Examination of Witnesses (Questions 220
- 241)
WEDNESDAY 13 MAY 1998
PROFESSOR EDWARD
W ABEL, DR
TOM INCH
and DR JOHN
BROPHY
220. Before this can make a macro-economic contribution,
as it were, you need dozens of these up and down the country.
(Dr Brophy) We would like to spread this practice.
We notice that other people are starting now so that is a good
thing. Maybe we can be a little more systematic in the way we
do that. What we would like to do, maybe through the DTI, is to
encourage them to spread the activity through other learned societies
and trade associations.
221. The way you describe it this idea is not
very different from conferences but you have got fewer talking
heads and it is a case of more people mingling.
(Dr Brophy) The talking heads are limited to people
who can tell the audience where to get the funds to pursue their
joint ventures, if they do want to get together and do something.
They talk about things which are really useful rather than the
latest science.
Dr Jones
222. Could you explain the exact role of the
DTI in this, how much are they putting up and how do they input
into the process, perhaps identifying who you invite?
(Dr Brophy) They have been putting up about 50 per
cent of the cost of the meeting.
223. So what is that?
(Dr Brophy) We raise the rest of it. The meetings
cost about £15,000 to organise and run. Half of that comes
from subscriptions and half of it comes from donations from the
DTI, Research Councils, whoever we can get to participate basically.
Other learned societies are taking part as well.
Dr Turner
224. Quoting your own document it says: "government-funded
research can sometimes enable breakthrough innovation into completely
new business options, both in terms of brand new products and
of radically new manufacturing processes". You think this
is more true of chemistry than other subjects. Can you tell us
why you think that is so and, if possible, give us some examples
of where that has happened?
(Professor Abel) Numerically in terms of new patents
chemistry and pharmacy have hugely more innovations than other
subjects just in sheer numbers. It is happening all the time.
You can go back in history and you can go back to when government
research was useful. Rothamstead worked for a long time on pyrethroids
and when, in fact, government ruled out DDT and Dieldrin eventually,
the pyrethroids were ready to take over as a transference of government-funded
research into commerce. Coming right up to the present day, and
John Battle referred to it in our annual congress up in Durham
about two weeks ago, there has been a very major breakthrough
in collaboration with an industrial company at Imperial College
in polymers which will have considerable repercussions. We firmly
believe that chemistry is doing more of these because there is
a chemical industry as opposed to no physics industry, no maths
industry. One does see these enormous numbers of patents going
through and an awful lot are followed through into industrial
processes, a lot of them in SMEs.
225. What do you think other engineering or
scientific disciplines learn from your experience in the chemical
industry in this respect?
(Professor Abel) I think getting researchers and users
together. You are talking about how do they solve their technology
transfer problems in the same sort of way. They may be different,
and I am not expert in them, but again it is a question of people
talking to people. Going back to our Car Boot Sales, these have
become so popular but we can only hold so many a year. You make
the point on numbers. We are, in fact, just about to set up electronic
Car Boot Sales where we will have industrial aspects and academic
aspects available on the web and people can contact one another
directly electronically. I think we will be able to build up a
much bigger database for this sort of thing electronically as
well as the actual physical ones that we are having around the
country. We still value the physical ones because meeting head
to head in direct interests is still enormously important.
(Dr Brophy) I think there is this fundamental difference
as well which might not be obvious and that is that a lot of chemical
companies and pharmaceutical companies actually create new technology
and intend to keep it and derive their competitive advantage by
owning intellectual property, whereas in electronics where the
life of a product or new process break-through can be as short
as two years, patents may be irrelevant. In engineering, in automotive
for example, a lot of research leads to designs which are copyrighted
but it is a different sort of competitive business. They do not
so much rely on patents and IPRs for their competitive advantage.
That is a characteristic of chemicals and pharmaceuticals.
226. How effective do you think the Government
schemes, LINK, CASE and the Teaching Company Scheme, have been
in generating new knowledge and technology and in encouraging
companies to exploit government-funded research in engineering
and the physical sciences?
