While not the best news article I’ve ever seen The Australian IT have a story about Innovation funding in the next budget.

An interview with the Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research:

The lack of collaboration between business and industry — on which new jobs and economic opportunities depended — was “one of the great weaknesses” of the innovation system, he told a higher education conference in Sydney.

Australia ranked 16th out of 28 OECD countries for research collaboration between industry and universities in 1997, he said.

“By 2004 we had fallen 10 places to be last out of 26 countries,” he said.

I’ve essentially been working somewhere in the void between University and Industry for the last 4 years. On one side of the void there is the Universities. I’ve seen many potential projects from IMPCA which simply end with a research article. And I dare say this is exactly how Universities should operate. They should research concepts on the “cutting edge” of science and make the results publicly available (very public. i.e. give away this knowledge — don’t scrooge the ideas with patents).

Then there’s the other side of the void – Industry. It seems to me that companies are only interested in university research if it is “ready for market”. They simply want to make money instantly out of the idea without wasting time and money “getting it ready”

So, how do you fill this “void” between Universities and Industry? I’m really not too sure! 🙂
I don’t think simply pumping money into some form of “commercial ready” grant works, because you have to fund the right projects which will make money for industry. I suppose the only way to work out which are the right projects is more collaboration between industry and universities.

But how do you force more collaboration between industry and universities without just offering grants?