Select Committee on Science and Technology Minutes of Evidence


Examination of Witnesses (Questions 180-191)

SIR JOHN CHISHOLM, DR MALCOLM SKINGLE, TONY MCBRIDE AND DR IAN RITCHIE

29 MARCH 2006

  Q180  Dr Iddon: Tony, have you anything to add to that?

  Mr McBride: Only to supplement both those views. I think that there is a good track research across the Research Councils of engagement with large R&D intensive businesses. These organisations are very good at putting their views forward as well so they seem to be candidates with whom to communicate. There are other hard to reach communities and the Research Councils have to do a better job of getting out and meeting those people, particularly in the SME community to fill in those gaps. I do not think the Research Councils can rely on the usual suspects all the time, important though they are, they need to broaden their engagement.

  Dr Iddon: That is very clear, thank you.

  Q181  Bob Spink: Does anyone think that PPARC's requirement to consider knowledge transfer as part of the standard grant process should be ceded as good practice into the other Research Councils?

  Dr Ritchie: I was on PPARC when that was introduced and it seemed like an appropriate thing to do and to ask. My question about that at the time was, is this the right thing to do for the kind of science we are doing? If you have something like gravitational waves, what is the exploitation for that? Maybe we will have weightless machines in 50 years' time or 100 years' time, who knows, but we are not going to have that today. I think it is an appropriate question to ask but I absolutely do not think you should make the scientific decisions on whether there is a realistic answer to that question or not. You should be making the decision dependant solely on the science.

  Dr Skingle: I would endorse that view. I think it is good that there is a reminder that people should think about potential outcome, potential exploitation of what they are doing. They should not necessarily be forced, you need that portfolio, that basic and applied research mix for it to be fruitful. Certainly one of my successes personally has come from PPARC in the last 18 months or so where we have taken algorithms that were used to look at the stars and we are now using them in biomedical imaging. It is because PPARC were actively encouraging the technology transfer through their PIPSS scheme.

  Q182  Bob Spink: Does anyone think that this requirement could impede blue skies fundamental research in any way?

  Sir John Chisholm: Can I express a different view from my colleagues? Ian said earlier on that exploitation came from serendipity which as a matter of fact is true but I do not believe it is necessarily true. Certainly in the field of defence research that is exactly how it used to be done. When it became very much more focused the volume of exploitation increased enormously, so I believe that even in funding research you can be more focused upon the areas in which you are investing. Those areas which are more likely to have a transfer are discernible in advance and a considered research programme built around that as an objective is more likely to be successful than simply serendipity. Having said that, brilliant science inventions have a role and I believe there should always be a component of any research programme which is entirely unlimited and purely blue sky for the purpose of civilisation. I think that is entirely legitimate. I think one should just be very explicit about what one is doing and when one wants to be blue sky, and purely focused on science for its own sake, that is an entirely legitimate thing for a country like the United Kingdom to do but you should be explicit if that is what you are doing.

  Q183  Bob Spink: As a potter specialising in raku I understand serendipity.

  Mr McBride: Specifically on that question, in preparation I read the comments from Professor Mason to this Committee when he talked about the PIPSS proposals being accompanied by the knowledge transfer plan and I think it is a good idea. It reminds me somewhat of the National Science Foundation in America's criteria which includes a specification for the indication of impact. I agree also that there might be concerns somewhere in the Research Councils about how this would impede blue skies research but I think it is clearly applicable more at the applied end of the spectrum. I do not think it will necessarily over-burden researchers.

  Q184  Bob Spink: Could I start with Tony and go along all of you, very quickly, it is a very short answer. Do you think Research Councils should be involved in business training, passing on commercialisation skills, entrepreneurial skills, and if they should be involved do they do it well at the moment?

  Mr McBride: I think there is a need for that. Our members have made this clear. I am aware that they are doing some of that sort of training already. To my knowledge they are doing this quite well with the engagement of some companies as well.

  Sir John Chisholm: There is a need, as I have said before, for improvement of skills.

  Dr Skingle: Yes, and they are doing reasonably well.

  Q185  Bob Spink: I thought EDA would say that.

  Dr Ritchie: I think it is worth doing. My question would be whether the Research Councils should be doing it or the regional development agencies should do that. In Scotland Scottish Enterprise works with the Royal Society of Edinburgh and they have got Enterprise Fellowships. We have about 15 of those a year. These are bright post-docs who basically get support for a year. They get their salary paid for a year and they get enterprise training for a year.

  Bob Spink: I get the feeling there is some sort of question on the inter-relationship between RDAs and the Research Councils, would be an interesting line for us to explore.

