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Reports : Lambert Tool Kit
In December 2003, the Lambert Report looked at ways of enhancing academic-industry interaction. The Report looked at the then current state of UK University–Business Collaboration and made some significant recommendations on the scope for further development in this respect.
A tool-kit for collaborative research containing model agreements and othe usful resources was later published. This tool-kit can now be found on the Intellectual Property Office website [click here]
Lambert also suggested that the biggest challenge was not about how to increase the supply of commercial ideas from
the universities into business BUT on the demand side suggesting that compared with other countries, British business is not research intensive, and its record of investment in R&D in recent years has been unimpressive. UK business research is concentrated in a narrow range of industrial sectors, and in a small number of large companies. All this helps to explain the productivity gap between the UK and other comparable economies.
It recognised that the best forms of knowledge transfer involves human interaction.
It highlighted the importance of the work that Regional Development Agencies do in supporting business-university collaborations
It pointed out that the opportunity to develop entrepreneurial skills is important to students.
It recommended that universities should do more to provide continuing professional development to business employees such as delivering innovative programmes of executive development short courses, aimed largely at managers in technology-intensive businesses.
The Review made a number of proposals for building new networks among research-intensive businesses, and supports existing schemes for business-university collaboration such as LINK and Knowledge Transfer Partnerships. It suggested that the Government should seek ways of directing a higher proportion of its support for business R&D to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).
The Review strongly supported the Government’s approach to so-called third stream funding which promotes knowledge transfer, and suggests that this funding should be increased in size and allocated in a more predictable fashion. It endorsed the broad objectives of the Government’s new Knowledge Exchanges, but suggested that these goals could be achieved in asimpler way.
In summary:
DEMAND FOR RESEARCH FROM BUSINESS
The Review recommended that UK business should establish a high-level forum to enhance the effectiveness of technical innovation in business in the UK. Chief executives of R&D-intensive businesses in the UK should agree its remit: it should be business-led and focused on the key issues for retaining and expanding high value-added business in the UK.
Government should seek ways of directing a higher proportion of its support for business R&D towards SMEs.
The Review recommends an enhanced role for the development agencies in facilitating business-university
links. A priority should be to identify non-collaborating SMEs that have the potential to gain significant benefits from working with universities.
The Review recommends that the Government should continue to support Knowledge Transfer Partnerships (formerly TCS) but that the programme should be better marketed to businesses.Increasing the regional focus of the scheme would allow it to be tailored more closely to the needs
of local businesses.
The Government should market the R&D tax credits better in order to increase their take-up by business.
KNOWLEDGE TRANSFER
Universities UK and the Standing Conference of Principals should establish a list of academics with relevant qualifications who are interested in becoming non-executive directors on company boards,and should arrange training for them in this role.
The Department for Education and Skills should exempt business people from the requirement to undertake training to lecture in universities.
Universities, departments and faculties should develop their alumni networks in order to build closer relationships with their graduates working in the business community.
Where they do not exist, clear codes of conduct to avoid conflicts of interest in carrying out research with business should be developed by universities.
The Association for University Research & Industry Links (AURIL), the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) and the Small Business Service (SBS) should produce a small set of model research collaboration contracts, for voluntary use by industry and universities.
• A range of model agreements should be developed, setting out various approaches to IP ownership, management and exploitation rights including, but not limited to, ownership of the IP by the university with non-exclusive licensing or exclusive
licensing to industry.
• The model contracts should be agreed by the main representative bodies. They
could be distributed through the same means: to universities through AURIL and Universities UK and to industry through the CBI and the SBS.
The Review recommends that the Government should continue to invest in a permanent and substantial third stream of funding, while simultaneously monitoring and evaluating the outputs from its investment.
The Review agrees with Sir Gareth Roberts and the CBI that third stream funding should be increased to around £150m per annum in England in the future, in order to increase the flow of knowledge and ideas from the science base into business and the wider community.
The Review recommends that third stream funding should be allocated for three years on the basis of universities’ business plans for their third stream activities. Universities that meet their third stream benchmarks in year one would automatically receive their second and third year allocations.
Simultaneously work should be undertaken by the Funding Councils to develop a basket of metrics that might in the future provide the basis for a predictable way of allocating funds on a formulaic basis.
In summary, if knowledge transfer is to achieve its full potential in the UK, the Review recommends that third stream funding should be substantial, permanent and allocated in a way that enables universities to make long-term plans for these activities.
INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY AND TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER
The Funding Councils and Research Councils, in consultation with universities, the CBI and other
industry groups, should agree a protocol for the ownership of IP in research collaborations.
• The common starting point for negotiations on research collaboration terms should be that universities own any resulting IP, with industry free to negotiate
licence terms to exploit it.
• But if industry makes a significant contribution it could own the IP.
• Whoever owns the IP, the following conditions need to be met:
1. The university is not restricted in its future research capability.
2. All applications of the IP are developed by the company in a timely manner.
3. The substantive results of the research are published within an agreed period.
• On all other terms the protocol should recommend flexibility where possible to
help ensure that the deal is completed.
• The Funding Councils and Research Councils should require universities to apply the protocol in research collaborations involving funding from any of the Councils.
The Government should use third stream funding to support regional shared services in technology transfer.
• Non-prescriptive – universities in each region should agree themselves how to set up and shape the services, and the role that each institution should play.
• Third stream funding should provide financial incentives to create shared services in technology transfer. Funding available to less research-intensive universities to provide specialist expertise in-house should be reduced.
• The most research-intensive universities should be involved where possible to build on existing expertise.
• Most knowledge transfer services should be kept in the university, including contract negotiation for consultancy and collaborative research and reach-out to
business. Some technology transfer staff should remain on-site to act as contact points for university researchers on technology transfer and IP issues.
• Development agencies should support the universities in delivering the shared services.
The Government should increase the level of funding for technology transfer and knowledge transfer training to stimulate the development of new training courses.
As third stream funding increases, university technology transfer offices should actively seek to attract individuals with industry background and experience.
UK organisations representing technology transfer should look to the US Association of University Technology Managers to see what lessons can be learnt in terms of providing quality training,increasing industry involvement and sharing best practice.
The Government should set clear guidelines for third stream funding to rebalance commercialisation activities towards licensing. In particular, it should:
1. Increase the availability of proof of concept funding.
Proof of concept funding is used to establish whether a new technology is commercially viable or
not. It is the first stage in transferring IP to the market, and is needed for both licensing and
spinning out. The level of investment is normally up to £50,000 per invention.
2. Reduce the availability of seed funding, and use public seed funds to draw in private finance
wherever possible.
Third stream seed funding is used to provide early stage investment in spinouts. The level of investment is normally up to £250,000 per invention. Private finance should be brought in alongside such funding wherever possible, so that the spinouts can be tested in the marketplace.
But some spinouts in some regions may find it more difficult to attract private funding early on,
since the venture capital and angel networks in the region are less well developed than in others.
The best spinouts from these regions should receive seed funding.
REGIONAL ISSUES
Regional Development Agencies should have targets that promote building business-university collaboration.
• Their core outcome target for innovation should reflect the long time lag between R&D and economic impact.
• All RDAs should set a specific milestone for building business-university links.
The Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish development agencies should also consider whether their targets adequately promote building business-university collaboration.
The Government should change Regional Selective Assistance so that it can support more knowledge-intensive clusters and businesses, and be used to help build a region’s infrastructure for collaborative R&D projects with universities.
FUNDING UNIVERSITY RESEARCH
The Government should now take stock of the proposals in the review of research assessment and in the review of the sustainability of university research. It should consider the conclusions of these two reviews together when deciding on the future direction of research funding and policy in the UK.
From a business perspective, there are some principles that the Government should take into account in assessing the proposals contained in these reviews.
• World-class excellence across all types of research should be recognised and rewarded by the Research Assessment Exercise and Research Council peer review
processes. Excellent research undertaken with industry or other users should be recognised as being of equal value to excellent academic research.
• There should be significantly more business input into the priority setting,decision-making and assessment panels of both of the peer review processes.
• The processes should be flexible and dynamic, capable of supporting new ideas and talent wherever they are found.
• Funding should be allocated in a way that actively supports multi-disciplinary research.
• The processes should be as simple and unbureaucratic as possible and should support the long-term sustainability of the research base.
• Greater weight should be attached to the importance of disseminating research to a wider audience outside academia in an accessible format.
The Government should consider the relative size of the Funding Council and Research Council funding streams and whether the present system provides the appropriate balance between giving institutions stable research funding and promoting a dynamic and competitive research base.
The Government should create a significant new stream of business-relevant research funding,which would be available to support university departments that can demonstrate strong support from business.
Demand for the funding from business would need to be assessed but funding in the region of £100m-£200m could be an appropriate starting point.
