Examination of Witnesses (Questions 199
- 219)
WEDNESDAY 13 MAY 1998
PROFESSOR EDWARD
W ABEL, DR
TOM INCH
and DR JOHN
BROPHY
Dr Jones
199. Professor Abel and colleagues, welcome
to this session of the Science and Technology Select Committee.
It is particularly good to have Dr Inch here since our roles are
reversed from the last time we met when we were answering the
questions. I do not think you gave us too hard a time and I hope
that you will enjoy our session today. You have emphasised in
your submission the importance of the science and engineering
base for support and stimulus for advances in products and processes.
Given the strength of the United Kingdom's science base, why would
you say that some companies under-perform in R&D and innovation?
(Dr Inch) It is really part of the break
down in communication between industry and the universities on
really understanding the process properly, the process by which
scientific ideas is not well understood at times either by industry
or by the university sector. In our submission we made one point
very explicitly. There are two types of research innovation, one
that leads to incremental improvements and one which is radical
new ideas which can lead to all sorts of good new things. The
industry usually requires the incremental improvements which are
fast translated into money and which lend themselves to rapid
take-up. Universities are not usually attuned to providing that
kind of information into the industrial base. Your question, why
does industry not translate the good ideas, I think it is in part
due to that lack of understanding. I think there still remains
a need to get members of boards of companies which are not really
at the forefront of technology, and I am not now talking about
the kind of hi-tech biotechnology companies but companies in general
manufacturing processes, to get the members of those boards fully
attuned to the actual process and understanding what goes on.
200. We will go on to discuss how we can more
readily engage companies in the possibilities of better use of
the science base. Let us go back to the science base itself. You
say that "we need to encourage a change in the very culture
of science so that all those involved in research are more alive
to science-based innovation". How would you say that the
present culture militates against innovation and what would you
do to change it?
(Dr Inch) If I could take a very extreme position
here, and I know many people around the table will recognise this.
Many university staff were trained by their predecessors in the
way their predecessors were trained in terms of the general approach
to research. I feel that the actual modern needs of industry are
not well communicated at times. In a recent survey we did asking
students whether or not they thought they had good career advice
the amazing fact that came out was that 80 per cent of those people
under 32 in employment thought their training had been pretty
good but only 16 per cent of those thought they had heard any
useful advice on what to expect when moving from universities
to industry. As we talked to young people in the universities
and as we talked to young staff particularly in universities,
the young staff said that they are singularly ill-equipped to
provide the right kind of advice. That is understandable because
they are actually concentrating on the research and not on the
application of it. So we get this kind of gap. One example I like
to use is someone doing research into synthetic organic chemistry
and when he goes to work for Michael Elves of Glaxo at the back
there he does not know whether he is going to finish up in drug
discovery, where he will need to know the language of the new
biology, or whether he is going to finish up in process development,
where he will need to know about process economics and chemical
engineering. The organic chemist rarely receives advice or guidance
on the kinds of fringe areas he might need to enable him to take
part in the right kind of discussions when he hits the ground
going into industry.
201. I hope there might be some female chemists
as well. One of the suggestions that has been put forward by the
Royal Academy of Engineering is the idea that undergraduates should
receive some kind of instruction in intellectual property rights.
How would you regard such a suggestion? Apparently this happens
in Japan.
(Professor Abel) I think this is already happening
in some university departments, in new chemistry departments.
Certainly more and more staff are becoming aware of intellectual
property rights in terms of research and in terms of a pressure
towards earning for the university. I think there is a move towards
that but it is fairly recent and it is very patchy.
202. Is it something that you would welcome
or should it be selective?
(Professor Abel) In terms of diversity of mission
I think it should be selective.
203. How would you select which courses, which
people?
(Professor Abel) I think this would be for degree
courses. I think there are degree courses that are highly academic
in content where this could just be a piece of information but
I think there are other courses where it could be given in quite
a bit of depth. If that diversity is available then I think companies
could hire accordingly.
Dr Gibson
204. The organisations that fund research, the
higher education funding councils and the research councils, what
role do you see them having in bringing about these cultural changes
that we are talking about? In other words, is the whole thing
funding driven?
(Professor Abel) It certainly can be said if it is
not funding driven it is not driven. I think one is going to see
an element of change here because post-Dearing we now have the
Quality Assurance Agency and chemistry, history and law are going
to be experimental subjects there. The benchmarking of these subjects,
take chemistry in particular, could well involve something of
this sort. We could in fact build that into a requirement for
university courses in chemistry and this will be one of the things
that examiners would look for as coverage if that university said
they were going to do it.
