Home » Opinion » Foreign Views
Tapping creative powers of colleges, labs
By Georges Haour |
November 22, 2010, Monday
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Print Edition
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WE seem to have a lot of crises on our hands at the moment: the economy, food, energy, health and, in OECD countries, an aging population.
On the whole, the world is muddling through the transformations needed to deal with these problems, but, if we are to get this right, we have to use all the resources at our disposal.
One of the most important - and least well-tapped - resources available to business is the creative power of our universities and public laboratories. Together they offer a wealth of knowledge and technologies that provide a whole range of avenues for solving or mitigating these crises through innovation, while simultaneously generating more employment opportunities for people who will, in turn, contribute to the knowledge pool.
Now is the time for firms to find effective and creative ways to partner with universities and public laboratories - or to risk losing access to the potential talent of a generation.
Unemployment is hurting developed nations. Nearly 10 percent of the US population is out of work. In Europe, the figure is close to 9 percent.
Youth unemployment is worryingly high at 18 percent in the US, 20 percent in Europe overall, and an alarming 42 percent in Spain.
This would be a concern at any time, but as OECD populations are aging, it could have even worse knock-on effects: The people on whom more and more retirees will need to rely in the future may never have had the chance to develop the skills and abilities needed for work in our modern economy.
Firms in developed nations, particularly in Europe, must begin to accelerate the job-creation process with a real sense of urgency if these countries are to sustain their current pleasant and sensible social models.
Social good
Better links and stronger partnerships between business and universities will help to do this. However, do not for a minute think that this is just about the broader social good: Firms need to do this if they are to continue to remain competitive.
In our new global age, innovation has changed. If firms are properly to access it, they must do three things:
1. Use federate inputs from external actors, such as universities, more effectively.
2. Invest in emerging economies, particularly India and China.
3. Learn to use information and communication technologies in an ever-more astute manner.
Partnerships with universities can help with the third aspect by allowing firms to stay in touch with the latest technological developments, thus keeping them ahead of their competitors.
However, it is the first of the three points that most requires businesses to work with universities; they need to learn how to "mine" the knowledge and technical resources available in universities.
This may be done using three main channels: collaborative research, licensing and spinning out university start-ups. One good example of success here is Flisom (www.flisom.ch), a solar power business based on research carried out at the Solid State Physics group of the Zurich Polytechnical Institute.
The start-up, founded in 2005 with significant investment from India's Tata Group, has a staff of 35 and nicely growing by developing and selling high-performance solar cells on flexible plastic that could be used with products, such as cell phones.
Small- and medium-size enterprises (SMEs) could lead the way in university partnerships - with some help.
In most countries, SMEs represent more than 75 percent of the labor force. The more that can be done to support such businesses, the greater the chances of creating employment. And what better way to help SMEs than by encouraging them to work with up-and-coming researchers at universities and in public laboratories?
Small firms
In Switzerland, for example, it is estimated that roughly 10 percent of the country's 30,000 SMEs could make use of inputs from these sources. In the US, the Small Business Innovation Research program (www.sbir.gov), which provides grants to SMEs, is often presented as an efficient way of boosting their competitiveness. It has real money to offer - in 2009 its budget was US$2.9 billion - and appears to make a real difference in building business-university partnerships.
Nearly 40 percent of grant recipients had some university involvement, while two-thirds reported that at least one of the SME's founders was an academic.
Other countries offer different forms of financial support, for example by funding a postgraduate engineering student to work on a specific project with an SME.
This student, who would work both at the firm and in the laboratory, acts as a bridge between academia and business. Projects last typically two years, at the end of which the engineer is often hired by the SME.
While such schemes are valuable, governments must do more to support innovation-led growth and job creation.
Singapore is a good example of how to do this; it has been among the top five most competitive countries in recent years, and made it to the very top position in 2010, according to the IMD World Competitiveness Yearbook.
(The author teaches on IMD's Orchestrating Winning Performance and Driving Strategic Innovation programs. Shanghai Daily condensed his article.)
On the whole, the world is muddling through the transformations needed to deal with these problems, but, if we are to get this right, we have to use all the resources at our disposal.
One of the most important - and least well-tapped - resources available to business is the creative power of our universities and public laboratories. Together they offer a wealth of knowledge and technologies that provide a whole range of avenues for solving or mitigating these crises through innovation, while simultaneously generating more employment opportunities for people who will, in turn, contribute to the knowledge pool.
Now is the time for firms to find effective and creative ways to partner with universities and public laboratories - or to risk losing access to the potential talent of a generation.
Unemployment is hurting developed nations. Nearly 10 percent of the US population is out of work. In Europe, the figure is close to 9 percent.
Youth unemployment is worryingly high at 18 percent in the US, 20 percent in Europe overall, and an alarming 42 percent in Spain.
This would be a concern at any time, but as OECD populations are aging, it could have even worse knock-on effects: The people on whom more and more retirees will need to rely in the future may never have had the chance to develop the skills and abilities needed for work in our modern economy.
Firms in developed nations, particularly in Europe, must begin to accelerate the job-creation process with a real sense of urgency if these countries are to sustain their current pleasant and sensible social models.
Social good
Better links and stronger partnerships between business and universities will help to do this. However, do not for a minute think that this is just about the broader social good: Firms need to do this if they are to continue to remain competitive.
In our new global age, innovation has changed. If firms are properly to access it, they must do three things:
1. Use federate inputs from external actors, such as universities, more effectively.
2. Invest in emerging economies, particularly India and China.
3. Learn to use information and communication technologies in an ever-more astute manner.
Partnerships with universities can help with the third aspect by allowing firms to stay in touch with the latest technological developments, thus keeping them ahead of their competitors.
However, it is the first of the three points that most requires businesses to work with universities; they need to learn how to "mine" the knowledge and technical resources available in universities.
This may be done using three main channels: collaborative research, licensing and spinning out university start-ups. One good example of success here is Flisom (www.flisom.ch), a solar power business based on research carried out at the Solid State Physics group of the Zurich Polytechnical Institute.
The start-up, founded in 2005 with significant investment from India's Tata Group, has a staff of 35 and nicely growing by developing and selling high-performance solar cells on flexible plastic that could be used with products, such as cell phones.
Small- and medium-size enterprises (SMEs) could lead the way in university partnerships - with some help.
In most countries, SMEs represent more than 75 percent of the labor force. The more that can be done to support such businesses, the greater the chances of creating employment. And what better way to help SMEs than by encouraging them to work with up-and-coming researchers at universities and in public laboratories?
Small firms
In Switzerland, for example, it is estimated that roughly 10 percent of the country's 30,000 SMEs could make use of inputs from these sources. In the US, the Small Business Innovation Research program (www.sbir.gov), which provides grants to SMEs, is often presented as an efficient way of boosting their competitiveness. It has real money to offer - in 2009 its budget was US$2.9 billion - and appears to make a real difference in building business-university partnerships.
Nearly 40 percent of grant recipients had some university involvement, while two-thirds reported that at least one of the SME's founders was an academic.
Other countries offer different forms of financial support, for example by funding a postgraduate engineering student to work on a specific project with an SME.
This student, who would work both at the firm and in the laboratory, acts as a bridge between academia and business. Projects last typically two years, at the end of which the engineer is often hired by the SME.
While such schemes are valuable, governments must do more to support innovation-led growth and job creation.
Singapore is a good example of how to do this; it has been among the top five most competitive countries in recent years, and made it to the very top position in 2010, according to the IMD World Competitiveness Yearbook.
(The author teaches on IMD's Orchestrating Winning Performance and Driving Strategic Innovation programs. Shanghai Daily condensed his article.)
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