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The butterfly and the plough - academia meets industry
European economies recognise the importance of putting publicly funded research to work through collaboration with industry. This article looks at efforts to ease such collaboration, including the Responsible Partnering initiative backed by EIRMA and others. Those that have applied its guidelines have already learnt valuable lessons, as well as generating ideas for improvements. The article also considers how intermediary organisations can enable collaboration, and the thorny issues of state aid and intellectual property. It concludes by asking how we can develop a skilled workforce that can accelerate collaboration, and by reflecting on the alternatives to today's bottom-up approach.
All academics live in ivory towers and are free to follow their instincts in an unfettered quest for knowledge. All industrialists are hard-bitten pragmatists enslaved by an endless cycle of quarterly earnings reports and annual forecasts. Setting academics and industrialists to work together has as much chance of success as harnessing a butterfly to a plough.
This is, of course, nonsense. Academics and industrialists have worked together for years. But Western countries, seeing their manufacturing jobs move to the developing world, are evolving into knowledge economies in which the pathways from state-funded universities and research organisations to a rapidly restructuring industrial sector are increasingly important. When UK prime minister Gordon Brown was finance minister he went so far as to suggest that universities should regard knowledge transfer as their 'third mission', alongside teaching and research.
But academic/industrial collaboration isn't easy. Both sides are still feeling their way towards the best approaches. Academics and industrialists often work to quite different timescales. The output of academic research is often an unsuitable input for an industrial development process, leading some to suggest that there's a place for organisations that can translate from one to the other, the so-called missing mezzanine. Intellectual property (IP) issues rumble on, although old-fashioned attitudes among academics that they should keep a majority stake in their work at all costs are being replaced with more pragmatic outlooks which reflect the value that other partners bring to a commercialisation project.
Recognising the importance of effective collaboration between the industrial and academic sectors, a group of stakeholders got together in 2003 to collate the best advice and develop it into a set of voluntary guidelines. The output was the Responsible Partnering initiative, a Handbook document and a website, developed by EIRMA, the European University Association, the European Association of Research and Technology Organisations, and ProTon Europe (the pan-European network of knowledge transfer offices), with help from the European Commission.
Two main principles underpin Responsible Partnering: that since much of the academic work that is transferred to industry has been paid for out of the public purse, it makes sense to get the maximum beneficial use from it; and that the work should be applied responsibly. Responsible Partnering also suggests that the most efficient and cost-effective way to transfer knowledge from academia to industry is to build long-term relationships based on mutual trust. This makes sense, but may be hard to achieve in practice. It's easier for an aerospace company, for example, to justify a long-term commitment to a materials research lab, than it is for a small company to make a similar commitment if what it needs is a quick fix for a pressing problem.
Talking it over
Three years after the launch of the Responsible Partnering initiative, a group of stakeholders met in Lisbon to discuss its uptake, the status of academic/industrial collaboration, and what can be done to increase its effectiveness. It was clear from the discussion that although a lot has already been achieved, there's more to do.
Gilles Capart, past chairman of ProTon Europe, opened the conference by reminding everyone of how different the two worlds are: "Public research is about excellence in research, generic technologies and deep insight. Industry is about business models and competitive development."
Capart called for a change in the outlook of collaborators, from seeking technology transfer to seeking knowledge transfer: "Patents and copyright are the visible stuff. When a university wants to be serious about taking part in an innovation agenda they should commercialise their research capability."
He added that collaborations needed to be approached strategically, because many related issues would then be solved as a consequence.
Capart said that there had been a number of challenges in getting Responsible Partnering adopted. The first is the chicken and egg problem - everyone is waiting for someone else to start first: "It is very difficult to get companies and universities to go on record to support Responsible Partnering."
The second challenge has been that Responsible Partnering has to be taken on as part of a wider strategy, rather than as a casual fix for a single issue.
