mind up fully on the topic. After reading Ben's book and talking to my learned economist friend, goonix, I believe that it is essential for NZ to begin either a tax or trading scheme.

I think a lot of the debate centred around the question of how much is it going to cost our economy now, vs. how much will it cost to fall in line and adapt later? We are only 0.1% of the worlds emissions after all, so why spend all this money, lets just wait and see what the world does and adapt later.

Well, one of the key points I took out of Ben's book is that creating a 'carbon price' will be a massive incentive for innovative change. When (not if) the world moves to a low carbon future, any country that is researching, commercialising and exporting these new clean technologies will be in a great economic position. Surely it would be harder to do this if we chose to wait and adapt, giving the rest of the world a head start. (Note: Masdar City, in the UAE, which I have blogged about here).

Sure, some industries in NZ will be harder hit than others initially, (ie. the polluters, farmers and their farting animals) however, do we want to end up dependent on a costly carbon rich lifestyle? It would be like suffering the same fate as those countries that resisted imposing high taxes on oil. Japan and the EU set high taxes, and their vehicle industries were given incentive to develop more efficient engines, which they did (up to 30% more efficient in fact). The US, on the other hand chose to keep the price of petrol near the market value, and as a result are heavily dependent on oil. There was no incentive for GM to innovate, and as a result GM have given their market share up to Toyota, and pretty much gone bust. The same will happen with anyone still intensively using carbon.

The book is focused largely on an Australian context, however the whole way through reading it, I felt that I could have easily substituted "New Zealand" every time I read "Australia". Apart from the huge solar resource Australia have of course, we have a lot in common. Perhaps we are even in a better position than Australia, as we have a lot of hydro, more wind generated power, are less dependent on coal fired power stations, and already have less emissions per capita. Creating a highly innovative CleanTech economy will create new, high tech jobs that won't be able to be outsourced to China. It's about being at the forefront of change, and I believe we have the goods here in NZ to make it a reality.

You can preview the book here.