Two households, both alike in dignity

There is the shape of tragedy in the situation of business and university relations. Of star-crossed lovers. Each with so much to gain from the other, and yet at some fundamental level failing to engage. Vast amount of effort has, and continues to be, devoted by universities to their business-facing activities, yet business continues to report that it finds universities very difficult to work with. And this from the few businesses that have got as far as making an attempt.

Before we proceed let me be clear. Universities have made great strides in their enterprise engagement. They have highly professional technology transfer arrangements and much more business savvy contract management. There are many examples of success. Enterprise engagement is high on the managerial agenda and is strongly incentivised. None of this is perfect, far from it, but the situation is unrecognisable from that of a very few years ago. So how can we account for the persistence of the problems? There are three minor issues we should address before turning to, what I believe are the, mainsprings.

First, there are the natural tensions between consumer and supplier over 'price and terms of service'. Business is unwilling to pay for work that it believes it has already paid for through taxes and hence should be available, if not for free, then significantly discounted. Universities are unwilling to direct effort away from other activities, research and teaching, which pay the bills, to unremunerative activities. These tensions are often sublimated in arguments about intellectual property rights. Here, we require more mutual understanding. Business should make the effort to understand better how universities are funded, principally through their own activities and not, as commonly thought, through direct government subvention. Universities need to understand better their competitive situation, now global, and the commercial value of their services, limited because of the high relative costs of exploitation.

Second, though universities have improved the way in which they relate to business, businesses have not done the same. Though there are a number of distinguished exceptions, university liaison on the part of business is largely unprofessional. Businesses rarely possess a well thought-out strategy nor do they manage their relationships strategically with a view to sustaining them in the long term. R&D is disconnected from recruitment, both are disconnected from the strategy formation processes where the innovation agenda is set. Complex IP arrangements are handled ad hoc, and the corporate memory of these matters is often poor or non-existent. If business wants to engage with universities, and I believe they have much to gain, they need to attach a higher priority to it.

Third, universities lack spare capacity. Rightly, before a 'business case' for engagement can be made by there is a need for preliminary work to understand the potential for commercial returns. There may be a need for academics to acquire a working knowledge of particular technologies and the specific environment of a potential collaborative business partner. Universities generally do not have the slack to do this. Researchers work from project to project and academics are hard pressed. There is no capacity to invest in a relationship. The result is a short term focus on funding before a partnership can sustain it.

Important as these are however they are not the principal causes of the difficulty. These lie deeper and are principally, though not exclusively, structural. The first has been diagnosed frequently but is so ingrained that it apparently cannot be shifted: the linear model of 'technology transfer' (even the name is problematic). In this model research undertaken in universities is acquired and after a process of development exploited by business. Technology moves gradually through sequential 'readiness levels' with a boundary between university and business somewhere in the ill defined middle-ground. This model has done more damage to innovation than almost any other cause. In fact, the process is closer to spiral with exploitation informing research in a process of mutual convergence. The strategies, organisation and funding required to support this way of working are wholly different from the linear pattern and universities and business both suffer from forcing research, development and exploitation to match a wholly inappropriate template.

There has grown up around university - business engagement a plethora of different funding modalities and support mechanisms. These are difficult to understand and navigate even for the expert which, as I have said, business is not. Each is weighted down with administrative complexities and bound by directive programmes that, despite the real efforts of the organisations charged with delivering them, they are unable to shed. Most are notably slow and unresponsive. They are universally built around the linear model described above. Critically they embody the core concept of a 'project' which as I shall now argue is fundamentally illl-suited as a basis for university - business relations.

The 'research project' is not a natural part of the research process. It is a by-product of funding and of the need for audit and governance. I will argue elsewhere about the distortion of research agendas that are engendered by cutting them up to fit the idea of a project. The effect of this is however particularly pernicious in the case of university - business engagement. University research is, at the risk of over-simplification, best suited to serving the strategic needs of business rather than the tactical or operational requirements. These broad directional imperatives, which require exploration, foresight and thought leadership supported by particular technical expertise are the ideal meeting ground for universities and business. Yet, because they fail to meet the pattern of the project, with work plan and deliverables, they cannot be readily funded and fall outside the contractual norms that have governed the way universities and business engage.

I am, of course, an optimist. University - business engagement not only serves the economy it serves science and engineering. To get it right we may have to confront some difficult challenges and to rethink, quite fundamentally, ways in which we work. That should not scare us too much.