Why do companies collaborate with academics?

News that Research Councils UK (RCUK) is to sponsor a study “to demonstrate and enhance the impact of research” is another sign of the growing interest in finding out just what society gets in return for the money its invests in academic research. The RCUK announcement says that the Council for Industry and Higher Education (CIHE) hopes to “obtain a deeper understanding of companies’ motives for collaborating with Higher Education Institutions (HEIs), such as how and why they collaborate and what benefits they think come from collaborations”.

Governments put money into academic research on the assumption that society will get something back from this “investment”. After all, no one would spend billions every year simply to keep university researchers off the streets. The challenge is to discover what society, including the business world, gets in return for that taxpayers’ cash.

In the new study, the CIHE plans to interview 20 companies, “ranging from large global companies to UK small and medium enterprises” that have indulged in research based collaborations with HEIs. The work is a follow on from previous work, including the report Universities, Business and
Knowledge Exchange.

One  motivation behind this work is to persuade the Treasury that the investment in research over the past decade or so was money well spent, and that it is not a good idea to turn off the tap just because the economy has turned sour.

Politicians like simple numbers when they measure such things, which is why for a time there was what many saw as an overemphasis on counting companies spun out of universities or patents filed by academics. As the earlier report points out, there are other interactions “including informal contacts, publications, conferences, graduate recruitment, internships, joint research projects, problem solving and consulting by university staff, testing and standard-setting, participation in networks, access to public space for cross-sector engagement”. Just try counting that lot, let alone putting a monetary value on it.

RCUK is not the only organisation that is pondering the point of business-university research links. The Confederation of British Industry (CBI) has launched its own consultation, through its Inter-Company Academic Relations Group (ICARG). The CBI’s announcement says that ICARG, a committee “drawn from a wide spectrum of R&D-intensive companies and other organisations, who have direct involvement and responsibility for managing the relationships between their organisations and the academic sector,” is “collecting members’ perceptions and experiences of methods of demonstrating the benefits to companies of research links with universities”.

One reason for seeking this information is to feed into its policy input on a new way of allocating research funds to universities that is due to start in 2014. The R&D managers who respond to the CBI’s request may also find the results useful ammunition in their attempts to persuade management that it pays to invest in R&D. Then there is the likelihood that the UK government will pay more attention to evidence that comes from the business world when it comes to deciding on the value of academic research to society.