Delivering a lecture titled ” From University Research to Economic and Social Benefit” at IISc, Sir William Wakeham, former Vice-Chancellor of Southampton University stressed on the need for adoption of a commercial approach to university research, as ToI reported here.
Sir William noted that “for the proper exploitation of academic research, many universities in the UK have tried to come out with a model where the industry and educational institutions work closely to take research to the level of making it commercially applicable and also look beyond intellectual property rights issues”
He further added that “the universities need to undergo a cultural change to ensure that university research leads to applications that bring economic and social benefits. Universities are not generally flexible considering that they have the structure of committees. Most industrial organizations have no patience for dealing with such structure, which makes the change important. There is a need to exploit intellectual property, attract venture funding, get the most out of incubators, science parks and business managers, even while we do academics. A lot of universities could be conservative about the connection with business, but we need to break that and ensure successful commercial spin-offs“
As ToI reports,Sir Wakeham is credited for taking the value of university spin-outs at Southampton to an all-time high next only to the Stanford University. Speaking on these lines, he added :
“The approach to spin-outs has to be focused on small number of business opportunities that easily attract funds from venture capitalists or private funding agencies.”
He cited the example of Imperial Innovations, a private company that was set up by the UK’s Imperial College primarily responsible for transfer of technology; incubating companies and venture capital. He also cited the Southampton University’s effort towards providing an entirely different model of employment to the local community for regenerating the port city of Southampton. This was done by utilising the university’s niche expertise in areas such as oceanography and photonics.
While concluding he noted that ” increasing innovation impact of the research base is key economic and political issue for UK. I am sure, India too is on the same path and some of these issues have a resonance with this country. The UK experience has to be examined to see how it can be applied in the Indian situation.”
This lecture series was organized by IISc and Royal Commission of UK for commemorating the centenary celebrations. The lecture was delivered at IISc Bangalore, Pune, IIT Kharagpur and Jadavpur University from August 9-13, 2010.
Prof. Wakeham’s suggestions are interesting. However, in India industry and academia are so far apart that professors do not know what is happening in industry, they have no incentive to be aware of the latest developments, or to improve their curricular content on a continuous basis. On its part, industry seems to lack a systematic approach to innovation. For example, investments in R&D may happen in fits and bursts and may lack a sustained and focused approach. Another is that they will follow the latest industry developments elsewhere, but may not fully appreciate the possibilities of interacting with local universities. They have highly specific and short term requirements which cannot be readily satisfied by university research. A huge gap between industry and academic circles is present in areas such as costing, product design, risk analysis, market analysis including current and potential markets, etc., which are very essential for commercial success of new ideas. Because of inadequate support in these areas even good ideas and innovations may not see the light of day.
It is imperative that industry consortia and professional associations foster interactions with universities by offering faculty members on sabbatical (say, 1 semester at a time) to universities, to handle important subjects. Likewise, industry can absorb faculty members for similar periods in their environment to work on specific projects.
There are many challenges. The skill gap between what industry needs and university faculty have can be considerable and could deter industry. However, part of the objective is for industry to train and motivate faculty on requirements. The other challenge is for university departments to be receptive to new ideas and be willing to change.
Once industry and academic institutions can talk to each other, it would not be difficult for the latter to obtain relevant projects and funding.