Examination of Witnesses (Questions 20 - 39)
WEDNESDAY 18 MARCH 1998
DR ALAN
RUDGE and PROFESSOR
RICHARD BROOK
Dr Turner
20. You have a role in fostering technology transfer and
so does the DTI. Can you explain the difference between the way
you see your role and that of the DTI?
(Dr Rudge) I think I made the point and I will keep
making it during the course of the debate, that the focus on transferring
inventions and bits of technology is important but is not the
main underlying reason for our existence. I think we are primarily
concerned to see two things in terms of technology flow: one is
that there is the movement of people from the areas where we invest
government money to generate knowledge and expertise, because
people are still the best mechanism for transferring knowledge
and expertise; the second we look for is we look for good interaction
between an academic department or group and an industry or a set
of industries and that could be by way of projects that they are
funding or whatever other means. Where industry is putting money
in it is a good measure of their interest. If we see that then
we are generally happy with the way we are investing in building
knowledge because we can see the outflow and, indeed, we ask now
when people are putting in grants for some indication of where
the outflow will be. We try to monitor this in a number of ways.
In terms of specific pieces of technology, we do not have our
main remit to transfer specific bits of technology but we try
to help wherever there is a cause.
(Professor Brook) I think the DTI and the Engineering
and Physical Sciences Research Council do cover rather similar
territory so there are many instances where we work very closely
together. I think there are other research councils where that
link is less obviously the case, such as the Medical Research
Council, for example. We do have formal links with the DTI through
the PTPs (Postgraduate Training Partnerships) which we both support.
There are LINK schemes which the DTI and the EPSRC are both involved
with. There is one on catalysts, for example. Foresight is another
instance where again close collaboration is there. My temptation
in thinking about the question you pose is to say I am not looking
for the distinctions between the EPSRC and the DTI but really
to the many instances where we find a common cause.
21. Do you think there is any duplication of effort? Do you
think that is justified if it does appear?
(Dr Rudge) I think I would look for more overlap where
we could work together on things because there is no doubt that
if we can get the DTI to gear some of its resources to ours we
can make a much bigger impact, and our objective is to try to
make an impact on a national scale, not just on a local scale.
22. So you are looking for synergy?
(Dr Rudge) Yes.
23. Were the DTIs' Advanced Technology Programmes in the
1980s more relevant to engineering and physical sciences than
current government initiatives, such as LINK, Foresight Challenge
and SMART?
(Professor Brook) I used to attend requirement board
meetings where people came to request money and there were similarities
between those sessions and the meetings in which we meet with
colleagues who come asking for finance. I think the Advanced Technology
Programmes were much more closely directed at applications. There
was a recognisable commercial objective which was to be reached
with this finance and that is the not the case with the work which
we support.
24. Do you think that the ATPs were successful in fostering
technology transfer between the research base and the UK companies?
(Professor Brook) If you forced me for an answer on
that one I would say that, using the criteria which we have advanced
today, that is that you will get the best return on the investment
if you concentrate on the generation of the knowledge and the
natural flow of that knowledge out into as wide a system as possible,
I think the Advanced Technology Programmes were a little limited
in that regard.
(Dr Rudge) If you look at the spectrum, if you like,
of R and D, you have research and I am going to define that as
without an immediate application in mind, that is you are mining
knowledge and new technologies, perhaps new techniques. You have
development, you understand, that is when you have a definite
product or process in mind and you have actually got a plan or
a project to deliver it. You then draw on whatever knowledge you
need. There is something between the two. Certainly when I was
responsible for research and development in BT we launched what
was an advanced development programme. That is, there are a number
of projects which one can devise which are much higher risk than
a standard development project but the rewards will be good if
they work. They are not research as such because you have a definite
idea in mind of what the application will be if it works, but
it is risky. These advanced development projects were something
which in BT we funded jointly between our corporate research monies
and our development monies. The BT operating divisions came together
with the corporate centre. If you take that on to a national scale,
you can say there is a role in DTI to play a role in that advanced
development area where the risks are higher but the rewards are
good if you are successful and in these cases you know what you
are trying to do, you are not just mining knowledge, you actually
have a definite objective in mind.
Chairman
25. That is what the advanced technology programmes were
trying to do?
(Dr Rudge) I think so.
Dr Gibson
26. The Foresight exercise you have already touched on and
I wonder how successful it has been in identifying priority areas
for research which is exploitable? In your experience, did things
come up when you had to start getting involved in the formation
of the panels and those areas?