"It all boils down to a strategic decision on the university's part to take an active role in knowledge transfer," he said. "It's not a good idea to do it casually. You have to do it professionally or not at all."
The third problem has been the lack of good quality people to implement the recommendations. The fourth is that the rules and criteria for funding research need to be improved.
"How do we make progress with Responsible Partnering?" Capart asked. "We need to show the benefits for early adopters and create the environment and mindset for those benefits to spread."
Monica Schofield of TuTech Innovation, a German knowledge transfer organisation, sounded a cautionary note about the academic sector's readiness to think strategically about knowledge transfer.
"Responsible Partnering is far above the level that many people are thinking at," she said. "There's lots of basic work to be done on collaboration still. And a lot of universities are not strategically governed - it's just about survival."
Why industry cares
Olivier Peyret handles R&D collaboration and university collaboration issues for oil and gas giant Schlumberger, which has the largest R&D spend in the energy business. He is also responsible for the recruitment of 7000 graduates each year. He reminded the conference why industry cared about partnering with academia.
"The world faces a serious energy challenge," he said. "If we keep increasing energy demand by 2 to 3% per year, with oil and gas coal providing 8% of our energy, we have a very significant challenge to keep up with demand.
"We will not be able to provide the technology for that challenge alone."
Peyret said that Schlumberger's main criteria for partnering were being able to find the right organisations to work with, their excellence in science and technology, and their location.
"It is absolutely crucial to be next to our partners physically," he said. "We just moved R&D to the MIT Campus, in Massachusetts, Tsinghua University in Beijing; and King Fahd University in Dhahran."
Schlumberger's rationale for these moves is that it wants to be no more than two steps from the best scientists and labs.
"This means we have to choose our first partners very carefully for their own capabilities and for their access to others. We also want to make strategic links, so we engage at the highest levels with universities and public research organisations, as well as being present in innovation hubs.
"The only way Western countries will survive, with a cost base three to five times that of the same work being done in India and China, is if private centres can demonstrate they have a partnership culture that is second to none with whoever is around them."
Cooking up the future
Some universities are already well on the way to demonstrating such a culture. Prof Just Vlak, of Wageningen University and Research Centre in the Netherlands, described the collaboration culture at his institution as already recognising that "we need to move from knowledge transfer to co-innovation".
Wageningen UR includes the university, with its 10,000 students and 6000 faculty and staff, and the Research Centre, which has annual revenues of €600m. It offers a broad span of activities from teaching to applied research in topics including nutrition and food production; the living environment; and health, lifestyle and livelihood.
Vlak said that the organisation is now moving from knowledge transfer to co-innovation with entrepreneurs, stakeholders, education and research.
"The lessons that we have learned in doing this are that quality matters, so we do good research and try to diffuse the academic approach to quality into the public research organisations," he said. "It's also important to address social challenges and put the right supporting skills in place. A collaboration between universities and central research organisations works if the strategy attracts excellent students and researchers."
Lucas Noldus runs Noldus, a spin-off from the University that develops software and services to help study human and animal behaviour. It has 90 employees and more than 4000 customers in companies, universities and research institutes in 75 countries.
Noldus said his company needs partners for three phases of its product development scheme: in gathering requirements for user-centred development; in research, where it cannot afford the breadth of fundamental research in the many disciplines it needs to access; and in testing and validation.
Noldus and Wageningen UR are now working together on the Restaurant of the Future, a shared facility for the long-term study of what and how people eat. The rationale is that traditional consumer research (such as interviews, surveys, focus groups) has limited value in this context, so it makes sense to try and measure food selection and consumption when and where it occurs, and over years.
The project has developed into a €3m consortium between the university, food service company Sodexho, and two small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). After three years' work the Restaurant of the Future opened in October 2007 on the Wageningen campus, with seating for 200, a café, research kitchen, sensory laboratory, mood rooms and 45 video cameras to watch people eat.