(Dr Inch) Could I just add to that. One of our concerns
is to protect our university members, I guess, because it is stupid
to think that every member of the university staff can be superman
or superwoman and understand all these issues, they have got enough
to do as it is. There is a role for ourselves as a learned society
in actually bridging the gap and working with industry and others
to provide appropriate guidelines to give broader education about
the requirements of the industrial base working with industry
to do that. It is silly to ask university staff to take total
responsibility for this very important area.
(Professor Abel) It is very likely that some of the
best expertise on IPL would come from industrial colleagues in
terms of instructing students.
(Dr Brophy) The research councils are doing something
at the moment to try and encourage their postgraduate students
to expose themselves more to an industrial type approach to the
work. They run week long courses for postgraduate students which
we encourage. What we are trying to do at the moment in the Royal
Society of Chemistry is to increase the awareness of that entrepreneurial
culture amongst graduate students and undergraduate students by
more closely integrating our industrial lectures, which we sponsor
every year, with some of the basic principles that we are trying
to get across to the academic community. I think the research
councils are doing things about it and I think the learned societies,
professional bodies and trade associations can add a lot to that.
Mr Beard
205. Just following on from the answer you gave
to Dr Jones, you mentioned that you felt one of the problems was
a lack of understanding in companies of what is required to take
something that has come from universities or early research and
move it into innovation. In the nature of things is there not
a very definite difference between the two, and part of the reason
that we do not get on is that we do not recognise the difference?
University research is exploring natural phenomena and looking
to see an explanation of it and providing, therefore, a mine of
understanding and ideas, whereas industrial research is looking
to direct that knowledge at a particular problem and to solve
a particular problem and therefore you have to have a fair definition
of what the problem is. If the problem is a product you want to
satisfy a market need you need to define it. In the one case you
are looking in a broad exploratory sense at how these things happen
and in the other case you are taking the knowledge and directing
it to provide a particular solution to a particular problem. Do
you think that we are educating people enough in the way in which
problems are solved as opposed to when a general inquiry takes
place?
(Dr Inch) I think it is very much a question of the
prepared mind and making everyone aware of where issues require
a solution and we are not nearly good enough at that. Universities
are not nearly good enough at finding the problems and industry
not very often prepared enough to go and seek the solutions to
the problems. One of the great exciting things that I have seen
time and time again in my career is where very good scientists
who would not dream of seeking out the solution to a particular
problem, when by chance are brought into contact with the problem,
produce enormously innovative solutions to the problem that the
people working in that area would never have dreamt of. You can
only do that by encouraging the right kind of cultural exchange
and awareness and an interaction of those problems. We have to
find ways of exploiting that more fully. It is very important
that we do this now with the change in the industrial culture
where once upon a time the big companies, the Shells, the ICIs,
the BPs, who had large corporate groups brought in people to do
fundamental research and gradually exposed them to more mundane
problems. That kind of culture has largely disappeared. We have
to find a way of finding a solution to replace that with other
methods.
Dr Jones
206. Before I bring Dr Gibson back in, could
I just ask: do you know of any examples of good practice where
you think that the right sort of culture has been achieved in
universities or research institutes?
(Dr Inch) The problem is, except where one is talking
about entirely new innovations, there are dozens of small examples
where interest in new solutions to specific solutions have been
found, and there are a lot, but they do not make headlines and
usually industry does not want to talk too much about them because
that is money or profitability, a cost reduction for them when
they come about.
Dr Gibson
207. Other countries have been through all this
as well. What lessons have we got to learn from the competitors
who are out there?
(Dr Inch) I do not know too much about other countries
but, in my experience, three years managing in research in the
United States, that is particularly relevant. I do not know that
other countries do things vastly differently. Many of the same
experiments we try here through the Funding Councils, through
TCS schemes, through LINK schemes, I believe have their parallels.
Sometimes they work well and sometimes they work a little bit
indifferently. In the United States, however, they have one big
difference in the way they fund research at times and that is
the way they are prepared to put really large sums of money behind
demonstrator products. A recent example of that is a new innovation
for the gasoline conversion technology which Shell, Esso and BP
have all played with to a certain extent, but the Department of
Energy in the States has just put many tens of millions of dollars
into a consortium of industry and universities to try and get
a grip on that particular project. That will really energise a
whole range of different activity in both pure research and in
engineering. It is that kind of sum that they are prepared to
put behind some of the projects that is different from what we
do here.
208. Do you think that the structures that were
set up in the 1960s with different departments of chemistry and
biology are still sunk in the past? It is quite clear that there
are exciting advances now where chemists and biologists mix and
rub shoulders geographically. Do you think that geographical distance
makes for important cultural changes?
