Public+Sector+R&D

Introduction
 Increasing numbers of middle-income countries are studying how developed countries commercialize research at universities and research institutes and are planning to create wealth from university (or research institute) research through licensing of IP and the creation of spin-off companies. But, these universities and institutes have much lower research expenditures than in the developed world and are working in different innovation environments. Under these conditions the question becomes: is it realistic for the university, institute, or an enterprise, to engage in technology commercialization and expect any chance of success?


 * 1) How does a government R&D center work with the private sector? What happens to the proceeds -- do they go back to the general budget, stay at the research institute, etc.?
 * 2) What is the legal basis for these decisions? How do you avoid conflicts of interest? How does this relate to government ownership if intellectual property (IP) and a country's IP strategy and legislation?
 * 3) How have different countries addressed these issues?
 * 4) In developed countries the number of spin-off companies created per million dollars of research funding at a university or public research institute varies by a factor of 10 at least. Research expenditure (2001) per spin-off company is 133 million euro in the USA and 13 million euro in the UK.
 * 5) The main purpose of university research is the creation of new knowledge not the creation of new businesses: commercializing technologies and creating spin-off companies is a secondary mission.
 * 6) A Public Research Organization can make a decision, as a part of its commercialization strategy, to emphasize and direct resources to spin-off company creation.

In an article on ** Management of i **** ntellectual property in publicly-funded research ** ** organizations ** [|European Commission Expert Group Report 2003]  the authors note that 70% of all patents filed in the US cite public research organizations research results as their basis. Therefore, efficient management and support of such organizations becomes essential.

**Note** that all the above comments refer to research //commercialization//. For countries with limited S&T resources, absorbing and adapting technologies developed elsewhere will be a better initial strategy - until an adequate research bases has been created.

Measuring the benefits from research
@http://www.rand.org/pubs/research_briefs/2007/RAND_RB9202.pdf

To date, much thinking about research measurement and evaluation has been concentrated in the biomedical and health sciences. However, there is increasing recognition that funders of public research— in areas ranging from music to microbiology or from economics to engineering—need to justify their expenditure and demonstrate added value to the community. Furthermore, they need to be able to engage with stakeholder communities in illustrating the research process as well as the outcomes of research. The challenge facing funders to measure benefits from research is considerable. This RAND Policy REsource provides some insight into the issues involved and offers ways to approach the objective.

[Introduce and add links to the IPP M&E pages]

Public Financial Support for Commercial Innovation, Europe and Central Asia Knowledge Economy Study
Itzhak Goldberg //et al//, The World Bank 2005. []

Partial contents: ** Economic Rationale of Support for Commercial Innovation ** Information Asymmetries and the “Funding Gap” The Impact of General Purpose Technologies (GPTs) Exports- versus Local Markets–Oriented Innovation ** Instruments to Support Commercial Innovation ** <span style="color: #231f20; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Grants versus Loans <span style="color: #231f20; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Procurement Preferences and Tax Incentives <span style="color: #231f20; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Matching Grants <span style="color: #231f20; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Venture Capital Support <span style="color: #231f20; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The Role of Business Support Services <span style="color: #231f20; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Monitoring and Evaluation <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">** ECA’s Institutional Framework for Public Support of Commercial Innovation ** <span style="color: #231f20; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The National Innovation System (NIS) <span style="color: #231f20; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Key Factors in the Knowledge Economy <span style="color: #231f20; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Economic Incentives and Institutional Regime <span style="color: #231f20; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Knowledge Assessment Methodology (KAM)

<span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: left;">NSF: Industry & University Cooperative Research Program (I/UCRC)
[]

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">"The Directorate for Engineering’s newly created division of Industrial Innovation and Partnerships (IIP) serves the entire foundation by fostering partnerships to advance technological innovation, and plays an important role in the public-private innovation partnership enterprise".