(Dr Brophy) I think there are several schemes which
chemists have exploited to the full. The CASE scheme in the research
councils is a tremendous example. That is networking on two legs,
that is one-on-one collaboration. People are very, very keen on
the CASE scheme and want to protect the CASE scheme. The Teaching
Company Scheme is another very good one which again is a good
example of technology transfer in person. What we have found in
the LINK schemes from feedback from some of our meetings with
companies and with academics too is that the larger companies
can actually devote resources to going through the actual application
process but for smaller companies it can be a burden and the time
to make decisions can be six months to a year which is unacceptable.
One director of a small company said to me "If my board came
back in six months and said why have you not started the project
and I told them I was waiting for a LINK award I would probably
get the chop". There are certain characteristics of the LINK
scheme which are not attractive to small companies. There is also
low awareness of these schemes amongst smaller companies as well.
There are some potential solutions. Again, following one of the
meetings we had recently on a particular LINK scheme through the
RSC, we heard very recently that the duration of the LINK projects
in that particular programme will be made much more flexible.
The time between submitting an application and receiving some
news about it will be shortened considerably. I think we still
can do a lot more to help companies understand what is out there
to collaborate on in the first place. I think some of the universities
could probably help the smaller companies in particular to prepare
the application. They have expressed a willingness to do that.
(Dr Inch) Could I just add that it is my own feeling
that the schemes we have just talked about are actually all excellent
schemes. What government has to guard against is too many initiatives.
One ought to concentrate more on making the good initiatives we
have work well and better otherwise all we get is people dressing
up the same research applications in different ways and I think
this is confusing and helps no-one.
227. Do you think that the government-funded
initiatives that are designed to encourage the exploitation of
the research base should focus on collaborative research or more
overtly on enabling technology transfer from the science and engineering
technology base to industry; or do you think that the current
schemes show a correct sort of balance between these two objectives?
(Dr Inch) I think you have got to look pretty much
at who the funding agency is and where it is happening. You have
got to distinguish between Research Council activities and some
of the DTI programmes. I think you ought to be clear from which
branch of government, what the purpose is and how those objectives
are being pursued. I think at the moment there is too much overlap
between what different funding agencies within government are
trying to do, which again causes a little confusion at times.
Mrs Spelman
228. You have partially answered my question
which is the experience that the small- and medium-sized enterprises
have with the LINK scheme. You have identified what those are
and what the barriers are. What measures would you recommend to
try and overcome some of those?
(Dr Brophy) The speed of the decision making. Three
months is a good target. Make the duration of them flexible. There
is a minimum of two years, the norm is three years, but why have
one post-doc working for three years when you could have three
for one year and get the thing into the marketplace faster, three
years earlier? Just to rethink on the flexibility of the duration.
There is also an issue over confidentiality. Some companies are
very concerned about letting their ideas out. We have to find
some more imaginative ways of reassuring small companies that
they are not going to give away their one big idea. Again more
awareness of what is available.
229. To what extent do university industrial
liaison officers make it easier for companies to tap into the
university research base in engineering and physical sciences?
(Professor Abel) They used to be good at it but I
am afraid that the culture has changed and there are an awful
lot of industrial liaison officers within universities now but
the universities have changed fund raisers. They have become almost
the opposite of what they should be, they have almost become a
barrier between a basic researcher in university and his contact
in industry by putting all sorts of difficulties about IPR on
behalf of the university and all sorts of financial difficulties.
That has changed and I am personally a little cynical about the
role of so-called industrial liaison officers now because there
are very few of them who are that any more.
Dr Jones
230. You said that the Teaching Company Scheme
deserves a special mention as particularly effective for smaller
companies. Could you explain why you make that point?