(Professor Abel) I would not think so. I think one
has interdisciplinary activities of the sort that you have described
because we have got the strong disciplines themselves. I do not
think molecular biology in this country has been in any way disadvantaged
because we have got a biology department and we have got a chemistry
department. It is the synergism between these that has actually
built it up.
209. You do not think distance plays a part
in that, that scientists meet each other and mingle? My experience
is that one hundred yards can be like a world apart in universities.
(Dr Brophy) It is more difficult the further you are
away to collaborate and share your ideas over coffee, etc. We
very, very strongly believe that a big piece of the future for
chemistry is on the interface with the life scientists and the
biologists. We have been spending a lot of time over the last
year through the Foresight process, building a new network to
discuss how we can bring those two communities together. We need
to preserve the strength of individual disciplines, the excellence
in chemistry and the excellence in biology, we do not want something
in the middle which is a jack of all trades. Finding ways to collaborate
is the challenge.
210. Do you not think that the funding councils
have got it right by saying that the more people you have on your
grant request from different departments in different parts of
the country, different parts of the world, it effects a cultural
change that excites and brings new ideas and new people together
who ten, twenty years ago would never even have talked to each
other? Do you not think the funding councils have actually promoted
that?
(Dr Brophy) I think that the culture can be influenced
very strongly by the funding.
Mr Beard
211. In that discussion you are referring to
the generation of ideas and bringing people together and dealing
with the cross-fertilisation between disciplines and dealing with
ideas. The inquiry we are looking at is why those ideas do not
get exploited as innovation. Dr Inch said: "I do not think
there is very much difference between us and other countries".
I think there probably is not in the generation of ideas and the
research councils and university organisations but we notably
do seem to fail in taking these things up and doing things. The
legion of things that are invented here and exploited elsewhere
is very great. This discussion is almost symptomatic of discussing
this issue in Britain. It goes back to the universities and the
research councils but that is not where the problem is, the problem
is further down from that; it is when you have got the ideas and
then you want to do something with them that has got commercial
relevance.
(Professor Abel) I think here we are back to a problem
of culture because the ideal technology transfer is two legs pointing
in the right direction and walking towards one another. Until
we have a culture where people do walk together either from industry
to academia or the other way we are still going to have this problem.
I think we are going to have to tackle this at undergraduate level
and postgraduate level in the universities so that when people
do go out in industry they do not forget their academic colleagues
and they are prepared to walk towards them.
(Dr Brophy) Can I make an observation? I would like
to challenge the basic idea that in the area of chemistry and
the chemistry-related industries there is a yawning gap between
industry and academia. I do not think that is the case.
212. I do not think so either.
(Dr Brophy) Chemistry is different in that it is blessed
with having an industry, unlike some of the other disciplines
like maths and physics. There is a clearly identified, coherent
industry and there are a lot of related industries around the
chemical industry all the way from agriculture through foods and
materials into health and life sciences and electronics even that
rely a lot on chemistry. In this particular area there is a good
track record of interaction between the science base and industry.
213. Except in materials.
(Dr Brophy) Materials is a very, very different sort
of industry, it is more fragmented, there are different types
of material that compete, there are different sorts of issues
there. We would challenge the basic precept that there is something
wrong in the case of chemistry. We think we can always do better
and we are working very hard on that but I think it is one of
the areas which has got plenty of good examples of where it can
actually work in the Government schemes and a lot of other ways
that people interact.
(Dr Inch) I would not think our materials programme
differs greatly from those in the United States either. They have
had the same kind of problems in developing the materials business.
We see the two great disasters of our major companies in buying
materials business in the States, ICI with Fibrerite and BP with
HITCO, and when peace broke out both companies went down the tubes.
It is market pull that is still important and one of the problems
in materials both in the United States and in the United Kingdom
is the lack of market pull in some areas.
Dr Williams
214. In one of your earlier answers you mentioned
something—and this could just be facts of life and we cannot
do much about it—that the people who are prominent in universities
in the leading positions are ones who themselves have spent most
of their lives, perhaps all of their lives, in universities. There
is a kind of inbreeding of certain academic research quality as
it were. Is there a way of more people coming back from industry
in their fifties or in their forties and spending ten or twenty
years in shared appointments with universities and in ICI where
that kind of industrial background philosophy and ideas could
play a part within the academic system? The second part of my
question is: are other countries doing more of that than Britain
is doing?
(Dr Inch) I think to some extent it is happening with
the fall-out from industry. Certain people have gone back into
academic roles in certain parts and that is helping. I think you
need currency of approach, not out of date approach. It has got
to be more of a partnership. Surprisingly here I see better practices
in Europe. In Holland, for example, there are more people holding
joint appointments in industry and university than there may be
in the United States where it is not such a usual situation. I
think in some European counties, and I would cite Holland as the
best example, it is probably a better model.