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> "The focus of IIP is to successfully invest in engineering research and innovation by leveraging federal, small business, industrial, university, state and community colleges resources. Genuine partnerships are dynamic and growing relationships based upon shared interests, trust, and an evolving technical relationship. Partnerships require a vision and performance goals and benchmarks, passionate and visionary leaders, and partners bound by an essential interdependency and shared commitment to hold them together. Partnerships should facilitate the sorts of infrastructure that can sustain and nurture the spread of innovative activity over the long term".

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> These infrastructures are to educate and train human capital for the research enterprise and the entrepreneurial aspects of innovation; develop the social networks characterized by shared commitment and trust that embeds the intellectual capital and know-how embodied in scientists and engineers honed through advanced education and training; and to build a base of operational support without which sustainable partnerships cannot exist. This includes a diversified base of private investment, the physical place to provide a context for incubation, technical, management, and administrative support, laboratory and other capacity, communications services, and reliable sources of capital".

Managing the Industry/University Cooperative Research Center: A Guide for Directors and Other Stakeholders
<span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 13.3333px; text-align: left;">[] for free download.

<span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: left;">Contents include:
 * 1) <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: left;">Creating Win-Win Partnerships:
 * 2) Background and Evolution of Industry/University Cooperative Research Centers Model
 * 3) <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: left;">Getting Started: Planning and Initiating a New Center Designing Centers:
 * 4) <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: left;">Principles for Effective Organizational Structure Membership
 * 5) <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: left;">Planning the Cooperative Research ProgramImplementing the Cooperative Research Program
 * 6) <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: left;">Communications
 * 7) <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: left;">Managing an I/UCRC:Control, Budgeting and Evaluation Knowledge and Technology Transfer in Cooperative Research Settings Center Leadership
 * 8) <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: left;">Putting It All Together
 * 9) <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: left;">Expanding and Diversifying the Center Resource Base.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">NSF Partnerships for Innovation
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">http://www.nsf.gov/ publications/pub_summ.jsp?ods_ key=nsf06550

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> "Research, education and innovation enterprises are increasingly interconnected, and increasingly global. Global collaboration--among scientists, engineers, educators, industry and governments--can speed the transformation of new knowledge into new products, processes and services, and in their wake produce new jobs, create wealth, and improve the standard of living and quality of life worldwide. Innovation is the transformation of scientific and technological advances into new products, processes, systems, and services. Innovation has created astonishing, tangible benefits to society, including improved healthcare, transportation, and computer-communications capacities.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> In the Partnerships for Innovation program, NSF seeks to stimulate and capitalize on innovation by catalyzing partnerships among colleges and universities, the private sector, and federal, state, and local governments. Key factors in the innovation enterprise include creation of and access to new knowledge; a scientifically and technologically literate workforce prepared to capitalize on new knowledge in a global context; and an infrastructure that enables innovation. For the purposes of this program, innovation explicitly extends both to developing the people and tools. The academic institutions that are NSF's traditional clientele play an essential role in generating new knowledge and creating a scientifically and technologically literate workforce.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> Partnerships are an important means for developing an innovation capability that links new knowledge and a knowledge-rich workforce to economic growth and other societal benefits. Partnerships involving various combinations of colleges and universities, private sector firms, and local, state, and federal governments, have the potential to increase the value of each of the partners' portfolios, and to mobilize innovation in a systemic manner. For example, private sector firms gain access to new knowledge and a workforce that can capitalize on it; academe gains financial support, the ability to capitalize on intellectual property, and access to real-world problems for field training; and local and state governments gain sustainable regional and local economic development activities. Students moving into the workplace facilitate the innovation process".

===<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Guiding Principles for University-Industry Endeavors. Report of a Joint Project of the National Council of University Research Administrators and the Industrial Research Institute, April 2006. === <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">//© 2006 by the National Council of University Research Administrators (NCURA). While NCURA encourages copying of this publication to enable broad usage, reproduction for sale or profit is strictly prohibited.//

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Although this is an America-centric discussion, the t__hree Guiding Principles__ are applicable globally.


