Collaborative R&D with Universities

Would outsourcing R&D to a university be relevant to your business? Have you ever been involved in a collaborative project with a university? If the answer to either of these questions is "yes", please read on...

Andrew England Kerr of Englands, who chaired the last Sharing Innovation network meeting in Birmingham, has been approached by the West Midlands Innovation Network for input into the development of a scheme to bring together innovative companies and universities.

The Design Council is helping Andrew develop a pilot study of what companies in the area would want from this relationship. However, we are now trying to gauge wider interest by asking Millennium Product companies who have completed, been involved with, or even contemplated such projects to share their experiences and learning with a view to potentially leveraging our findings with other innovation networks around the UK.

Based on anecdotal evidence from a number of companies that have been involved with similar schemes, we believe that more companies would take up this opportunity if they were able to retain all legal rights to their ideas and if their contribution could be as work in kind rather than financial. Is this the consensus view? We understand that there are schemes in place that overcome these problems and we would like to explore how this would affect Millennium Companies' decision if they were made more widely available.

As Andrew England Kerr commented: "I know that our company's past experience was frustrating in that having gained approval for a joint scheme after many months, we had to reject it at the last moment as a result of an intransigent attitude by a University who wanted to retain legal rights to our ideas.

There had been problems with past schemes, but if we can iron these out we could be on the verge of offering Millennium Product companies something very exciting. Until we are confident of any scheme we should not endorse it. While I am an eternal optimist, a touch of reality is rather important these days!"

So if you participated in a collaborative project with a university, what factors acted as an incentive for you to proceed? Conversely, if you did not proceed, what were the reasons? If you are interested in forming a relationship with a university, what are the "must haves" and what are the qualifiers to your decision? Please send your responses to akerr@englands1.com

If you would like to be more involved in the pilot process, we would be delighted to hear from you!

Andrew England-Kerr
Director, England
email: akerr@englands1.com
T - 0121 422 4055
F - 0121 4220 4052