215. What about in Japan, say, is there a much
closer relationship there?
(Dr Inch) I do not know the Japanese situation.
Dr Turner
216. The Government obviously is a major player
in research funding; what can it do to encourage companies to
exploit further the fruits of the Government-funded science? What
do you see as the major barriers that prevent companies from doing
so now?
(Professor Abel) It is a matter of information. For
example, if one had a sort of catalogue or some sort of base of
available non-secret Government information this would help enormously.
To use our own parlance, let us almost have a Government research
based Car Boot Sale. What has the Government got available to
offer out into the system? There have been efforts in this direction.
The MoD some time ago tried very hard, I think about £20
million worth, to try and get their story out but I think that
failed and they are about to start again on another one.
(Dr Inch) Professor Abel is referring to the defence
technology enterprise initiative of a dozen years ago where everyone
said there is a massive amount of research ideas in defence establishments
that ought to be commercialised and it came to nothing because
there was an enormous gap in research and the intermediate development
needed and the expenditure needed to take those ideas into anything
like a commercial role and nobody was prepared to put up the money.
There are other initiatives in the Ministry of Defence and we
will wait to see whether they have learned from the previous lessons
or not.
(Dr Brophy) I think there is a lot of emphasis in
allocation of Government funds to research projects on the input
side. On the output side we could all help do a lot more to publicise
the results of that research and bring it to the attention especially
of the smaller companies who cannot necessarily have the large
offices and staff searching the universities and the databases.
There is a knowledge gap in the small companies, especially on
the output side. We can all contribute here. One of the things
we have been doing recently that has been very successful has
been to hold a new type of meeting where we bring the smaller
companies together with university research groups in a very focused
way. This came as a direct result of being asked to do it by a
collection of small companies who felt they were not very well
networked, they did not understand what was going on in a particular
area of chemistry in the UK and they asked us to help them. This
was a direct result of Foresight. We set up a new type of meeting
which brought them together and it was very simple. It involved
getting a large number of academics and smaller companies and
larger companies with a common interest in one room and letting
them talk to one another, just locking the door on them for a
day and letting them get on with it. There were no talking heads,
no overdoing the presentation side and talking at them, but giving
them the opportunity to network. We were astounded by the response
we got. It is simply an opportunity for them to set up their stalls
and tell each other what they have got to offer in a very non-confrontational
way. It works very well. It is not very complicated, it is not
very sophisticated, but it actually does have an impact. We have
had a lot of very, very good feedback. The DTI have given us a
lot of support in these meetings and through their help to finance
the meetings we have been able to lower the cost, the entry barrier,
to smaller companies and to academics. For a very low fee we can
actually get together most of the academic groups that the companies
want to meet in one room on the same day. One small company recently
quite by chance in the April edition of "Chemical Engineer",
a small consultancy company from the West Country, said that:
"For every company contacts are the lifeblood, so setting
aside time each week to reach potential customers is vital. Targeting
meetings where relevant people will be is a good place to start.
A car boot sale run by the Royal Society of Chemistry last year
was ideal for marketing my company because it was full of university
researchers and small companies. Huge trade fairs are no good
because I can't compete with the flashy stands they offer. They
are on a completely different scale". There is a lot we can
do if we do some marketing, asking them what they want.
Dr Jones: Before I bring Dr Turner back, Dr
Williams would like to ask some questions about your Car Boot
Sale.
Dr Williams
217. I take it it is a fairly new idea, is it,
you have only had four of them?
(Dr Brophy) We got the idea from this group of companies
and we modelled our meeting on the input from smaller companies
and tried to give people the opportunity to exchange information
and talk rather than be talked at. It is a poster session that
involves industry and academia. We got 150 people, half and half
from industry and academia, which in itself is very strange for
the UK, you usually have industrialists paying £700 a day
for a professional meeting or academics talking to one another.
We have managed to get a 50/50 split.
Dr Gibson
218. Making it half price?
(Dr Brophy) Yes. We cut it down to £50 a day.
Dr Williams
219. The cost of that is relatively small indeed,
is it not?
(Dr Brophy) Yes, and we keep it small by help from
the DTI and the research councils which are actively participating
in our events. We have held four so far and we have three this
year coming up.
(Dr Inch) The one difference from most meetings is
we do not simply advertise, we actually consult widely and make
a careful selection of the people we invite to try and persuade
to come. I know we are getting networks that are self-selecting
but it is quite hard work to pull together the people who we think
can make a contribution in a critical way.
|
