Originally published on October 6, 2014
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Scientists won’t solve the world’s most pressing problems –
world hunger, poor healthcare in the developing world, the spread of infectious
diseases, to name a few – without industry and academia joining forces.
Industry needs the intellectual capital and research smarts
embedded within the academy, while academics need the brain trust, financing,
and dogged focus of industry.
A recent report by the American Academy of Arts &
Science rings the alarm bells on the state of research funding in the U.S.,
calling for “establishing a more robust national government-university-industry
research partnership” as a counterweight to falling federal budgets.
All well and good. But before that can happen, a large
cultural hurdle must be overcome for these partnerships to flourish.
At issue is that, in general, faculty do not embrace turning
research into products and services, and they are hesitant to collaborate
closely with industry and pursue commercialization opportunities. This comes
from the wellspring of academic independence — a concern that industry
collaborations may potentially limit a faculty’s ability to freely criticize
the industry collaborator.
Some faculty question whether a university that promotes
public-private partnerships can be objective. For instance, can a faculty
member receiving funds from a company producing products that degrade water
quality criticize the company in public — or will the faculty member be asked
to temper her responses?
A related issue inhibiting partnerships is what academia
regards as the scientific myopia of industry scientists and their often
single-minded quest to commercialize. Many academics view that they themselves
are chasing knowledge while industry chases profits.
That point of view is encapsulated by the late Charles Vest,
former president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
“Industry’s nearly total R&D focus on rapidly
commercializing products, when combined with growing constraints on support of
university research, could devastate our national innovation system,” Vest said
in 1995. “It could well leave us without a shared, evolving base of new
scientific knowledge and new technology. It could destroy the primary source of
tomorrow’s products, jobs, and health.”
From the industry point of view, joint research projects
with academics is no picnic. Solutions that could come out of university
research and brought to market to improve the human condition languish in
peer-reviewed journals. Combined with complicated intellectual property
policies, university solutions are often inaccessible to those who can turn the
research into commercial products. The words “speed” and “academia” are
contradictions for some in industry.
The ground truth is that in order to make up for the loss of
federal research dollars, industry and academia will have to find an elusive
middle ground that allows for greater collaboration.
Academia will need to better understand the needs of
industry. Corporations want to invest in ways that align with their business
interests, and because of this universities need to think differently about how
they engage with dynamic business strategies.
For companies, they will have to accommodate the discomfort
of academic freedom. Industries that recognize early shifting attitudes in the
market are at a competitive advantage, and they should welcome the careful and
critical analysis that is the hallmark of university research and scholarship,
even if it is at odds with their currently offered products and services.
If the walls can be broken down between industry and
academia, the two sides need to be more focused in their partnerships in order
to better address the world’s most pressing problems. Europe’s Science Business
Innovation Board offered a prescription for improving these partnerships. The
answer rests in quality over quantity, it said.
“Increasingly, the trend is to narrow the focus on a handful
of strategic partnerships that aim higher, receive significantly greater
funding and last longer. These partnerships increasingly will drive richer
benefits to fewer universities,” a recent Board report found.
“Long-term strategic partnerships focus the university’s
creativity and talent on enabling future innovations that can be taken to
market by industry and deliver benefits to society within five to 10 years,” it
said.
An example of just such a partnership is something we are
engaged in at the University of Minnesota. Called the Minnesota Discovery,
Research and Innovation Economy, or MNDRIVE, it is a strategic relationship
between the entrepreneurial university, business and industry partners and
government entities.
MNDRIVE focuses transdisciplinary academic industry
partnerships in the areas of: robotics, sensors and advanced manufacturing;
global food ventures; discoveries and treatments for brain conditions and
conserving the environment.
One such example is the use of a partnership between
engineers, microbiologists, soil and water scientists and industry to employ
cost-effective, “green” solutions using microorganisms to clean up contaminated
land and water.
But let’s face hard facts — as long as faculty values are in
apparent contradiction to the goals of industry, and as long as industry views
academic dissent as a threat and not a strength, the relationship will not
change and conflicting pressures will slow the transfer of knowledge for the
public good.