The university contributes by providing project management, scientific expertise and research. Noldus contributes video, computer and sensor technology, data collection and analysis software and system integration. Sodexho contributes operational management and catering services, and Kampri provides kitchen equipment.
What does each partner get out of the arrangement? The university gets a facility for teaching and research, as well as the opportunity to win contract research projects. Noldus can test new research tools, use the restaurant as a showroom and expects spin-offs to other markets. Sodexho should gain a better understanding of consumer behaviour, as well as having a place to test new catering concepts. Kampri gets a place to test new equipment and a showroom.
What makes the collaboration work? The first contributing factor is its focus on something that really matters: our relationship with food. The consortium is built on a clear division of labour between partners with complementary skills, and clear rules about IP rights (IPR). Each partner has also brought a highly motivated champion to the collaboration.
Putting Responsible Partnering to work
Philips Research is also undertaking complex collaborative research projects, but does it on a much bigger scale. According to Jan van den Biesen, vice president of public research and development programmes, the organisation had 200 projects in European and national programmes in the third quarter of 2007. This meant 900 partnership links, 48% of them with universities and public research organisations, 32% with large firms, 12% with SMEs and 8% with other types of partners, for a total of about 550 partners. About 16% of the organisation's full-time employees are engaged in public programmes. It has 25 part-time professors, and uses ten professors as external advisors. Philips Research also hosts numerous visiting students, R&D trainees and postdocs. So it is well placed to assess the way it works against the Responsible Partnering guidelines, and in doing so to assess the guidelines themselves.
Philips Research evaluated its work with nine public research organisations and nine universities. According to van den Biesen, the public research organisations and universities assessed themselves against the guidelines and scored 8 ½ out of 10, while Philips Research gave itself 6 ½ out of 10.
"So the question is whether there should be different types of checklists for each type of organisation," he said. He added that the guidelines provide a useful and relevant checklist, although there's too much focus on policies and procedures and too little on personnel issues."
Dr David Joyner, director of innovation at Bangor University in Wales, and Dr Oggy East, director of spin-out software company Semantise, spoke about their experience with the Responsible Partnering guidelines.
Semantise is a five-person company of software authors that also acts as channel partner for a Canadian software company. Despite its size it has supported short undergraduate projects, knowledge transfer partnerships (KTPs) and PhDs funded by the European Science Foundation. The UK's KTP scheme links industry, academia and an individual in a partnership of mutual benefit. A business with a (usually technical) issue approaches the KTP scheme for help. Through a regional network, the organisers find academics with the skills to address the issue. Once a successful introduction has been made, the academic chooses a graduate to work in the company transferring the solution. The government and the company share the costs of paying the university for the academic's time and support, and the graduate's salary. [There's more on the KTP scheme here.]
Semantise used the Responsible Partnering guidelines to assess a KTP it undertook with Bangor University and a company called Vision Support Trading, which makes Braille books. Each of the partners gained a different set of advantages, although all three felt that participating had helped them organise for lasting relationships and gain the right professional skills. Vision Support Trading also improved its profitability and benefited from the new business processes introduced during the project. The graduate who did the knowledge transfer reported to the company's board during the project, and later got a job there. The university managed to embed its world-class research into a company.
Improving Responsible Partnering
Philips Research and Bangor University both used the Responsible Partnering guidelines to benchmark how they work at the moment, and to reflect on how the guidelines could be improved.
At Philips Research, van den Biesen suggested that guidelines should cover personnel issues, and that the checklists for academics, public research organisations and industry should be aligned so that they can become real comparative tools. He also suggested that checklists should be turned into a genuine assessment tool, by having clear questions and statements, scores, and perhaps even criteria for declaring yourself a Responsible Partner.
Joyner and East's experience with collaboration led them to some general conclusions about the process. Many companies valued the badge of working with the University and felt that the exchange of knowledge and expertise held a strong appeal. Most companies were confident that research would benefit them generally, by improving their knowledge and profile, helping apply for grants, and create new products and processes.
