Whilst policy makers are frequent in the commissioning of reviews of the settings required to encourage a clever economy, the follow through is often lacklustre.
There have been many attempts to set policies that are made in the name of academic capitalism. This paper sets out a review of the highlights of some of the recent efforts from across the globe, from academia, industry and policy makers.
Building Strength in Innovation, 2008 — Australia
Findings:
- sectoral bias in Australia towards relatively low-tech industries explains low investment in R&D relative to OECD countries.
- promotion of R&D needs to be targeted at fields where Australia is internationally competitive and domestic need for public goods.
- recognises a shift to open innovation, requiring involvement of more partners and increasing structuring complexity.
- recognises that the intangibility of knowledge renders it problematic as collateral for financing and information asymmetry creates problems for marketing discoveries for commercialisation.
- successful adoption of R&D requires active engagement and investment, the free-rider approach doesn’t work.
- governments can support market design with incentives for early marketplace engagement and accuracy and timeliness of information flows.
- long term signals are essential (national research priorities, incentives and regulatory frameworks).
- intellectual property issues are classified as legal issues, whereas the activity they seek to promote and regulate is an economic matter.
- targeted transparency ratings on information flows can be an effective signposting technique.
- R&D tax incentives are not proven to achieve the desired impact. For research, Australia Research Council grants provide targeted alternatives. Even where concessions are available, companies cannot plan for their use (invisible in business planning). Direct assistance incentives are preferred by those who engage at the coalface.
- there is inadequate participation by the capital markets in the R&D paradigm.
- public funding structures deployed as gap-filling funding were structured on the premise that a single valley of death persists and that uniform transition strategies could be deployed in size and at times that would then be met by markets (that do not exist). The effect is to leave translational development projects stranded. At the same time, hundreds of federal, state and local funding programs support translation, however these are not coordinated.
- public procurement strategies can establish governments as model actor in risky structures with a focus on improved coordination between departments and international counterparts.
Ten years on — it is difficult to identify policy changes that address these issues.
Policies and incentives for promoting innovation in antibiotic research, 2010 — Sweden
An interesting exploration of issues in funding research into antibiotics explored the funding paradigm from a financial engineering perspective. This review outlines:
- more than 50 policy solutions to incentivise research in antibiotics; and
- the structure of options, structured finance and collaborative joint ventures which could enhance translational capacity.
The Hargreaves Review of Intellectual Property: Where next?, 2012 — United Kingdom
Findings:
- A lack of robust data with which policy can be informed leaves too much influence open to lobbyists (the UK patent box has since been cited as an example of successful lobbying by the pharmaceutical industry).
- Recognises that existing IP laws are not facilitating contemporary practice. In particular, patent thickets are identified as an obstructionist technique that is adopted as part of a patent protection strategy.
- Considers that the current IP system works well when you know what you want to do and you know that you have something valuable worth investing in to get the returns. What does not work so well is when you are not quite sure what the value of what you have is and you do not really understand the IP system.
Collaborations between the Public and Private Sectors: The Role of Intellectual Property, 2013 — Australia
Findings:
- IP is often used as a catch-all term to describe problems associated with many of the commercial issues that arise in transactions and negotiations.
- Funding performance metrics do not sufficiently encourage the formation of collaborations with industry.
University Start-ups: critical for improving technology transfer, 2013 — Brookings Institute
The licensing model is unprofitable for most universities and can risks alienating the private sector.
This paper outlines the opportunity use startups to translating research. In recent years, these ideas have been successfully put into practice in pockets across the globe. Examples include:
- The SATT, France, which provides a structured program to institute pipeline support to spin good research into startups with teams, funding, training and early adoption opportunities with government locality backing.
- Cicada Innovations, Australia, which is a collaboration between 4 Australian universities to incubate deep technologies (many of which come from academic pursuits).
Education to Employment, 2013 — McKinsey
Sets out the reasoned analysis for why and how the feedback loop between key stakeholders should and could be closed.
Industry sponsorship and research outcome (review) 2013 (updated 2017) — The Cochrane Collaboration
Findings:
- Industry sponsored drug and device studies more often had efficacy results that were favourable to the sponsors’ products, (risk ratio (RR): 1.27, 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.17 to 1.37), similar harms results (RR: 1.37, 95% CI: 0.64 to 2.93) and favourable overall conclusions (RR: 1.34, 95% CI: 1.19 to 1.51), compared with non-industry sponsored drug and device studies.
