Questions for Consultation

1. We would like to identify best practice and examples of excellence in business-university collaboration in the UK and abroad. Some examples of the types of collaboration that we would be interested in hearing about include:

• Industry’s use of the information contained in academic publications, and academia’s use of industry patents and prototypes or vice versa.
• Joint ventures between universities and business, for example, personnel exchange or collaborative research and development projects.
• Informal contacts, for example, meetings and conferences, use of science parks, business-university liaison, industry sponsored university posts or studentships, work experience for students, business contributions to curriculum development, academic secondments in industry and provision of continuing professional development training by universities for business.
• Formal contracts, for example, the use of licensing, research contracts, consulting projects, establishment of spinout companies, product testing, or business support.

We would also be interested to learn how the relationship came about. Were your local Regional Development Agency or Sector Skills Council involved? What more could be done to facilitate successful partnerships?

2. If you do not have, or would like to strengthen such relationships, what are the main barriers to doing so?

These might include:

• Management and organisational issues. How can businesses and universities best organise themselves in order to benefit from each other’s resources? Do the present mechanisms for priority setting, decision-making and funding in the university sector help or hinder business-university collaboration? What changes might encourage collaboration?
• Technology transfer. What are the barriers? How can it be made more effective?
• Intellectual property. Are the present arrangements understood and appropriate?

3. A third set of questions relates to how business can attract the best graduates and postgraduates with the skills that they require, especially in technology. Questions include:

• Is the quality of graduate recruits satisfactory?  Are there any obvious gaps in terms of skills and disciplines?
• How do businesses, individually or collectively, communicate their needs for specific scientific or technical skills and for the development of relevant courses in universities?
• How could more attractive career paths for science and technology graduates and postgraduates be developed?
• What plans does business have to attract the best talent in the future and are the universities made aware of them? If not, what more could be done to facilitate such a dialogue?

4.  The review team will also want to understand whether financial considerations currently help or hinder the relationships between business and universities. Questions include:

• Are there ways in which the present financing arrangements could be made more effective?
• Has the introduction of R&D tax credits influenced business demand for research and skills, and if so, how? Are there other means to the same end?

The review team welcomes written submissions by either email or by post.

The Lambert Review of Business-University Collaboration,

1 Horse Guards Road, 

London, SW1A 2HQ, UK 

E-mail: lambert.review@hm-treasury.gsi.gov.uk

Deadline: 17th April 2003

Unless submissions are specifically marked as confidential, they may be posted on the review website. Please include the name and contact numbers of the person to contact for any follow-up discussions.

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