June 15, 2010
Enterprising Universities: delivering social and economic value
As part of Universities Week CIHE supported a breakfast roundtable hosted by the 1994 Group of Universities on 15th June 2010 to discuss how universities can engage more effectively with business and have greater economic impact. Attended by business executives, universities and senior policy makers, the discussions addressed a number of ‘how to’ issues, including:
- How can the research base at universities add value to business?
- How can universities work with businesses to achieve greater strategic scale in university-business collaboration?
- How can the government support university-business partnerships?
- How can university enterprise activities support business growth?
As one of the panel members, CIHE Chief Executive, Dr David Docherty, highlighted the important role universities have in creating the ‘knowledge workers’ of the future. This would require universities to collaborate with business across a broader range of activities – beyond research, skills development and work placements. To make our graduates more employable would require a doubling of efforts on the Early Professional Development of students. To this end both universities and businesses should focus on making this part of the student experience more systematic, more scaleable, selleable, and more satisfying for students.
Miles Templeman, the Director General at the Institute of Directors, noted the importance of universities making themselves “open for business” to both local and international companies. Universities could best support businesses by helping them achieve a competitive edge.
Other speakers included Professor Trevor McMillan, Pro Vice-Chancellor, Lancaster University and Alice Frost, Head of Business and Community at HEFCE.
Key issues for further consideration from the meeting included:
- ensuring that the incentives and rewards for universities encouraged collaboration with businesses;
- government policy focused on ways of lowering the hurdles and barriers that prevent the first experience that businesses have with universities;
- doing more to celebrate and publicise the success of university-business collaboration – already the latest research shows that about £3 billion worth of services are provided by the higher education sector to business, government and charities;
- making universities more responsive to business drivers for competitive advantage and aspirations for growth;
- encouraging a broad and diverse range of interactions between businesses and universities.
The latest CIHE report titled “Absorbing Research: the role of universities in business and market innovation” was also presented at the meeting, and can be downloaded here.
First, I think I have broken new ground by being the first person ever to respond in the CIHE blogger-sphere. Is there some sort of cash prize?
However, in response to the above points. I have devoted most of my career to commercialising technology, with mixed success. But the one thing I have found is that the key to the whole process is making deals. Deals with the academic, deals with the TTO, deals with the VC, deals with the management teams. More specifically a series of deals linking “technology push” to “market pull” in order to make money.
At the PraxisUnico conference this year [Where David Docherty presented a useful insight into CIHE activity] many delegates pondered the meaning of tech transfer. However, no one got round to biting the bullet that the key driver of the whole tech transfer process is to make money.
I asked the simple question “If all academics had a line on their payslip which said this is a share of all the revenues gained by university from commercialising technology, would there be a marked increase in the number and quality of ideas hitting the TT office and so make more money for everyone?” The audience was aghast. I felt as if I had asked the audience to cull seal pups, let alone sacrifice a few sacred cows.
Until such time that there is a paradigm shift towards developing a commercially based, nationally focussed, government backed commercialisation infrastructure, then I am afraid that science, which is porous to geographical boundaries will move to where governments value it correctly. I mean China, Singapore, Korea and other countries which are busily vertically integrating ideas generation, market need, venture capital and early stage proof of concept development in order to sell us iphones and other whizzy stuff in order to make money.
We need to recognise that the key driver for business is the bottom line which along with growth and innovation is also a gentle euphamism for making… you guessed it, MONEY. We need to work together to make more of it. After all it pays for everything!