Examination of Witnesses (Questions 40-48)
IAIN GRAY,
DAVID BOTT
AND DAVID
GOLDING
1 APRIL 2009
Q40 Dr Iddon: That was what I was
really asking. When do you expect the reformed Small Business
Research Initiative to be rolled out more widely across departments,
and what support have you had from departments for that initiative?
Mr Gray: I am expecting to roll
that out over the next couple of months. We re-launched SBRI about
12 months ago and my commitment was to run a couple of pilots
with the Ministry of Defence and Department of Health over the
last 12 months. We have run those and they have been successful
projects. We are now laying out for the next 12 months a series
of programmes that will run across a number of different departments,
the Home Office, Department for Transport, MoD and Department
of Health. Those are the four departments we have targeted. In
terms of that roll-out, we are weeks away from doing that. End
of April, beginning of May is my target date for a broader roll-out
of SBRI.
Q41 Dr Iddon: You have already mentioned
low carbon technology research particularly with respect to transport
initiatives, but we have also set up an Energy Technologies Institute
and there are a number of other organisations interested in low
carbon technologies as well. How do you interact with the other
people who are pushing ahead in that area of R&D?
Mr Gray: The Energy Technologies
Institute is one example, as you say, and there are a number of
other areas. We see the Technology Strategy Board very much playing
a leadership role across a very, very broad spectrum. Just to
be quite specific, I sit on the board of the Energy Technologies
Institute. The Technology Strategy Board is one of the two public
sector funding providers into the Energy Technologies Institute's
programmes and our technologists play a key role in the selection
of projects that are being made. We support the Energy Technologies
Institute in a number of very key areas, wind power and marine
power being two examples. In those sorts of areas what we have
developed with these organisations we are working in partnership
with is a mapping exercise to show who is focusing on what in
which particular areas. Wind and marine are two areas where the
Technology Strategy Board's support is through the ETI type of
involvement. In other areas, the low carbon vehicle, just coming
back to that example, we are saying the Technology Strategy Board
must directly lead that, we need to do things very quickly in
that area so we are playing a strong leadership role. We see our
leadership role coming through in a number of different guises.
One is actually through leading programmes directly and the other
is through directing and influencing our engagement with other
establishments.
Q42 Dr Iddon: Could you tell us about
your interaction with two other organisations, the Environmental
Transformation Fund and the Energy Research Partnership?
Mr Gray: Again, I sit on the Energy
Research Partnership and arguably one of the biggest deliverables
from that was the establishment of the Energy Technologies Institute.
The Energy Research Partnership I see more as a cross-government
business leadership, almost a leadership council type role, between
business, government and agencies to help determine an overall
policy framework. The Transformation Fund is one that, to be honest,
we are not very closely involved with from a funding point of
view. It is now part of DECC and we are working very closely with
DECC to show joined-upness in this whole energy arena. The Transformation
Fund is looking much more beyond the area that we are involved
in and it is much more looking at large-scale demonstration projects
rather than the technology innovation projects that we are engaged
in.
Q43 Dr Iddon: So there are clear
boundaries and you do not feel that you are tripping one another
up?
Mr Gray: There are overlaps and
those overlaps are helpful in the sense that they bring different
business models and different types of thinking to areas. There
is also a very clear understanding of where the focus of different
organisations is. Again, it is an evolving landscape. The Technology
Strategy Board is very closely involved with ETI and Energy Research
Partnerships.
Q44 Dr Iddon: Let me look next at
the Framework Programmes in Europe. They are bureaucratic, difficult
to get into, academics constantly complain about the amount of
paperwork, and business seems to have lost interest in them now.
I understand one of your responsibilities is to re-engage business
in Framework Programme 7, for example. Are you having much success?
Mr Gray: Again, it is a journey
that we are on. The UK benefits quite significantly from research
funding but it is, as you suggest, predominantly through universities.