(Dr Inch) We hear enormously good reports of teaching
company schemes. For chemistry, something which I personally regret,
it has never been much used by chemists, it is a scheme that only
a handful of people use. Whenever I have spoken to people, usually
they are more mature people who come back to do some kind of research
with companies and universities, they tell me how valuable it
is because they learn a bit about research and an awful lot about
company strategy and how the programme fits into that strategy
and where it is intended to go in those companies. That is something
quite different from PhD training and I think it fills a very
valuable part in the whole spectrum of education and technology
transfer. At the moment we are carrying out our own studies to
see whether we can promote the Teaching Company Scheme much more
to chemists. We think it is a missed opportunity.
(Dr Brophy) It is clearly also driving a new culture
because it sets out to say that this is not an educational process
in the classic sense of receiving a certificate at the end of
it, this is an educational process in the sense of making something
work in industry and transferring technology. I think from the
companies' point of view, the companies that do participate find
it extremely useful to have access to a chemistry department,
for example, where they have a whole body all the time in their
shop working and access to his or her supervisor. So they get,
for a very reasonable outlay, tremendous leverage. One thing we
have found is most of those people who go on Teaching Company
Schemes end up with real jobs in a technology based company.
231. In our last report on innovation in the
last Parliament we recommended that the Government should do more
to inform SMEs about independent research and technology organisations
and the Government response was that this was the role for Business
Links. How effective do you think Business Links are in this kind
of role brokering between the science base and small companies?
(Dr Inch) Could I answer that because we were very
interested in Business Links and still are very interested in
Business Links and think that in principle it really should be
a very powerful scheme. We actually carried out an experiment
with North London Business Links in association with the Institute
of Physics and the Institute of Electrical Engineers in which
we looked at all our members in those particular postcode regions
and the Business Links in that area then looked at all the companies
in those areas hiring physicists, chemists and electrical engineers.
We reckoned that anybody hiring a graduate or a PhD was probably
a technology company. They actually sought those companies out
to see whether they could help them with technology and make connections.
We were actually a little bit disappointed in the outcome because
too few of the companies wanted to take up any kind of technology,
they were all too busy getting on with their daily business. The
Business Links themselves we find are very patchy, some really
have a fair grasp and others do not. What we were trying to do
was to say "as a Business Link you know what is going on
in your area but if you cannot get help within your area we, as
the Society, will help you nationally to find the right connections".
We were trying to help the Business Link and would like the opportunity
to continue to do so.
(Dr Brophy) The biggest problem for everybody is who
are these small companies? It is murder trying to find them. You
get a long list of small companies, including dry cleaning shops
and all sorts of things. Finding out which ones are interested
in technology is extremely difficult. What we have discovered
is if you take the learned societies and the trade associations,
but particularly the three learned societies which have a technology
membership approaching 100,000 people or more in the UK, that
is the first clue in and once you go through their employment
details on the databases it is a route into the companies. We
are very keen to work with Business Link.
Dr Kumar
232. My question relates to Foresight. Obviously,
as supporters of the Foresight programme you recognise the creative
network produced and so forth. Can you just tell us how successful
it has been regarding the outputs and actions to small- and medium-sized
enterprises and what your own evaluation is?
(Dr Inch) Dr Brophy has already told you about the
Car Boot Sales. I remain disappointed at how difficult it is to
actually make contact. We actually carried out a telephone poll
of 50 of our members in companies—this was 18 months ago,
well into the Foresight programme—and asked them if they
had ever heard of Foresight and what it meant for their companies.
Uniquely, I guess, not one of them said they had heard of the
process or found it of any value. Each of them said they read
our house magazine "Chemistry in Britain" regularly.
We had carried at least 25 articles and reports on the Foresight
process in our magazine but clearly their eyes passed over that
because they were not recognising the significance. This is one
of the weaknesses that we try and work out in other ways and we
are continuing to work out because we believe that the only way
we can really achieve our objective is on a face to face, man
to man, woman to woman contact to get some of the message across
about what the process is and how important it is and to think
about the issues in the right kind of way.
233. In your submission you mention that "the
process is more important than the published ... reports".
(Dr Brophy) I think I have answered the question really,
people do not read the reports, you have got to talk to people
and get them involved in the debate.
