Examination of Witnesses (Questions 214-219)
BIRMINGHAM AND
COVENTRY UNIVERSITIES
12 MAY 2008
Q214 Chairman: Can I, first of all, thank
you for facilitating what is, Professor Atkins, a very interesting
session, and important for us, and thank you for allowing Birmingham
to intrude on Coventry on this occasion. This is an important
but rather elusive inquiry; it is a theme that has occupied politicians
and policy makers for a very long time, in fact, you have been
telling us how the very origins of university have their origins
in this question, but in an increasingly globalised and competitive
world it becomes an ever more important question, and we are very
fascinated by what we have learned already informally over lunch,
for which we thank you. It seems an obvious question but I think
different universities answer it differently. What do you think
a higher value added economy is, and what role do universities
have in hoping to foster it?
Professor Atkins: We would say
that the definition is beginning to move outwards from a manufacturing
product orientation to something a bit broader which would include
service areas and new sectors of the economy, not just manufacturing.
So we would see the high value added question as being appropriate
to services, and to the way in which people work. For example,
some of the expertise we have here on location independent working,
which is all about how people manage their time, may also be part
of what innovation is going to look like in the future. How should
we as universities engage with that? Well, I think through the
courses and the way we design the learning experience of students
so that graduates go out with the right level of skill and knowledge
to support a high value economy. Through the applied research
we do working with companies obviously, focused on innovation
and creativity, and their productivity or, in the public sector,
improvement in service in some measured way. And through knowledge
transfer, which is product-based and IPR-linked, but also much
knowledge transfer happens on legs through high skills training.
So in all those three areas we support a higher value-added economy.
Professor Clarke: I sign up to
all of that but would add one point: that it is the addition or
insertion of knowledge into the production, broadly-defined, process,
and that gives you the clue about where universities stand in
all of this because, as Madeleine said, through teaching, through
research and developmental work, universities are by their nature
supporting this transformation in the economy. Having said all
of that, it is one of the slipperiest concepts around and capable
of being given all sorts of definitions.
Q215 Chairman: Do you think there
has been too much public policy and public discussion emphasis
on the question of invention, discovery, as being what universities
contribute to this process? We see here that is very much not
your understanding of the process, but more generally do you think
public debate has been shaped too much by the blue sky thinking
and entirely academic institutions developing new ideas which
then become brand new products? Has there been too much emphasis
on the innovation process? NESTA have talked about hidden innovation;
you referred to services in your answer. How useful do you think
that concept of hidden innovation is?
Professor Clarke: I would like
to see as broad a definition as possible given to the concept
of innovation. Having said that, it is possible that over much
attention has been given to the role of fundamental research,
but I think we need to remember that the development of the firm
or the economy will not happen without the fundamental, blue skies,
as you described it, research work being undertaken. That is not
to say every university should be involved in that or involved
in that intensively but that needs to go on, and without that
we would be a poorer economy. Just to give you an example, sitting
behind me is the Chair of the Regional Development Agency. Now,
I mention the Regional Development Agency because in the West
Midlands they have taken one very interesting initiative which
has been to recognise the importance of fundamental research in
development of the economy, not to the exclusion of other things
but to recognise that, without the presence of fundamental research
in the region, then the region will be the poorer for it. As I
think you know, AWM have funded or are funding a programme of
collaborative work between the two major research universities,
Birmingham and Warwick. They are interested in capital infrastructure
to enable those two universities in three key areas of the regional
economy to develop programmes of research which will keep the
West Midlands at the cutting edge internationally. Now, that is
not to deny the importance of any other research or development
activity, but is one particular take on it.
Professor Atkins: As I said when
introducing Coventry University to your Committee, the importance
for us is to have a definition that does embrace the near market
and the exploitation of known ideas as well as the blue skies
end. And certainly for universities such as Coventry what we have
become concerned about is too narrow a definition of innovation
which precludes attention to new sectors in the economy which
are emerging. For example, an over reliance on manufacturing and
an ignoring of things like digital media which we would say is
short-sighted. Or an understanding of innovation which is very
much bound up with product and not with process and service design.
We think that innovation embraces those aspects just as much as
it does product, and for the kind of country that we need to become
then innovation in service and process is likely to be as important
as innovation in product.
Q216 Chairman: Universities UK's
written evidence to this Committee was very critical of R&D
definitions and said that they exclude much of the creative and
service industries, which obviously concerns me, and you have
just focused on that. Does this have any issue when it comes to
funding the work you are doing? Is there any problem with accessing
funding for the work?
Professor Atkins: Certainly here
with Advantage West Midlands we are getting very good support
for work in the digital media and the creative industries. I think
it is not at the level of support given to some other sectors,
but Advantage West Midlands was one of the first to recognise
that these areas of the economy were going to become important.
I think it would also be fair to say that the Technology Strategy
Board has been quick to recognise some of these newly emerging
sectors as well, and we are getting positive signals from them,
for example in serious games.