- No difference between industry and non-industry sponsored studies with respect to standard methodological factors that may increase the risk of bias, except for blinding: industry sponsored studies reported satisfactory blinding more often than non-industry sponsored studies.
- In industry sponsored studies, there was less agreement between the results and the conclusions than in non-industry sponsored studies, RR: 0.83 (95% CI: 0.70 to 0.98).
- There was no difference between drug and device studies in the association between sponsorship and conclusions.
- Analysis suggests that industry sponsored drug and device studies are more often favourable to the sponsor’s products than non-industry sponsored drug and device studies due to biases that cannot be explained by standard ‘risk of bias’ assessment tools.
The findings of a series of engagement activities exploring the culture of scientific research in the UK, 2014 — Nuffield Council on Bioethics
The majority of researchers participating in this study reported pressure to compromise on research integrity and standards.
Boosting the Commercial Returns from Research, 2014 — Australia
Findings:
- Political uncertainty around funding for fundamental components of the research sector, including stop-start funding of the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy, may have reduced the sector’s productivity and risked affecting our research excellence over the long-term.
- Australia’s publicly funded research organisations have a major focus on medical and health sciences (25%), engineering (11%) and biological sciences (9%). The MRFF will support health with a 2020 goal of $20B capital.
- CSIRO works with around 3,000 clients each year, including more than 20% of the ASX top 200 companies and 1,300 SMEs.
- Australia’s 15 rural research and development corporations (RDCs) are another good example of research-industry collaboration. These organisations are funded as government-industry partnerships. Primary producers pay a levy on their production to contribute to collective R&D for their industry sector, and the Australian Government contributes matching funding up to a capped level. Research by the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences has found that for every dollar the government invests, farmers generate around AU$12 within 10 years in terms of increased agricultural productivity.
The Dowling Review of Business-University Collaborations, 2015 — United Kingdom
This report:
- includes a comprehensive review of the previous UK reviews and a roadmap for implementing reforms.
- calls for funding stability as critical component of translation success (and planning).
- recognises the need to encourage industry to share research vision (closely guarded secrets)
Tackling Drug Resistant Infections Globally: Final Report and Recommendations, 2016 — United Kingdom
This report:
- proposes an intervention strategy and calls for an early stage fund for early stage ‘non-commercial R&D’.
- illustrates the importance of political lobbying to preserve monopolies beyond patent period.
Review of the R&D Tax Incentive, 2016 — Australia
This report found many of the same findings outlined above. One of the apparently unpopular findings was that a more targeted approach to supporting R&D should be encouraged. Spray & pray has had its day!
Review of Australia’s Research Training System, 2016 — Australia
Found that funding mechanisms should be used to drive the significant change required to foster greater research-industry collaboration.
Review of Research Policy and Funding Arrangements, 2016 — Australia
Tasked with developing options to strengthen Australia’s research system and encourage greater collaboration between universities and business and other research end users, this report outlined inefficiencies at engagement level.
The Turnbull government response to report adopted measures that for the most part, are aimed at simplifying the grant process, making it faster and removing the cash matching requirement for Linkage Grants with SMEs.
Clever Collaborations, 2016 — Australia
Examples show that when companies tap into the expertise of universities and their researchers, it boosts not only the firm’s own bottom line — but also that of national economies. It does not address the outcomes that research may have sacrificed directly, or indirectly by reason of the engagement.
The Value of Everything, 2018 — Professor Mariana Mazzucato, University College London (Institute for Public Purpose)
Asks — can the State deliver?
The thinking behind this policy analysis has influenced many of the popular left-leaning liberal candidates across the globe (the New Green Deal in the US is an example).
Getting smart about intellectual property and other intangibles in the public sector: UK Budget, 2018 — United Kingdom
This report provides a detailed review of the barriers to extracting value from public knowledge assets. Recommendations identify the need for better recognition of intangible assets and bespoke tools to foster their use within the private sector.
Across the globe, the political pressure to realise short term gains prevails over the need for a sustainable commitment to the policy settings that reflect the characteristics of the knowledge economy. It is telling from repeated commissions of reports that look into similar issues and provide well reasoned analysis and recommendations, that solutions outside the political arena may be more effective than those developed within the public sector.
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