0.2 21st century economic development  (Page 10/13)

Welsh graduate output – welsh economy input?

However, the challenge exists, as described in the Welsh Assembly Government’s Knowledge Economy Nexus (WAG 2004), to provide opportunities for these skills, preventing them from being lost to other regions of the UK. This outflow of graduates from most regions is something seen across the UK with young talent attracted to the opportunities of London and the South East of England. This problem is particularly acute in science and technology. While Europe (and our region) performs well in producing science and technology graduates we perform poorly in the number of researchers that we employ (EU 2006), thereby failing to capitalise on this investment in intellect.

Supporting innovation – knowledge and technology transfer

Universities are being increasingly recognised as a source of ideas for new commercial products and services (Siegel et al. 2003). University research produces new knowledge and builds upon existing knowledge. This makes it valuable for fuelling innovation, through both incremental improvements to existing technology and by major fundamental breakthroughs.

Forms of technology and knowledge transfer that are simple to measure and compare include: contract research; new company spinout; (Di Gregorio and Shane 2003); patenting and licensing activity. Each of these activities is easily numerated, be it by research income, number of new companies founded, patents filed or licenses executed. Studies in many countries, including extensive national surveys, have quantified and analysed these outputs of technology transfer (AUTM 1995, 2005, HEFCE 2003).

Consultancy, contract research and licensing

As described above there exists a host of mechanisms for universities to transfer knowledge to the industrial community. Consultancy can provide businesses with the opportunity to appraise what a university could offer before embarking upon larger research contracts, leading to a different type of interaction, plus it can provide SMEs with university expertise for relatively low fees. Other fields of technology transfer could also benefit such as licensing, where more than 50% of licenses go to companies already known by the academic concerned (Lambert 2003).

The manner in which universities manage their IPR portfolios and anticipate revenues is an important issue. Using a portfolio of patents (patent pooling can be within and between institutions) (Parish and Jargosch 2003) in a targeted manner rather than relying on individual patents is a strategy advocated and applied by the Association of University Technology Managers (AUTM) in the United States. This strategy helps facilitate successful licensing and commercialisation. This strategy also helps balance revenues, as revenues from all patents are not equal. During 2002 only 0.6% of licenses negotiated by U.S. universities (N.B. licences not patents) provided revenues of over $1million (Pressman 2002). When considering the possible revenues it must be born in mind that on average it takes six years to commercialise university research, thereby putting much of the onus of risk and investment onto the shoulders of the licensee.