Joyner echoed van den Biesen when he asked: "Is there something we can identify the European level to reflect the value of working with universities?"
Pascal Iris, managing director of Armines, a non-profit contract research organisation linked with the Groupe des Ecoles des Mines and other engineering schools in France, has been involved with a lot of collaborations between academia, public research organisations and industry. He drew on that experience to suggest improvements to Responsible Partnering that would address IPR issues.
"First, you should know the real cost of the research project, using fully loaded costs and the balance of private and public funds," he said. "This allows you to negotiate the IPR on the correct basis.
"The second issue is to know the boundary conditions of your contracts. It is important to define the background [IP] for the contract, the generic results, the applied results and how each is handled."
He gave the example of Armines' development of software to analyse forging tools, which is based on a long heritage of simulation code. None of the IP in the forging tool software belongs to any of the companies that funded its commercial development. Instead Armines holds the overall rights to the code and the funding partners get access to the latest versions. This work has now created a spin-off to industrialise the software, which is licensed to 250 companies in 25 countries.
Pathways to partnering
Nuno Silva of the knowledge transfer office at the Instituto Pedro Nunes in Portugal, pointed out that there are some basic issues to overcome. Academics aren't that interested in repeating work, so it's difficult to use them for a series of similar projects. Long term relationships are good in theory, but many companies don't know what sort of research they will want in 20 years' time. Universities are becoming much more aware of IP issues, which may slow negotiations.
"So how do we move Responsible Partnering forward?" Silva asked. The answer is grassroots moves that focus on delivering immediate benefits. Portugal's Innovation Relay Centre and Innovation Agency have worked together on two basic programmes. In the first, they pay a team of people within an SME to develop a relationship with an external R&D group on a specific project.
"In our first year the target was to put groups in 20 companies but we actually sponsored 100 and now have 250. It's a very promising way to connect SMEs with R&D," Silva said. The second programme co-finances PhD and Masters students within SMEs, with a 50-50 funding split.
Adrian Duncan of TWI, a membership-based research technology organisation with 3500 industrial members, discussed its approach to partnering for Framework Programme projects. The organisation does industrial R&D and consultancy, plus some publicly funded research, and looks for projects that offer funding, some exploitable IP and long-term partnerships.
It takes a strategic view of potential partners, considering them on their ability to fulfil the project's needs and provide a related supply chain, as well as how working with them will change TWI's overall mix of partner types and locations.
TWI is also streamlining its proposal process to minimise the effort involved and improve the chances of success. In an outline stage, the partners agree to work together in principle and the industrial partner provides a limited input to the proposal to minimise the administrative overhead. Once this stage has been successfully negotiated TWI moves on to a full proposal that requires more input from the partner and approval from an appropriate management level. This two-step approach has improved the chances of successful partnerships, as well as wasting less of everyone's time.
Duncan laid out some of the myriad threats to a successful partnership. These include technical issues such as competing technologies or slow results, financial issues such as poor record keeping, management issues such as differing cultures, and commercial problems such as conflicting markets or a change in the industrial partner's strategy or ownership.
Schofield of TuTech said the key to such relationships was about "establishing long-term relationships and getting middle managers to understand a long-term approach of universities".
Peyret countered that "partnering at the top level is fine, and between scientists is fine, but middle management usually has a harder time to see the value of a long-term relationship versus their quarter on quarter demands. The best way is to have a contractual obligation over five years."
Duncan suggested a pragmatic approach: "We can't set out to create a 15 year relationship. You need to develop the trust that enables one project to roll into another."
Universities as businesses
Thomas Baaken, manager of the science marketing research centre and professor of technology marketing and business to business marketing at Muenster University of Applied Sciences in Germany, presented his research on customer satisfaction in R&D relationships between industry and academia.
"It shows that customers want outcomes and competencies, so we need to change universities from being process-oriented to being outcome-oriented organisations," he said. "We also have to manage expectations, because different customers have different expectations, and expectations also vary by country."
