PUBLIC LECTURE

Innovation systems, innovation policy and the future of university-industry knowledge exchange
Canberra, 14 August 2008

Alan Hughes Alan Hughes is Director of the Centre for Business Research and Margaret Thatcher Professor of Enterprise Studies at the Judge Business School, and a Fellow of Sidney Sussex College, University of Cambridge. From 2000 to 2003 he was Director of the National Competitiveness Network of the Cambridge-MIT Institute, a joint venture between MIT and the University of Cambridge. His research interests include innovation and technology policy; growth and innovation in small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs); and corporate takeovers, corporate governance, and business performance. His recent work on productivity and innovation includes comparative benchmarking of university industry innovation activities in the UK and the US and innovation in the transport sector and the role of services in Australian productivity growth. He has carried out numerous impact evaluations of SME and innovation support policy. In 2004 he was appointed by the Prime Minister to membership of the Council for Science and Technology, the UK’s senior advisory body in this area.

This presentation provided an analysis of the nature of university-industry knowledge exchange in innovation systems. On the basis of both large-scale international survey data and detailed individual case studies it argues that there has been an over-emphasis in much policy making on spin-offs, licensing and technology supply push as key drivers of knowledge exchange. Instead it is proposed that a richer set of interactions deriving from informal and non-contractual relationships lies at the heart of much creative knowledge exchange activity. On the basis of the analysis of the roles that universities play in societies more generally and in relation to knowledge exchange in particular, it is argued that there has been an undervaluation in policy making of the 'public space' role that universities may play. This role enables them to provide a forum in which the identification and shaping of patterns of knowledge exchange can develop. It is also argued that there has been an underestimation in policy development of the extent to which commercialisation from the research base requires extensive supporting innovation expenditure by the business community and supporting investment by them in individuals and structures that can develop and promote essential gatekeeping and boundary-spanning capacities which will enable them to effectively interact with the university sector. Various policy implications were discussed.