234. Will you be supporting the Foresight programme
further given that the Government is going for further consultation
on the document?
(Professor Abel) Let me say what we have in hand at
the present time. The Society is carrying out its own internal
programme, its own scientific Foresight programme. The last Foresight
exercise came up on us rather quickly and I suppose to some extent,
like most people, we had to be reactive to it. We are certainly
going to be proactive for the next Foresight programme because
we are already looking at networks, names of people and any requests
from DTI in terms of Foresight, in terms of people, in terms of
expertise. We hope we will be ready for it. We have got 85 subject
groups, a lot of which incidentally are inter-disciplinary. All
of these are looking at how they can contribute to Foresight for
the next exercise. We are hoping that we are ahead of the game.
(Dr Brophy) One comment I can make is on the culture
as well. We did a survey of a couple of hundred senior members
of the Society and some of the senior academics said that after
the first round of Foresight they thought it would go away so
they did not take it too seriously, now they know it is going
to stick they are taking it very seriously and they are changing
the way they think about interaction with industry and applied
research. The Government commitment to another round of Foresight
is marvellous and we need to keep building on it.
Mr Beard
235. You say in your evidence that you doubt
that the Faraday centres are going to have any significant impact
in fostering technology transfer. What grounds have you for saying
this? It is rather early, is it not, to say this?
(Professor Abel) We would, in principle, be highly
supportive of Faraday centres and their idea. Our concern with
the way Faraday centres have been set up at the present time is
too little finance, in our opinion, from the wrong source. We
think EPSRC is seriously stretched in its funding. We have a situation
of less than a 20 per cent success rate in EPSRC applications
for funding that research. EPSRC is stretched to the limit. I
am not saying they were wrong to go into Faraday centres but let
us use a Sir Humphrey-ism and say: "They were courageous
to do it by themselves with, in my opinion, inadequate money".
I think that one and a half million in technology transfer into
Faraday centres is just too little and I am pessimistic of the
outcome.
236. You are talking about the scale rather
than the concept?
(Professor Abel) Yes, very much so.
(Dr Inch) And the funding agency, I think we would
prefer if it was DTI-funded rather than Research Council.
237. The DTI were not going to. I think the
EPSRC see that they are generating new ideas that are bottled
up because they are getting transferred nowhere and this is an
attempt to get them out.
(Professor Abel) Faraday centres are, I will not say
more appropriate to engineering than chemistry and we see their
usefulness. The four that have started so far are more engineering
than chemistry certainly. We see that as a very good area to experiment
in but our perception of Faraday centres is that they want to
be getting fairly near market and if they are getting fairly near
market we feel that the DTI should be involved with more money.
We think that EPSRC is stretching itself into the Faraday centres
wrongly.
238. Is it not better that they exist with the
wrong sort of money than do not exist at all?
(Professor Abel) If they fail or they do not really
get off the ground, what is the answer? Have we carried out the
wrong experiment or what? One hopes they will succeed but certainly
if you read our sentence it is very carefully worded, we are for
them but we think they are under-funded and from the wrong source.
We are hugely supportive of the concept but, as you would expect
from us, more money, please.
Dr Jones
239. Did not the EPSRC take the plunge because
they felt they had to put their money where their mouth was?
(Professor Abel) Yes.
240. But that was the only way to secure DTI
funding.
(Professor Abel) Absolutely. It is too strong a term
to say they need rescuing but certainly in our opinion they need
to be successful, more support than they have got now and that
should be supplemental as soon as possible.
241. Professor Abel, Dr Brophy and Dr Inch,
thank you very much. We really do have to finish now but if there
is any quick point that you feel we have missed in our questioning
that you want to make then I will give you a very brief opportunity.
(Professor Abel) No, I think you have covered the
points that concern us. If we had to hammer home one point, I
think we are all going to have to work on the cultural change
of technology transfer and we are going to have to start on this
at the lowest level.
Dr Jones: Thank you very much for your time.
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