Baaken suggested that the best way to achieve the goals of the Responsible Partnering initiative is to establish a 'staircase' to strategic partnerships which begins with a single project, which becomes many projects and then a limited co-operation, followed by joint activities and partnerships and finally a strategic partnership. Muenster University has established a vice-rector of partnering to reflect its belief in the organisation-wide importance of partnering.
On IP issues, the university has rejected benchmarking itself by number of patents and instead shares the IP its collaborative projects generate and shares any subsequent royalties.
"We also have to adapt the university processes so that R&D is done in industrial context," Baaken said, adding, "We regard the university as a value chain that can be managed."
Does state aid help?
With the Lisbon agenda to make Europe the most successful knowledge economy in the world now eight years old, there has been plenty of time for both the Commission and national governments to put various policies in place to encourage knowledge transfer and academic/industrial collaboration. Have they worked?
Lubo Jankovik is managing director of InteSys, an SME spun off from Coventry University in 1992. The company has participated in Framework Programme, Eureka and UK government technology transfer projects, as well as teaching other SMEs about the ins and outs of the process.
He said that SMEs face a number of barriers to participating in such projects, including the time involved in making a bid with an uncertain outcome, the lack of financial and coaching help, and the uncertain commercial returns. He believes many universities have become large organisations that are not commercially oriented, and do not understand SMEs or the financial rules surrounding such collaborations. He also doubts whether the levels of funding available are that attractive to SMEs.
Jankovik's prescription for a better way forward is to overhaul the support system and evaluation process, cut bureaucracy, and introduce a coaching and evaluation process like that used in the KTP scheme. His strongest prescription, though, is to make collaboration support schemes more friendly to SMEs.
"SMEs are the engines of industry and commerce," he said. "If SMEs are important to the EU, then the EU should make it easier and more financially attractive for them to participate, and SMEs should lead projects rather than being considered as inferior participants."
Alain André of the Sofia Antipolis Business Innovation Center, cited other issues undermining SME engagement in European programmes, including the administrative workload, and delays in payment that can cause cashflow problems for small businesses.
Jan van den Biesen of Philips Research pointed out how complex the rules governing state aid had become and how difficult they made it to know whether a project can qualify for support.
"The Lisbon Strategy believes that more R&D is good and that more industrial and academic partnering is good," he said. "But R&D public/private partnerships are constrained by EU rules, particularly those covering direct government aid to firms through R&D subsidies, and indirect state aid, for example through collaboration with research organisations."
There are limits on the amount of state aid a project can receive, of up to 100% for fundamental research, 50% for industrial research and 25% for development work. When companies collaborate with public research organisations, a bonus of 15% is possible but the combined aid from direct government support and any contribution from working with a public research organisation cannot exceed these limits.
"This makes assessment very difficult, so indirect aid is usually avoided," said van den Biesen.
He outlined four cases in which working with a public R&D organisation is not considered as gaining indirect state aid. These are: when the company pays the full cost of the project; when the IPR remains with the public partner; when the company buys the IPR at market price and deducts any aid paid; and when the share of IPR reflects the effort of each partner and serves all interests. If none of these conditions are met, the full value of the public organisation's contribution to the project is regarded as state aid.
The issue is so important and yet confusing that the European Information, Communications and Consumer Electronics Technology Industry Associations has issued a white paper that sets out explain it with the aid of diagrams, equations and decision guidelines that run over 12 pages.
Dr Pat Frain, director of NovaUCD, University College Dublin's technology transfer office, is also concerned about the practicalities of the state aid rules. He asked how collaborators could fairly assess the equivalent market price for a variety of IP options; who would ensure compliance; and how varying interpretations of the rules should be handled.
