![Lost in Translation participants Antoine Hemens, Charmaine Chalmers and Stuart Elliott. It was generally agreed at the ...](/content/dam/images/g/r/q/9/o/c/image.related.afrArticleLead.620x350.grq7qh.png/1475066293827.jpg)
Australian business and universities need to radically rethink how they collaborate if the nation wants to halt its slide down the global rankings when it comes to innovation.
While the nation ranks highly in term of innovation inputs, according to the Global Innovation Index for 2016, we continue to perform poorly when it comes to commercialising our research outputs. Moreover, a key weakness of the Australian economy is the low amount of research talent embedded business.
According to PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) partner Manoj Santiago, universities and industry players want to work more closely together but it's something that's often placed in the "too-hard basket".
"Both players believe there are too many hurdles when it comes to closer collaboration, so it does not need prioritising," he said.
![Yeshevini Chandar (left), Manoj Santiago and Dr Michelle Deaker. Too many hurdles mean working together is often put in ...](/content/dam/images/g/r/q/9/o/7/image.imgtype.afrArticleInline.620x0.png/1475032579905.jpg)
Santiago was speaking at the recent "Lost in Translation" roundtable co-hosted by The Australian Financial Review and PwC as part of its Aspire series for private businesses. The subject was how best to improve commercial collaboration between industry and universities in Australia.
Different social nuance
While roundtable participants were keen on espousing the virtues of countries getting industry and university collaboration right such as Israel, the United States and France, or citing the example of Stanford University and its $US22 billion ($29 billion) endowment, participants pretty much agreed Australia needs to forge its own path.
Stanford graduate Yeshevini Chandar from the University of Newcastle's commercialisation arm believes the social nuance is different here.
"US universities are totally different. We have to learn and adapt to the local context. We can't replicate what's happening at Stanford or Berkeley.
"At Newcastle, we are a regional university and we've broken the mould a little bit. The Newcastle Institute for Energy and Resources' model sees us working closely with industry. PhD students are coming in and working on research projects closely with industry on campus. What the students are able to see is their research moving directly from the laboratory to having practical applications in industry."
University of Technology Associate Professor Dr Antoine Hermens said it was vitally important that universities and governments focus on outcomes, and that's happening internationally.
"In France for example, industry and universities are interested in what sort of career path a graduate will have," he said, adding that there was a large obligation from universities and industry to get it right but they often worked at cross-purposes.
"Industry generally takes a short-term view, whereas traditional universities tend to take a long-term view.
"Part of the problem regarding the long-term view is, academics are often looking to solve a deeper, more profound problem rather than something simpler."
Research simple problems
Co-founder and CEO of Planet Innovation, Stuart Elliott, believes universities need to focus more on the "low-hanging fruit" – the research that needs to be done which solves simple problems today.
"We have to ensure research is focused on a commercially relevant problem. If the problem is defined well upfront and universities get it right, there will an auction for their research," Elliott said.
"Researchers have to pick markers that are attractive to the industry. I've seen researchers whom I've told, "You can buy a solution to their problem in the pharmacy across the road". It's a question of speaking to the industry and potentially even spending the first 20 per cent of the research budget on identifying the right problem."
Chief executive officer and managing partner of venture capital firm One Ventures, Dr Michelle Deaker, agreed there needed to be more focus on commercial outcomes as well as strongly emphasising the need for invention.
"Universities and research institutes need to learn to direct resources to the commercial opportunity – they need to understand commercial reality and the times constraints around commercial realities."
For PwC partner Charmaine Chalmers, the problem lies on both sides: "There's an asymmetry of information out there and it's going to take real leadership to bring about change."