  Q186  Margaret Moran: On intellectual property rights, as you will have heard in the last session, and we have heard in evidence, industry is sometimes very sceptical of the way in which IPR is valued and used within university. Ian, particularly, you have put forward an interesting quite specific proposal on IPR. Do you think that the Research Councils should be directly involved in proposals of that sort or is that something, as they would say, that they need to create the climate rather than direct the IPR proposal?

  Dr Ritchie: I think there is an argument that says the Research Councils should perhaps be more directly involved. The UK used to have the British Technology Group that did this stuff , and then a number of years ago it was transferred and now the commercialisation rights to all research is with the individual universities. The universities vary enormously in quality here. The Lambert Report highlighted this. You have the small universities who do not come across much of this stuff and do it very badly. You have got the big universities who do a lot better, Imperial College does a lot and is very good at it. You have a whole range in between. It is very much a postcode lottery basically depending on which university you are with whether you can get a reasonable discussion with a commercialisation officer. In general, and this was highlighted also in the Lambert Report, universities have got an unrealistic recognition of the value of the IPR. In the vast majority of cases, particularly in the world I am in, where you are talking about start-up businesses the things which happen in the lab is a proof of concept, it is an idea, it has to be developed into a pilot, it has to be developed into a prototype, it has to be marketed, and you have to bring commercial and management people in and marketing people before you can start running a business—a process which might take three or four years. When the business is finally running the ideas that are behind that business are only loosely connected with the things which were in the lab and yet we have this problem, and we have it perennially—I am a mentor to enterprise fellows and so forth and I have this every year—the university commercialisation people trying to assert ownership. In one case recently, they wanted 35% of the equity. Until a year and a half ago Edinburgh University had a thing called the non-dilutable 10% which was a concept only known to universities, the real world does not have non-dilutable anything but they had this non-dilutable 10%, we take 10% of your company and after further investment, when it is successful, we still have 10%. Extraordinary! That has gone, thank goodness. We have all this variety of things. Actually just professionalism into that whole process would help, I think. Far be it from me to reinvent the old British Technology Group but at least it was an outfit which knew what they were doing. I think the Lambert Report suggested that there might be regional co-ordination of this type of thing so perhaps a region could have a commercialisation department and that might be a solution to it or it could be RCUK could do it. I think we need a way of getting more professionalism into it.

  Sir John Chisholm: There has been a burgeoning of technology transfer people in universities—a vast burgeoning—most of whom, of course, come without a big skill base of their own so they are learning on the job, and of course they are largely funded by HEFCE and the Research Councils. There has been this big burgeoning of people and, as Ian has said, their first action quite often is to get in the way because they are new to it. As Ian has also said, it is a characteristic of all researchers to over-estimate the value of their particular idea. That is true absolutely across the board. A tremendous amount of the value gets created through the later process. Getting that message through to this new growing core of technology development people in universities is often a hard thing to do.

  Q187  Margaret Moran: Is there a particular model. we have been told about MRC, that could be applied and who would apply it? Could it be RDAs or Research Councils?

  Sir John Chisholm: The MRC has a different place because, as I said earlier on, in the life sciences actually there is more value in the original invention. I think from our limited perspective the MRC are better organised than the other Research Councils, possibly because they have a clearer job to do there.

  Dr Skingle: I think the Research Councils should not be prescriptive in respect of forcing the issue. They each have very different mechanisms. I think the rule should be that whoever has the ability to protect intellectual property adequately should be the one to do it as long as there is some clear exploitation path. We usually look to own IPRs arising from work that we fund but there is always a reward clause in those agreements which I sign off on to ensure that there is remuneration to the university if the exploitation is successful. We are going to be fair and reasonable because obviously we want to go back to those people and we want the universities to work with us.

  Q188  Chairman: Can I thank you all very much indeed. I think we have found it a fascinating journey looking at knowledge transfer and it has become in vogue with the Chancellor mentioning it a number of times in his Budget statement this year. We are anxious to bring in Research Councils which offer us really good practice and with the exception of PPARC, that you all seem to think has got exceptionally good practice, would you recommend anyone else? Is there any other Research Council we should have in?

  Dr Ritchie: I do not know quite the scope. Are you looking also at the Funding Councils?

  Q189  Chairman: No, we are just looking at the Research Councils.

  Dr Ritchie: The Funding Councils have got this knowledge transfer category they are investing in as well.

  Q190  Chairman: We might come to that in the future. In terms of the research, is there another good example? We have mentioned the Medical Research Council for obvious reasons, I take your point, John, but PPARC?

  Dr Skingle: They each have different things to offer. I do not think by picking on one you will see a true effect. You have already had Keith O'Nions in, he sits across the piece.

  Q191  Chairman: What you are saying is apart from PPARC and MRC you have misgivings?

  Dr Skingle: I think each of them do good things in different ways.

  Chairman: Thank you all very much indeed. We have enjoyed our session with you.





 
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