The point here is not the actual rules. It is that when the vice president of public research and development programmes at Philips Research and his colleagues across European industry need white papers and decision guidelines to apply the rules, they have lost their value as a tool for encouraging collaboration and knowledge transfer. They're just too complex to be effective, acting as a barrier for all but the most highly motivated.
Given that van den Beisen and his colleagues have to work with the current rules, he suggested making the EICTA decision-making tool part of the Responsible Partnering handbook and any future voluntary European IP charter. He also suggested including examples of collaborations in which the IP conditions were so well balanced that the work is not seen as constituting state aid.
The thorny issue of IP
Which brings us to the thorny issue of IP. What's odd about this as a stumbling block to collaboration is that very, very few academics, universities or public research organisations get rich from the IP they develop. Most university technology transfer offices don't even cover their own costs. Even MIT, apparently the world's finest exploiter of university IP, only earns 7% of its revenue from licensing and spin-offs. A lot of what MIT gains from commercialising its work is an ever improving reputation, and generous donations from successful alumni.
Nonetheless, if the perceived value of IP is a sticking point for collaboration, it needs to be dealt with. The UK has offered the Lambert Agreements, a set of contract templates and a decision-making guide, for some time and others are doing the same.
John Dooley, head of science technology and innovation policy at Forfás, which develops public policy on enterprise and science for the Irish government, told the conference that Ireland introduced a national code of practice for managing the commercialisation of IP from public/private research in November 2005. What's particularly attractive about the Irish code is that it sets out a guide for potential partners to decide what they want to do within 90 days. In March 2007 Forfás added draft IP templates and a decision-making guide to help users choose which IP ownership model to use.
Frain at NovaUCD said the code of practice is pro-business and pro-exploitation, as part of a wider strategy to make Ireland a competitive location for collaborative research. It is supposed to accelerate negotiations by educating those involved in the process, increasing certainty and providing opening negotiation guidelines and a timetable. The code is not compulsory, but some university technology transfer units are already using it.
"One of the great advantages of the code of practice is the stakeholder involvement, which has increased awareness of issues," said Frain. He presented a model for one possible future of university-industry collaborative programmes, developed by Dr Frank Walsh, vice president of global research at healthcare company Wyeth, which suggests progress from today's knowledge transfer approach towards something closer to co-innovation.
Dr Jim Houlihan, of the innovation directorate at the UK Intellectual Property Office, reminded the conference that sorting out IP ownership issues is important but may miss the bigger picture. A report to the organisations that fund the UK's universities and public research organisations, published in July 2007, said that key barriers included the overvaluation of IP, and the public institutions' failure to recognise that the overriding objective of knowledge transfer was to benefit the UK economy, not necessarily the institutions that developed it.
Gillian McFadzean, chair of the Commission's expert group on knowledge sharing in the European Research Area, discussing the potential for a European IP policy, said it should enable knowledge sharing, stability, and clarity of expectations and rewards in terms of outcomes and goals and metrics. Conversely, policy shouldn't generate conflicting expectations, unnecessary obstacles, confusion and contradiction, micromanagement and regional nuances.
So an IP charter should harmonise process & practice, set standards, ease delivery, provide clarity of responsibility, support and encourage national strategies, as well as Embodying the principles of Responsible Partnering.
"We have to take responsibility for ourselves and just get out and do it," she added.
Denis Dambois of DG Research at the European Commission said it was considering a non-binding Commission recommendation on the management of IP by public research organisations. The recommendation would recognise the strategic value of knowledge transfer, properly managing IP, funding knowledge transfer, and international issues. The Commission is considering offering policy guidance, including a high-level code of practice flexible enough to adapt to national circumstances. It is also considering creating an expert group to develop metrics on knowledge transfer so that a consistent European view can emerge.
People as the key
All these plans and strategies are nothing without the people to implement them. Capart pointed out that knowledge transfer demands a rare combination of skills including IP knowledge, business development skills, and entrepreneurship.
"Knowledge transfer is not a recognised discipline. There is no recognised degree so we need to cross-train, and the profession is not well regarded," he said. "We should develop a qualification framework for knowledge transfer professionals."