Professor Marshall: The transfer
of technology from the entertainment games industry into other
sectors of our economy is a classic example of where we can take
one aspect of research and development and innovation and perhaps
create another completely different use for it which is a definition
of innovation. So in terms of serious games, although it is a
small embryonic industry at the moment, it can draw on the back
of a lot of very good research and development work that has been
done by the entertainment games industry over the last 20 years.
Advantage West Midlands to their credit have co-funded the Serious
Games Institute with Coventry University, so it is possible to
get funding, and there are a number of very good initiatives running
within this region. We are involved in projects again funded by
Advantage West Midlands to help games companies diversify, we
are involved in projects to take the technology into other sectors.
It is perhaps not funded as well as, let's say, manufacturing,
but it certainly is there and available. Part of it is about the
university sector being slightly creative, thinking carefully
about what they want to do and explaining it carefully to potential
funders. For example, within this region we have the INDEX voucher
scheme running as a pilot, run out of Aston University for the
older universities in the sector, partially funded by EPSRC, ESRC,
Advantage West Midlands, ERDF, ESF funding which enables SMEs
to get a voucher for £3,000 worth of consultancy, and that
has been used by companies as diverse as you can think of, from
small manufacturing companies through to service industries, and
it is a really nice innovative way of encouraging people to get
consultancy, to take product ideas, process ideas, service ideas,
and enhance them.
Professor Clarke: Could I just
take you back a moment or two? It is really important not to just
think of innovation in relation to the sectors of the economy
we have just been referring but to the public sector as well as
the private sector. It is difficult to believe that an economy
is going to innovate into private sector if public sector is not
innovating as well, just to underline that. Secondly, to make
a slightly different point, in your earlier question to me I think
there was reference to the implicit disjunction which there is
often seen to be between the wealth creating sector and the fundamental
researcher. In the collaboration I was referring to between Birmingham
and Warwick we are trying to make sure that business interests
are involved at the stage of conceiving research projects and
living with the research projects as they develop, as well as
trying to look at the end to application.
Chairman: I think in a sense you are
moving on to the questions Roger Berry wanted to ask at this stage.
Q217 Roger Berry: On the question
of innovation, Advantage West Midlands in their opening comments
states that the West Midlands has a poor overall track record
in innovation. Would you like to offer your views why?
Professor Atkins: I am sure you
will also be putting that to Advantage West Midlands.
Q218 Roger Berry: I certainly will!
Professor Atkins: I have come
into this region from the North East where I was for 20 years,
and I would say this region has considerably more understanding
of the innovation process than the North East, certainly when
I was there in Newcastle University. I think some of the issues
five, six, ten years ago, were perhaps not understanding where
the new sectors in the economy were coming from. And also the
dominance of the manufacturing sector in terms of concepts like
supply chain, which did not actually apply to some of these new
emerging sectors, like for example digital media, where the whole
way in which you get to market is different and so on. And I think
it perhaps took a little while to open up from a predominant focus
on the manufacturing to an understanding that there are other
ways in which markets are made and other sectors that need to
come through. I think to some extent that would be true in Coventry,
which was the car capital and where, by history, people have associated
innovation with very large companies, rather than with micros
or with associations of micros, or with medium-sized companies
working with others, not just in this country but elsewhere. Advantage
West Midlands will speak for itself, but certainly the analysis
that was made in the last RES and continued into this is that
the innovation difficulty lies with the medium-sized companies
in particular, which have bumped along OK but which have not necessarily
taken on some of the new technologies or the new ways of doing
things that they might have done. And this is one of the things
that the university sector is trying to engage with at the moment.
There may be some other analyses one could offer but those are
some of the points that occur to me in answering that question.
Q219 Roger Berry: One of the observations
that, again, Advantage West Midlands make is that business expansion
on R&D shows the West Midlands to be seventh out of the nine
English regions. Now, someone has to be seventh, eighth or ninth,
but it does ask the question why, in this region, business expenditure
on R&D is ranked so low, like in the latest figures.
Professor Clarke: I agree with
what Madeleine has said; I think to understand this region you
need to understand the impact of the 1980s on its traditional
industries. It is interesting, if you look at the current regional
economic strategy and the strategy of the region's Innovation
Technology Council, which is our equivalent of the Regional Science
Council, the key sectors for growth are sectors which simply would
not have been evident 20 years ago. That probably tells us something
about the impact on current R&D spending. I am not familiar
with the statement of Advantage West Midlands and I am not sure
precisely what period it is referring to, but in a way it does
not entirely surprise me, given that piece of recent history.
Professor Atkins: And also we
have no pharmaceutical industry, which is one of the reasons why,
for example, the North West will have a higher R&D. There
are very few sectors which are investing in R&D, pharma is
one of the big ones and there is virtually no pharma in the West
Midlands.
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