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President's Report from Martin Sharp

PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE

November 2011

 

Technology Transfer has been high on my agenda over the last few months Mike Green and I have been working on a report looking at technology transfer within the Laser Materials Processing (LMP) community. At its heart is a survey on technology transfer that achieved a reasonable response.

A broad view of technology transfer was adopted. Too often the term "Technology Transfer" is regarded belonging solely to the territory of the academic / research organisation. It seems that many believe it is just the research community that have the knowledge that somehow has to be transferred into the commercial world.

The reality is that knowledge pervades the whole community whether it be in researchers, suppliers or users. There are many people in industry who possess in-depth knowledge, skills and experience of laser processes.

The broader interpretation of technology transfer in our survey was intended to see how important these other contributions to the technology transfer process were. And the results confirmed that they are indeed significant.

Both as suppliers and recipients of technology transfer, companies contribute a great deal of activity in transferring knowledge about LMP. Indeed the report argues that the majority of technical transfer activity is undertaken by manufacturer - suppliers and job shops.

This raises a potential concern in how well our research community meets the needs of our industry. There is a lot of anecdotal evidence that industry does not see universities as a good source of knowledge. A 2009 DBIS survey of some 16,800 enterprises found that only 3% rated universities as important sources of information.

So are the universities failing the UK industrial community? The simple answer is that our universities are doing what they are asked to do really quite well. But they are not really asked to conduct technology transfer to our industry, or rewarded for it.

Some universities have made great efforts in technology transfer, with, for instance the Universities of Liverpool and Liverpool John Moores having a long track record of technology transfer activity going back to the mid 90's. Arguably much of this was based on the availability of funding, such as European Regional Development Funds, but there is still a real desire to work with companies and promote LMP.

But the reality is that most research and non-teaching activity is geared towards achieving high quality, international, research outputs to achieve a good research assessment. And despite the increased importance of "impact" in research assessment, "outreach" activity does not attract much benefit.

These issues arise from the business model of our universities, and not necessarily the failings of academics to engage with industry. The need to achieve international leadership in research means that an academic's research agenda is unlikely to be directly relevant to local companies, rather to multinationals likely to deploy the technology on the other side of the world.

But because of this, companies do not rush to talk to universities, further Isolating the research community from the needs of UK PLC. I believe that it is this lack of interaction that has entrenched this gap between University and Industry, leading to the idea of the 'valley of death' in mid-TRL activity. Funding for Technology Innovation Centres has become real, and indeed the HVM TIC will be a player in LMP. The one risk that I see is that if the TIC's monopolise the gateway between industry and academia, they will push the universities back towards basic research, leading to a reduction in interaction with industry and end users. As somebody who has spent his time in the academic world working hard to increase this interaction, I would see this an unwelcome outcome.

AILU provides a forum where there is a lot of interaction, and where the researchers and industrialists do meet and exchange knowledge and experience for the benefit of its members. For this to grow, which it must, we need our members to be active in the association and generate the two way technology transfer that will benefit the whole LMP community.

 

Martin Sharp
m.sharp@ljmu.ac.uk