 * Guiding Principle 1**: A successful university-industry collaboration should support the mission of each partner. Any effort in conflict with the mission of either partner will ultimately fail.


 * Guiding Principle 2**: Institutional practices and national resources should focus on fostering appropriate long-term partnerships between universities and industry.


 * Guiding Principle 3**: Universities and industry should focus on the benefits to each party that will result from collaborations by streamlining negotiations to ensure timely conduct of the research and the development of the research findings.

Best Practices Manual
<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13.3333px;">Download from []

<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13.3333px;">An Engineering <span class="wiki_link" style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13.3333px;">Research Center <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13.3333px;"> is an interdisciplinary center typically located at a university working in close partnership with industry. A Center provides an environment for academia and industry to collaborate in carrying out research which addresses the needs of industry, has the potential to transform the product lines, processing technologies, or service delivery methodologies, or create new industries.

<span style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13.3333px;">The National Science Foundation-sponsored Engineering Research Centers (ERCs) are a group of engineering systems-focused, interdisciplinary centers located at universities all across the United States, each in close partnership with industry. Since the ERC Program was founded in 1985, the ERCs collectively have brought significant changes in the culture of academic engineering research and education. This Best Practices Manual was authored independently by staff of the ERCs. It is not an NSF publication and does not necessarily reflect official NSF policy. The document is intended as a "how-to" manual for those involved in, or contemplating involvement in, the operation of an ERC or similar university-industry center. The chapters, presented as separate links at left, are organized according to management roles and functional areas in an ERC. The manual is broken down as follows:

<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13.3333px;"> Introduction <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13.3333px;"> Center Leadership & Strategic Direction <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13.3333px;"> Research Management <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13.3333px;"> Education Programs <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13.3333px;"> Industrial Collaboration and Technology Transfer <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13.3333px;"> Administrative Management <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13.3333px;"> The NSF/ERC Interface <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13.3333px;"> Student Leadership Councils <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 13.3333px;">Multi-University Centers

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Collaborations between the Public and Private Sectors: The Role of Intellectual Property
<span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: left;">FINAL REPORT September 2012 (Australia advisory council on IP)

<span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: left;">@http://www.acip.gov.au/reviews_completed.html This report identifies important factors that affect the formation and operation of collaborations, and includes recommendations on how these can be improved. Specifically, it looks at the role of intellectual property (IP) and how it acts as an enabler or disabler.


 * Recommendation 1**: Develop mechanisms to increase the motivation of Public Funded Research Organizations (PFROs), especially universities and medical research institutes (at an institutional level) and PFRO researchers (at an individual level), to engage in collaborations with industry.

Considerations should include:
 * Establishing an evaluation framework that complements ERA (the Excellence in Research for Australia) and measures the impact of PFRO research,
 * including metrics for collaborations with industry
 * Increasing reward mechanisms for PFROs that are directly linked to PFRO– industry collaboration performance
 * Increasing the weight given to industry collaboration and engagement activities in appointment and promotion criteria for individual researchers.


 * Recommendation 2**: Encourage the development and promotion of educational resources to assist PFROs, industry and researchers to form and conduct

collaborations. Resources should be easily identifiable and accessible to all stakeholders, particularly PFROs and SMEs, and be supported by relevant training.

Considerations should include:
 * Assessing available resources, tools and programs and how they may be best promoted and deployed. Particular focus should be on modules that can assist with:

- Aligning interests with expectations

- Expediting the negotiation of collaboration agreements

- understanding the commercial/legal provisions in collaboration agreements


 * A set of starting principles/questions to help partners focus, communicate and develop a good understanding of the objectives of their collaboration
 * Term sheet-like smart forms setting out all issues that need to be included in negotiations and possible options to deal with them
 * A module focusing on background IP (contributed to a collaboration) and project IP(arising in collaborations), including the proper identification and management of both
 * A module on valuation models of early stage technologies and IP
 * Providing PFROs with access to expert patent analytics services, related business intelligence tools and training.


