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Business - University COLLABORATION IN
SCOTLAND
The Scottish Executive's Response to the Lambert
Review
FOREWORD
Harnessing innovation and discovery for the benefit of
the whole of society is key to our future economic success,
and in raising our quality of life. Our universities are
highly competitive in terms of their research, and their
potential to contribute to our economy is enormous. But the
focus and expertise for many academics lies in the research
itself rather than in subsequent exploitation of its
commercial potential. On the other hand, businesses,
particularly small ones, are often too pre-occupied with
their day-to-day trading to seek out research teams in
universities to see how they might help with maintaining
their competitive edge through research and development.
The result is that commercial opportunities from the
research base are sometimes only slowly realised in
Scotland, or are developed elsewhere.
These issues, while not new, were the subject of Richard
Lambert's highly influential study of business-university
collaboration in the UK in 2003. That report contained a
range of recommendations for business, universities and
public support agencies, and there is no doubt that moving
forward strongly on these issues is a central strategy in
the UK Government's recent science and innovation
investment framework covering 2004-2014.
In Scotland, the Lambert recommendations also have a
strong relevance, although in recent years there has been a
concerted drive by the Scottish Executive and its agencies
to put in place a range of initiatives to tackle this
agenda. Many of these initiatives are ahead of those in the
rest of the UK. We have, for instance, established three
Intermediary Technology Institutes (ITIs) as a long term
strategy to support the development of key market focused
technologies in Scotland. However, business investment in
R&D remains much weaker than in the rest of the UK, and
the importance of maximising the benefits of
university-business interaction is correspondingly greater.
This report contains numerous examples of where
universities are supporting business and I am sure that
there is much to be learnt from these.
We have also recently refreshed our enterprise strategy
for economic growth in Scotland,
A Smart Successful Scotland. This strategy depends
crucially on our ability to maximise the economic impact of
science and technology to businesses in Scotland. We are
therefore increasing our focus on the adoption of new
technology by new and existing companies. However, because
of the complexity and long term nature of development, this
is not an area where we can expect rapid or step changes.
But it is critical that we continue on a strongly upward
path of better and more frequent interactions between
business and industry, and in overcoming cultural barriers
to these.
I believe this report will provide not only a commentary
on Scotland's position on this important agenda, but also
some clear ways forward for business and universities.
These include further encouragement of university
commercialisation activity, supported by significant
increases in funding from the Scottish Higher Education
Funding Council (SHEFC), and the launch of a new single
point of access for business to aid its interactions with
the university sector. The new SEEKIT and SCORE schemes
operated by the Executive will also make a positive
contribution to these developments.
This work will require an ongoing dialogue between
business and the higher education sector but this is
something that should allow Scotland to use its size to
good advantage. And I am pleased to announce that
Technology Ventures Scotland has agreed to help take
forward this dialogue.
Jim Wallace
Deputy First Minister and Minister for Enterprise and
Lifelong Learning
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