Our role is to engage businesses. We are holding a very significant
Technology Strategy Board meeting with the Commission at the end
of April to look at ways and means of how we can get better business
engagement in European programmes, help influence the agenda and
ensure our businesses are getting a fair share. The other kind
of mechanism that we are engaged in is we have done probably two
examples now of small seed funding type proposals where we have
put a small amount of money into a competition with UK businesses
to help them prepare to submit more substantial bids in European
programmes. We find that when we target specific areas and help
businesses get themselves in a good position to apply for European
funding that is a very good model for moving forward.
Q45 Dr Iddon: The Committee has just
been out in the Far East and in Japan we visited a rather interesting
institute where the large electronic companies, all the big names,
Sanyo, Hitachi and all the rest, were brought together to research
in that institute in the early stages of developing what looked
like successful technologies and once the ball starts rolling
they each go back and develop that technology in their own way.
I guess my question is, are we doing something similar through
the TSB or have you even thought about it yet across Europe?
Mr Gray: Across Europe or the
UK?
Dr Iddon: I am talking about Europe and
internationally.
Chairman: Because we do not have those
great big companies here.
Q46 Dr Iddon: We do not have the
big companies like they do and it would seem ideal to bring companies
together to do the initial stages of development work.
Mr Gray: I am a great believer
in centres and the importance of clusters. There are some really
good examples that exist that we and the regions do support with
capital infrastructure, but I do not believe we are joined up
in the way that we do it and we could make a much bigger impact
if we were joined up in our whole approach to centres and clusters.
It is definitely something that we are thinking about, but it
is an area where there is a lot more work to be done.
Q47 Dr Iddon: Not yet is the answer.
Mr Gray: Yes.
Q48 Chairman: Particularly with your
background in terms of Airbus because that was an interesting
area where people did come together and produced very successful
products. Finally, could I talk about the Knowledge Transfer Networks
which you have mentioned a few times during your evidence today.
Currently there are approximately 40 of these Networks and you
are going to drive them down to 20 by forcing them to collaborate.
We have received evidence to say that a lot of the individual
names and brands will be lost in that. In the very key areas that
you were talking to Ian Stewart about in his questioning earlier,
grants will be reduced by 25 per cent by 2010, there will be a
focus on cross-sector relationships and sometimes that is inappropriate
for some of these smaller niche areas that are coming through.
Certainly one witness has told us that this would be totally counterproductive
to everything that in this case UKDL Knowledge Transfer Network
has looked at. We looked at plastic electronics in our engineering
inquiry, so this is an area where we have evidence. How did you
consult the existing KTNs about this major shift in policy?
Mr Gray: Just as a very general
response, I would be very happy to brief the Committee at some
future point on the whole approach to Knowledge Transfer Networks
because I think it is a really interesting subject in its own
right. For the record, currently we have 24 Knowledge Transfer
Networks and are looking to reduce them to 15. We need to be careful
not to muddle up the financial side with the rationalisation side,
but I would recognise that they are two separate issues. The rationalisation
came from a business-led approach and it was business that was
saying to us, "Look, it's quite a muddled landscape out there.
For us, as a small business, there is a choice of four or five
different KTNs that all appear to cover roughly the same sort
of area". We employed an independent organisation to do a
review of the KTNs and they came back with a number of recommendations.
We have been working with business and the KTNs to try and help
map the process forward. I recognise the specifics of the issue
that you allude to. From my perspective, we are doing the right
thing and we are doing things which business in the long run will
see to have been hugely beneficial in providing the cross-fertilisation
of market opportunities. For me, a Knowledge Transfer Network
is about identifying, for example, opportunities about how display
and lighting may see market benefits coming from healthcare or
transport or the built environment. The Knowledge Transfer Networks
are as much about creating networks that go across different areas
as they are about very specific vertical knowledge transfer in
a discipline. I believe that when we come to look in a few years'
time at the changes we have made they will be viewed as beneficial.
All change creates a little bit of a backlash and I think that
is what we are seeing in one or two areas.
Chairman: On that note, can we thank
you very much indeed, David Golding, Iain Gray and David Bott,
for your evidence this morning. Thank you.
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