The IPL newsletter: Volume 9, Issue 183

INTRODUCTION

This newsletter is published by The Innovation Policy Lab at the Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto, and sponsored by the Ministry of Research and Innovation. The views and ideas expressed in this newsletter do not necessarily reflect the views and policies of the Ontario Government.

Attacking the Recession: How Innovation Can Fight the Downturn

Charles Leadbeater and James Meadway, NESTA
NESTA – the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts – is publishing this paper to contribute to and stimulate the wider discussion of what the recession means for the UK and how it should respond. NESTA’s aim is to use this document to start a debate about how the UK should attack the recession by using innovation. The authors make some initial recommendations in each of the broad thematic areas it covers – firms, places, people, and public services. The document argues that we need a strategy to attack the recession, not just to respond to it. Innovation – in business, communities and public services – needs to be at the heart of that attack. The UK should aim to emerge as a more innovative, greener, more sustainable and diversified economy. The UK will need new growth sectors to make up for the dynamism that has been lost from financial services. The development of those growth sectors will require a mix of intelligent public investment, partnership with business and entrepreneurship. Decisive government leadership and public investment will be critical to innovation in many fields, from scientific research to cultural funding.

University-Private Sector Research Partnerships in the Innovation Ecosystem

President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology
In order to recognize fully the importance of university-private sector partnerships and their role in the rapidly globalizing innovation ecosystem, this report reviews the current state and historical trends of the U.S. R&D enterprise. This study involved examining inputs to the ecosystem, including funding sources and mechanisms, and outputs of the ecosystem in order to evaluate the effectiveness and productivity of the research enterprise. Finally, it examines the effects of the increasingly globalized nature of the economic markets on both the inputs and outputs of the R&D enterprise. A critical part of the study considers several models of university-private sector research partnerships and models of private foundations that fund such partnerships. The varied nature of these models reflects the diversity of the innovation ecosystem itself, showing that there is no “one-size-fits-all” approach for creating a successful research partnership. Nevertheless, the report does find numerous barriers and opportunities that many partnerships shared in common; these commonalities and the partnership models are included in the Appendices to the report.

The findings and recommendations to enhance innovation and to address barriers for university-private sector research partnerships fall into five general areas:

Basic Research and Innovation 
Universities continue to serve as a primary engine for discovery research that can lead to innovation, and the Federal government remains the primary source to support basic research. PCAST found that, in spite of the increased diversity of funding sources for research performed by academia, the Federal government continues to be the primary source of funds for basic, curiosity-driven research.

• While exploring new partnership models, and assessing the evolving innovation ecosystem, the essential role for the Federal government in supporting basic research must be recognized and maintained.

Economic and Regulatory Policies Impacting U.S. Innovation and Research Partnerships
The economic and regulatory environment impacting U.S. innovation and research partnerships requires significant long-term changes. PCAST believes that recent economic and regulatory factors within the United States are exerting a significant negative impact on innovation. Increased constraints on an economy that is generally open with measured regulations threatens the ability of the United States to continue to compete in the global environment, a consequence even more critical in the current economic downturn. Ameliorating the current situation will require several significant and long-term changes.

• Update and enhance the R&D tax credit to make it a more stable and effective incentive for industry to perform and support R&D.
• Develop guidance and educational tools on intellectual property and technology transfer practices for university and private sector partners.
• Modify, or clarify through additional guidance, tax-exempt policies that may have an unintended negative impact on industry-supported research on university campuses.
• Develop a task force to assess other tax policies impacting innovation.
• Assess mechanisms to enhance Federal-State coordination to promote innovation and university-private sector partnerships.
• Assess options to streamline oversight structures and conflict of interest requirements while ensuring the accuracy and integrity of research and preserving the public’s trust.

Network Models of Open Innovation
Open innovation has the potential to drive technology development and partnerships in academia, the private sector, and government. There is currently a global revolution in the performance of R&D, whereby individuals and entire regions of the globe that would historically never interact can now collaborate on a research project in real-time. These open collaborations or open innovation systems can be utilized to augment corporations existing internal R&D infrastructure and university collaborations. PCAST found that these novel approaches have tremendous potential for addressing challenging research questions. These platforms could have an amplifying effect by dramatically increasing the pool of individuals available to address a given question and decreasing the time to develop solutions, thereby ultimately decreasing the time to market.

• Further evaluate the impact and scalability of open innovation models.
• Federal agencies should expand the use of prizes to address certain challenging research questions.

Connection Points Between Partners in the Innovation Ecosystem
The connection points among partners in the innovation ecosystem need to be strengthened to reduce barriers to collaborations.
PCAST members continue to believe that connections between the various partners in the innovation ecosystem need to be strengthened. Despite the increase in cross-sector collaboration seen over the past twenty years, substantial difficulties in forming such collaborations appear to remain. Some of the barriers identified by PCAST include misalignment of cultures, management structures, and goals; as well as differences in the policies that apply to IP, proprietary information, and publication.

• Build on existing frameworks of successful university, government, and private sector initiatives to enhance research partnerships.
• Formalize and enhance opportunities and incentives for researchers to have flexibility in moving between academia, industry, and government.

Measuring and Assessing Innovation
Enhanced tools and metrics for policymakers and research partners to assess the outputs of the innovation system and the demands of the individual partners (both technology and workforce) are lacking. Despite continued concerns about U.S. competitiveness in a number of areas from science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education and workforce to technology development and commercialization, PCAST found few robust measures and quantitative assessments exist to validate these conclusions with high confidence. Measured advances in data collection have more often been made on the inputs of the innovation system rather than on the outputs or impacts. Developing meaningful output measures for innovation remains challenging area of research.

• Develop and apply improved tools and metrics to measure the outputs of research partnerships and innovation to guide policies and incentive structures.