Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Operational management
All organisations involved in the study shared the opinion that bringing together
groups from different disciplines helped to increase innovation in their R&D and
enhance their ability to find innovative solutions to problems. But it was not possible
to confirm this opinion with objective evidence.
Identifying new partners and new projects was described by university business
development officers as a major activity. This activity involved networking (both
internal and external), scouting for new projects (spotting opportunities), and sign-
posting funding opportunities (finding funding). In addition, university business
development officers were also involved in facilitating new partnering opportuni-
ties, closing deals and undertaking specialised tasks, such as managing IP, negoti-
ating contracts, managing projects, corporate marketing, and training scientists in
business matters.
Finding new partners and projects was considered by both university and industry
informants as being particularly difficult. Various mechanisms were put in place by
the organisations involved in the study to address this difficulty and to raise aware-
ness of opportunities, including: making personal contacts in potential partnering
organisations, setting up corporate web-pages inviting applications for technology
development, involving external scientists as scientific advisors, publishing “hot-
lists” of research needs, and undertaking systematic market intelligence based on
publications and grant applications.
A number of company informants experienced difficulties in their partnering
arrangements, especially the ability of universities to deliver on promises. In one
case a university was described as “hard to do business with” because it took this
institution nine months to prepare a term-sheet. In another, staff movements led to
transfer of a project from one institution to another before the programme could be
completed. A third experienced problems with the way projects were managed at the
university, with excess bureaucracy and very limited resources to manage activities.
Many of the partnering difficulties cited by key informants typically arose from
poor management of IP issues: either because partners were aware of their IP rights
(but could not agree on how to share them); because they were uncertain of the IP
that might emerge through the collaboration; or they did not know the best way to
describe potential outputs of a project or apportion future IP streams emerging from
the partnership.
In some cases, even when a partner was found and a suitable project identified,
problems arose with resourcing the project, as the offer of partnership did not always
result in an appropriate level of funding commensurate with resource needs. Both
universities and companies found that they often needed to explore complimentary
funding sources and assist each other with grant applications to secure additional
finances.
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