 * Recommendation 3**: Improve the ability of SMEs and PFROs to form and conduct collaborations with one another. Considerations include:


 * Programs that increase the awareness of SMEs as to what PFROs have to offer and assistance aimed at encouraging industry to engage with PFROs. These may include innovation vouchers, staff exchange programs and strengthening the Enterprise Connect Researcher in Business program.


 * Recommendation 4**: In order to improve their collaborations with industry, PFROs need to increase their project management skills and capability. Consideration should be given to:


 * PFROs allocating additional resources to support project management, and developing and maintaining appropriate skills including through staff exchanges with industry.


 * Recommendation 5**: Request that the Coordination Committee on Innovation (CCI)<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> p romote and encourage the use of flexible terms and conditions in Australian Government grants and research contracts, including those specifically related to background and project IP licences, warranties, indemnities and moral rights.

Considerations should include:


 * Collating and communicating information about existing initiatives and previous work undertaken in relation to such terms and conditions and the circumstances in which their flexible application is appropriate
 * Increasing awareness among Commonwealth and PFRO legal and procurement practitioners of the flexibility available in the terms and conditions of Australian Government grants and research contracts (including those specifically related to background and project IP licences, warranties, indemnities and moral rights)
 * Establishing a process for government agencies to report on the extent that such flexibility is being applied.


 * Recommendation 6**: Ensure that the National Principles for Intellectual Property Management for Publicly Funded Research (currently being reviewed by CCI):

Consideration should be given to:
 * Cover all publicly funded research conducted by PFROs
 * Encourage PFROs to introduce continual improvement to, and implementation of, internal policies and procedures for IP management.

- including reference to implementing continuous improvement processes in the Commonwealth’s mission-based compacts with universities.

[clean up below]

Balancing Public Investment in Research and Innovation
Last week EARTO published a study commissioned from Technopolis Group on “Getting the Balance Right: Basic Research, Missions, and Governance for Horizon 2020”. The 60-page report reviews the scientific literature on the links between research and innovation and examines how governments in different countries inside and outside of Europe spend on R&D – the balance between “basic” and “applied” research – and then considers the implications for Horizon 2020. It stresses the need to take a systemic view of innovation, with adequate space for both curiosity-driven research and mission-oriented work, where the role of government is not just to fund research but, especially, to ensure that the links between the different actors and functions within the innovation system operate effectively. The report concludes that Horizon 2020 should give greater weight to mission-driven, problem-solving research as well as to post-research development and innovation activities. Its findings also indicate a need for a robust governance framework to ensure a strong and enduring focus on innovation.

Some in the science community will not like what they read. The report debunks myths and false claims about the links between science and innovation. One is the idea, frequently implied by the proponents of “scientific excellence”, that (excellent) science drives innovation. No, says the report, innovation is most often pulled by market opportunity and societal need. Yes, science is important for producing new knowledge, but innovation feeds on the stock of knowledge – old and new – to generate new products, processes and services. Another is the notion that Europe is poor at exploiting the excellent results of its basic research – the “European paradox”. The report questions the proposition and concludes, rather, that we are simply not good enough at innovation compared with our competitors.

The literature review and empirical evidence lead to some stark conclusions. The key weaknesses of the European research and innovation system are in innovation activities: doing more science will not repair them. Europe needs to put more resources into problem-solving, mission-driven research targeting prioritised economic opportunities and societal needs. Curiosity-driven research, notably the European Research Council, has more than enough resources already. As the report’s title says, it’s all a question of balance: so far we have not got the balance right.

The report, and also a summary brochure with the key findings, can be downloaded from the EARTO website: http://www.earto.eu/activities-and-services/publications.html. @http://www.earto.eu/fileadmin/content/03_Publications/FINAL_TECH_REPORT2012.pdf 70 pages