He said it could be used to define the knowledge-transfer profession, certify professionals and provide accreditation for learning materials.
"If we did this it would make the profession more attractive, with better recognition and rewards. If it was well-defined it would also encourage higher education institutes and universities to develop and offer the relevant training."
Ian Harrison, chairman, membership and professional standards committee, of the newly formed Institute of Knowledge Transfer in the UK, said that knowledge transfer has been formalised over the past 50 to 60 years and in the past 10 years this has been backed by government policy.
"There are many supporters, and part of the reasoning is to get across the fact that knowledge transfer exists, there are real people doing it and it's important," he said. The Institute was formed in May 2007 to create professional standards, share best practice, stimulate interest in encouraging investment, and promote Europe-wide recognition standards.
"It's all about building the credibility of the knowledge transfer profession," he said. "Is this a model for Europe? I don't necessarily see we would be the only knowledge transfer body in Europe. Knowledge transfer is now thoroughly international and the boundaries we grew up with are gone."
Peter Pawlek of Austria Wirtschaftsservice, which promotes the development of technology based businesses in Austria, explained that a qualification for a 'certified transnational technology transfer manager' is already being developed through a bottom-up initiative. The idea is to create a recognised course as a basis for an accredited profession with a standard skill-set. The goal is to have five institutes offering programmes in five countries.
Apparently the demand for such a qualification exists. In a survey which gained 561 responses from a poll of 3000 people, 83% said they would participate in training on at least one of seven skills, including business development, negotiation, knowledge IPR and licensing, commercial awareness, networking, communication and industry-specific expertise. Of the respondents, 79% said it would be important to receive a European certification after participating in such training.
Partnering as competitive advantage
The Lisbon conference left the clear impression that the importance of knowledge transfer and collaboration between industry and academia is now very well recognised, and that many initiatives are underway to make it easier, from training schemes to IP guidelines. But the conference also kept sight of why it was important and how it could be to Europe's advantage.
Leopold Demideleer of Solvay said that improving knowledge transfer and collaboration was an urgent issue for Europe, because of the differentiating value it could bring to the science base.
"I think we have a chance for five to 10 years to lead in clustering," he said. "China has a problem with the top-down direction of connections. Things aren't structured like that in China, they're led by the military, so their silo thinking will not be destroyed in the next five to 10 years."
McFadzean said that Europe was "way ahead of the US in collaboration. The system is not broken in Europe, but there is room for improvement."
She suggested Europe's collaborative strength would help it make the best of the globalisation of R&D.
"The pharmaceuticals industry is looking at China, recognising the constraints there and looking to bring European and Chinese scientists together for the benefit of both."
Despite their complexity, some European programmes do bring unique advantages, according to van den Biesen of Philips Research: "Through the Framework Programmes we can call anybody in Europe about collaboration, because the IP issues are already fixed. That's a huge asset that other countries should envy us for."
Peyret said the only way to improve collaboration would be to set very specific measures and targets: "What are the key performance indicators, can we measure them? How many post docs, secondments and so on have we managed?"
McFadzean echoed his comments, saying: "We have to produce the evidence, measured by an increase in profit and turnover in small companies."
Of course, there is another way if the voluntary, bottom-up approach to accelerating knowledge transfer from academia doesn't pay off. McFadzean pointed out that UK universities have just been through a research assessment exercise, which measures the quality of their work and affects each department's funding. As part of the assessment, if a research team had a publication funded by an industrial partner, they were asked to provide a contact number for someone at the company who would talk about the work's impact.
"We are seeing more and more measures put in place to measure the impact," said McFadzean.
It may be that this approach, which couples success in technology transfer to research funding, will do as much to drive collaboration as any voluntary initiative or set of guidelines. If the butterflies choose not to pull the plough, perhaps they will soon find themselves harnessed to it anyway.