Professor Stephen Holloway Professor of Chemical Physics Executive Pro Vice-Chancellor
nternational HE-Business Links
The mission of the Japan-UK “Scheme� is to advance the mutual unders between universities in Japan and the UK. The core universities are long-established and are all research intensive institutions.
The creation of strategic relationships between Japanese and UK univers increases collaboration in the core activities, research and teaching.
In Japan and the UK there are strong government directives that univers should be both closer to society and that research should help to innova business.
How can universities best work with business and industry across intern boundaries??
Types of University-Business Collaboration
“British business is not research intensive and its record in R&D spend i unimpressive. UK business research is concentrated in a narrow range o industrial sectors and in a small number of large companies.� Lambert review 2003 Research collaborations arising from a chance encounter Bottom-up, the academic has to be interested and research related;
Could be long lasting and successful, usually bi-lateral and serially fund Typically small scale and not on the radar of the university nor the indu Strategic collaborations Top-down, difficult to instigate with individual academics; Potentially important for possible business development opportunities; Usually appears in university strategy documents and .... ignored!
Barriers to University-Business Collaboration “Universities don’t understand the business world”. The Ivory Tower of academia. The precious academic (Applied research, ugh!) The global economic downturn The IP issue Short term-ism (SMEs) Academic workload management (early career staff) Fully costed research (sustainability) The decline of corporate research laboratories (“not invented here”)
Opportunities for University-Business Collaboration Outsourcing Trans-national corporations Human mobility
Government intervention (economic growth, knowledge economy, £ & ¥)
Innovation & Research Strategy for Gr BIS, December 2011 Sharing of resources Sharing best practice (sustainability) Internationalisation (The Japan - UK “Scheme”) and connectivity Curriculum development and industrial involvement in non-research university activity (the skills issue)
The Japan-UK “Scheme”: Priorities Initiate a range of “standard” development activities (quick wins) Summer schools (Nagoya model); Internship programmes; “Show & tell” workshops; Bi-annual symposium in UK/Japan & etc. Communication strategy to attract potential industrial partners Produce high quality web site and some “paper” literature; Produce a core-team audit of research strengths and 5-10 important industrial partners. Develop an initial range of collaborative research mechanisms Graduate students Post-docs Academic staff exchanges.
The Japan-UK “Scheme”: Costs & strategy Universities & industrial partners The subscription cost; Some seed funding for, say, academic exchange or graduate tuition; Travel costs; Access to university/industrial facilities; Staff time (academic, research and professional services). Mechanisms Create UK/Japan university pairs having similar research priorities; Set a series of industrially related targets and goals for each pair; Consider the delivery of undergraduate modules in partner universities with “local” flavour.
The Japan-UK “Scheme”: Benefits What’s in it for the academic/university? New, additional research income streams; Grand challenges from a different perspective; International student placement and internships; Student mobility, staff secondments; Best practice e.g. - the sustainable university. What’s in it for the industrial collaborator? Opportunity to solve a problem; Business development opportunity (training, CPD, market access); Recruitment of experienced, multilingual staff; Access to governmental funding opportunities; Mechanisms for innovating business practices which might be outside of the cultural experience of “the locals”.
A worked example; UoL Exchange with Kaneka Corporation Dr Tomokazu Tozawa Visiting researcher from Kaneka Corporation in Liverpool Chemistry Department between 2007–2008 Industrial sabbatical supported by Kaneka, local costs met by the University of Liverpool Influential outputs: Tozawa et al., Nature Mater., 2009, 8, 973 Nature Chem., 2010, 2, 750 Nature Chem., 2010, 2, 915 Nature Comm., 2011, 2, 207 Nature, 2011, 474, 367
“Visit has opened up a whole new area of materials ‘Porous organic cages research” (acceptance address of RSC Corday-Morgan Medal recipient, 2008)
JUKEN Japanese-UK Knowledge Exchange Network
Jūken (獣拳, "Beast-Fist")