Transcript of oral evidence to the Science and Technology
Committee (Lords) on the subject of delivering a UK science and
technology strategy
Witnesses:
-
(Secretary of State at
Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy), and
Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy
- Alexandra Jones, Director of Science, Research and
Innovation, Department for Business, Energy and Industrial
Strategy
Extracts
: We have already heard mention
of the Fraunhofer institutes in Germany, which provide this
interaction and movement of people back and forward between
academia and business. The members of the institutes have
research programmes in academia. We heard similar stories from
the United States and Israel. The innovation strategy does refer
to it, but it does not spell out the strategy for doing this.
Could you enlighten us, please?
: There are a number of
things here. Again, we have to look at where we have come from. I
think, 20 years ago, the criticism that we were rubbish at
commercialisation was a lot stronger and had a lot more credence
than it does today. It was the case, 20 years ago, that you had
academics doing their thing and you had businesspeople, but there
was not much of a match between the two. Today, we have seen huge
progress on that...
---
: We heard evidence that, for
instance, much of the IP in our country may lie with the
universities, which are not willing to pass it on for
commercialisation, because they do not see any profit margins in
it. We have heard that in Israel and other places the
universities benefit from the IP that they hold, so they are
willing.
: That is an interesting
point. As I said, I have been in the United States. What I
discovered there was that businesspeople were more willing to
deal with the universities, because the universities claimed only
up to 7% or 8% of the profits. The idea was that the businessmen
were incentivised to work with the universities, because the
universities had a much less onerous requirement in terms of
payback.
In the UK, I was told, it is the other way round. The problem is
with universities taking too much profit. Any businessman looking
at this and saying, “The university is going to take 50% equity
and 50% profit” is less incentivised than he would be in Israel
and the United States. The problem is more complicated than
universities not being willing to make profits. They are, but
they may be trying to make too much money out of these ventures.
That was raised with me directly last week.
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