Wellington
Over the past decade the number of R&D staff transferring into New Zealand's private sectorhas reduced according to IPENZ .
There has been a corresponding reduction in upskilling says the Institution of ProfessionalEngineers NZ, and the low absorptive capacity of the private sector to R&D and other newtechnologies remains a major issue.
IPENZ recently launched its document and thought piece,'Catalysing economic growth - boosting innovation expertise in the private sector'. (See other sticKstories,
One of the reasons for this it says is that until very recently, the criteria for obtaining andretaining public research investment in the CRIs and universities has led them to operate verystrong retention policies.
The same bodies are also rewarded for a track record of scholarly publications more thancommercial outcomes.
In what might be a provocative document (at least for some scientists), IPENZ makes twoproposals.
•A much greater encouragement/incentivisation for academics to go out into industry and buildstrategic partnerships with companies, and to transfer skilled people to the company at the end ofthe project
•Incentivise small private businesses to take on R&D staff (essentially through governmentco-funding)
As Science Media Centre director Peter Griffin commented on the IPENZ proposals, the ideas wentdown like a
However, IPENZ contends that its two proposals would be better than other policies because:
•It would focus on building innovation expertise and building skill pools to make NZ 'sticky'to high technology manufacturing technology manufacturing. Companies would build local skillsnetworks and want to keep close to their university and CRI collaborators. The smart universityacademics or CRIs would be incentivised to keep close to their company and build clusters to retainthe client for the future
•Research providers would be incentivised to shift their focus to developing innovationpotential potential in industry, not just to obtain investment from industry for work carried out atthe research provider's site
•It would provide expanded career paths based on science, mathematics, technology andengineering study. This would rebalance NZ's tertiary education investment much closer to the OECDnorm
•The decision point on what research to perform would be taken away from a centralisedbureaucratic process to a distributed decision making point close to market information
•Companies would be incentivised to increase their investment and grow their potential toadopt, adapt and use new technology for commercial benefit
•Barriers would be reduced for small businesses wanting to get R&D going in their ownpremises
•New Zealand would be made a visibly smarter, leading edge, technology-based society
Yes, there might be howls in the halls of academia to such proposals.
But the point is, we need to get more bang from our R&D buck.
Let's hope the document and the thinking behind it doesn't disappear too quickly.