There are a number of possible ways to allocate the new business-relevant research funding stream including an expansion in the scope of Higher Education Innovation Fund, an expansion of existing schemes such as LINK, or allocation through the Regional Development Agencies and
their equivalent bodies in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
The Review’s preferred approach is to allocate the new funding stream to the RDAs through their single pot allocation, and to provide them with targets on promoting business-university collaboration.
• RDAs would match fund the contribution by business to collaborative research projects on a sliding scale. For basic and strategic research, RDAs would match the
business contribution: for near-market research, the support would be lower.
• RDAs would prioritise the applications from university departments by considering the likely economic impact of the research and the fit with their regional economic strategies. They might prioritise applications involving
previously non-collaborating SMEs.
• If the Government invests less than the proposed £100m-£200m in England, the priority should be to support university departments which are doing work of
value to business, but which do not receive significant quality related funding through dual support.
Any new increase in the budgets of the English RDAs would lead to a consequential increase in the budgets of the devolved administrations. It would be for the devolved administrations to decide how to allocate any such increase in their budget. However, the Review hopes that they would consider the recommendations in this report in deciding how to allocate any such increase.
The Russell Group of universities should encourage the development of a league table of the world’s best research-intensive universities. This could well be produced by the private sector: the Sutton Trust is one group which is already considering the possibility.
MANAGEMENT, GOVERNANCE AND LEADERSHIP
The Review recommends that the Committee of University Chairmen, in consultation with the sector and Government, develops a concise code of governance representing best practice across the sector.
While the code should remain voluntary, all institutions should disclose in their annual report when their governance arrangements do not conform to the code, and explain why their particular governance arrangements are more effective.
Each governing body should systematically review its effectiveness in carrying out its obligations to all stakeholders every two or three years. These reviews should take into account the stated objectives of the governing body, the performance of the institution against key performance indicators, evaluations of senior
management and the results of effectiveness reviews of senate and committees.
To ensure transparency, the methodology and results should be published in the university’s annual report and on the internet.
The Review supports the Leadership Foundation as an initiative to address the sector’s need for high-quality leadership and senior management.
• The Foundation should focus its efforts as much on future vice-chancellors as current ones.
• Development programmes and training should be implemented with third parties rather than created and supplied internally.
• The Foundation should develop programmes to support council chairs in their increasingly challenging roles.
The Review recommends that the Government and all funders should minimise the use of hypothecated funding streams.
• Funders should continue to consolidate individual funding into larger streams, more proportionate to the necessary level of bureaucracy and regulation.
• Smaller hypothecated funding streams should, where possible, be allocated on ametrics or formulaic basis, rather than by bidding.
• Funders should minimise audit requirements on hypothecated funding streams.
• “Top-sliced” funding streams should have a limited life of no more than three years, after which they should be rolled back into core funding, unless policy is
explicitly renewed.
The Review recommends that funders and agencies should apply a significantly lighter-touch regulatory and accountability regime to well-run universities.
One agency should be responsible for risk assessments on behalf of all funders and regulators. In time, assessments should be published. Risk should be assessed on:
• Adherence to the sector’s code of governance
• Quality of management.
• Financial soundness.
• Institutional performance measured against key performance indicators (such as teaching, research, third stream and so on) set by the governing body, as well as
other broad policy goals (as set by Government).
In the longer-term, well-run universities should receive greater financial freedoms, such as the freedom to move funding across budget lines and longer, multi-year funding cycles.
In three years’ time, the vice-chancellors of Oxford and Cambridge should take stock of the progress of reform, and agree with the Government what further steps will be necessary for the two universities to sustain their global position.
SKILLS AND PEOPLE
Funding Councils should require universities to publish information in their prospectuses on graduate and postgraduate employability for each department (or faculty, if datasets are too small)by 2006.
This information should include:
• Employability statistics and first destination data – to allow students to see whether particular courses are likely to be useful for specific careers.
• Starting salary data – to give students an indication of the value that employers place on graduates from particular courses.
• Other information relevant to specific disciplines.
The Government should ensure that Sector Skills Councils have real influence over university courses and curricula. Otherwise, they will fail to have an impact on addressing employers’ needs for undergraduates and postgraduates.
The Higher Education Funding Council for England should ensure that its forthcoming review of the teaching funding method for universities:
• Takes account of the views of employer-led bodies and representatives from the public and voluntary sector rather than funding courses solely on the basis of
historical cost.
• Considers whether the UK university system is producing the right balance of graduates in the disciplines that the economy needs.
The other funding councils should also consider these issues.
Lambert Report