(Dr Rudge) In the operations of the EPSRC at the council
level we work on generating what we call a landscape of the programme
areas that we think we should address. This is a very broad treatment,
we are not defining it by project, we are defining it by area.
These are the areas that matter.
27. Such as?
(Dr Rudge) I can take materials and I can take IT
and engineering and so on, different broad areas. When we draw
our landscape we look at the balance between one area and another:
should we be putting more resources into IT and less into materials?
The balance between the programmes is important. When the Foresight
information becomes available what we do is we overlay, if you
like, the input from Foresight over our landscape and say: "Are
we missing something? Is there something that has come out of
Foresight which is a serious omission from our particular plan
or is it reinforcing what we do?" We do this exercise and
we treat Foresight output as a key input to drawing our landscape.
What I am personally less enthusiastic about from Foresight is
when out of Foresight pops a specific project.
28. And did it?
(Dr Rudge) There are examples, certainly in the first
round of Foresight. The panels were feeling their way, some gave
more broad treatment and others gave a broad treatment dotted
with the odd project or two which particular people on the panel
thought would be a good idea.
29. But they were not on your initial landscape?
(Dr Rudge) If I can just take it one further step.
When we have prepared our landscape we then have the executive,
which Richard Brook is responsible for, that in a sense populates
that landscape with projects by calling on the research community,
identifying our landscape and saying: "Please make your proposals".
In other words: "You are the ones with the innovatory ideas,
this is the landscape, come and mine it". We then have a
peer review system which selects which projects we should fund.
But, if out of Foresight a project came that was a good idea we
would put it into our peer review system with the other project
proposals that come so that it can find its level, if you like,
from the proposals that are already coming from the academic sector.
30. So what you are saying is it was a valuable exercise?
(Dr Rudge) Yes.
31. How did the companies react to this? Was there any reaction
from them? When they heard you were doing this in your interactions
and discussions with them did they say: "this is quite exciting,
this is something we would like to be involved in because it is
exploitable"?
(Dr Rudge) Are you referring now to the Foresight
exercise?
32. The Foresight exercise.
(Dr Rudge) This is a personal view. The Foresight
exercise was reasonably informative to the larger companies that
had the ability to absorb what came out of Foresight. Where there
is a greater problem is the medium- sized and small companies
that do not have the time or resource necessary to study it and
to consider it. I think one of the ways that Foresight could be
improved in the future would be to concentrate on the dissemination
exercise: how do you get at the small companies and how do you
put the information in a form that they can digest and it can
be useful to them? How would that be? Well, it might be a warning
that you are in area A, do you realise that there are these new
technologies coming along which are going to change the world
for you? That kind of information needs to be packaged and disseminated,
not merely by issuing a number of reports and hoping people read
them. I hope that in a follow-up to Foresight more attention will
be given to how you disseminate that information to small companies.
Dr Jones
33. Who should be responsible for that?
(Dr Rudge) I think the Foresight organisation has
to be responsible for it, it is part of their task. But how it
would be done? Again I think using the intermediate research and
technology organisations would be one of the ways of getting that
information out to the smaller companies that they often serve,
the many thousands of small companies. They are in a position
to present it in a way which is more easily digested.
Dr Gibson
34. The big companies—is there anything exciting that
has come up yet, anything we can say is British and we are proud
of it? You have got your new landscape, do companies come along
and say: "thank you for Foresight"? Assure me that Foresight
has been worth it, please.
(Dr Rudge) The trouble is I would be wrong to try
and give you instant reassurance about these things but I would
say the following: if you look at these things as an end-to-end
system where in a sense we have a limited resource in the UK and
we are directing it when it is young to work in certain broad
fields. If those fields are the right fields the flow through
into industry and the nation at large will be much more effective
than if it is random and they just do whatever they please. As
a result of the end process I assure you that you will see an
improvement. Why do I say that? I ran the same process in BT for
ten or 11 years pre-Foresight. We had our BT Foresight before
this national Foresight. It was very effective. You have to see
it over a number of years before you can start to measure the
benefit.
35. There is no estimate of the time that needs, as you pointed
out; it can be short-term or long-term? Is there nothing coming
through yet in the areas that you know about? I am hungry for
something in this field.
(Dr Rudge) I think you should speak to those who are
directly responsible for Foresight rather than to me. I do not
know if Richard has any examples. Almost certainly there are examples
of some of the things that have emerged early on. All I would
ask you is when you are looking at those and feeling warm about
them, do not believe that is the value of the process; this is
the early result, the value of the process is the systematic improvement
over a number of years that this can produce.
Chairman: When Dr Gibson feels warm about Foresight we will
write and tell you.
Dr Williams
36. Could I ask you: in general your budget is £383
million—I read through the briefing you sent us this morning
and there is not a detailed breakdown of it—is most of that
£383 million blue skies or academic research? Can you give
me a rule of thumb; how does the figure break down into broad
areas?
(Professor Brook) The great majority of it is academic
research. The EPSRC has no institutes of its own, therefore the
finance is deployed out into the university sector predominantly
to support projects conducted by academic colleagues. There is
a budget line which is for the support of large facilities, that
is the neutron source at the Rutherford laboratory and the synchrotron
source at the Daresbury Laboratory, and we pay directly into those.
The great majority of the work is directly in support of academic
research in the universities. We do not use the formal-basic-applied
division too heavily although the view is that we support very
little which is of a closely applied kind. We have one programme,
which is engineering for manufacturing, where there is a substantial
involvement of industry there, they pay for half of the programme,
and therefore there is a close interaction, close collaboration,
between academic colleagues and industrial colleagues interested
in those projects. In our other seven programme areas, that is
mathematics, physics, chemistry; the two technologies, IT and
materials; we have two other engineering programmes, one for the
infrastructure and one really for the health of disciplines in
engineering, they are more involved with intermediate strategic
research which is probably the largest sector of our activity
if you use a Frascati type approach.
37. Can I ask you the value of your own initiative? Despite
the lack of DTI financial support you went ahead with the Faraday
Partnerships. How much are they costing and how successful are
they proving?
(Professor Brook) They started very recently with
£4 million which we have put into the four partnerships over
the four years. They were launched at our November annual meeting
last year. We have picked four Faraday Partnerships which we think
will, when we look back on them, allow us to identify the strengths
of such partnerships. One of them is directly related to interests
of small to medium enterprises. The packaging industry is a supply
chain into supermarkets involving very many small to medium enterprises
and we have taken their concerns into account. The other three
allow us then a spectrum of activities so that we can come back
later and say: "this looks to be the most productive way
to run such things".
38. Initially, during both your contributions in the first
20 minutes, I was quite surprised that you did not rate that highly
the initial importance of relations with industry or corporate
ventures. Could I put it this way to you? You reminded me of PPARC
and I can understand in particle physics and astronomy there is
no direct connection but there could be some spin-offs. In your
own case your main emphasis, it strikes me, is blue skies research
and training good people who then go into industry and any invention
or industrial application that comes out of that is not of first-thinking,
as it were; it is secondary; it is a by-product of that. In comparison
the Medical Research Council and the BBSRC are much more applied
in their thinking. Is that the right picture to draw?
(Dr Rudge) If you think about it we have a much broader
spectrum than the Medical Research Council. In a way the Medical
Research Council knows what it is about, it is looking at the
human body by and large and it is pretty tightly focused. We cover
all of the physical sciences and we are interested in training
people and preparing people in a lot of different disciplines
so the spread is much greater. Because of my comments about the
invention focus, which I tried to—
39. I was paraphrasing you.
(Dr Rudge) I tried to offset it, not to destroy it
but to try to open your mind to the fact that it is an element,
not the only element, of what we do. We are very strongly concerned
about the relationship with industry because we see that as part
of the flow. There is no flow if industry is totally disinterested
with the product that we are preparing and the people that we
are training. Richard made the point that we spend the great bulk
of our money on research but a good part of our money on training.
The research itself is training but we also invest in the students
themselves. We invest in CASE studentships, 1,500 CASE studentships.
We have also devised an industrial CASE award where we actually
offer industry this studentship and say: "you can go to any
university you choose" rather than offer the studentship
to the university and say: "you can go and find any industry
you choose", it is the other way around. We are very interested
in bonding industry with the academic sector. I personally believe
that if you look to the future there is probably a five or even
ten-fold increase in the amount of money that flows between industry
and the academic sector that can occur if this bonding significantly
improves. The bonding is not just based on inventions, it is based
on this whole knowledge transfer principle. I do not believe if
we look to the future that it is likely that Government will increase
its investment in science by five or ten times, but I do believe
industry could do, and would do, when it begins to realise the
benefits of the relationship.
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