Professor Stephen Holloway

Professor of Chemical PhysicsExecutive Pro Vice-Chancellor

nternational HE-Business LinksThe mission of the Japan-UK “Scheme” is to advance the mutual undersbetween universities in Japan and the UK.

The core universities are long-established and are all research intensive institutions.

The creation of strategic relationships between Japanese and UK universincreases collaboration in the core activities, research and teaching.

In Japan and the UK there are strong government directives that universshould be both closer to society and that research should help to innovabusiness.

How can universities best work with business and industry across internboundaries??

Types of University-Business Collaboration“British business is not research intensive and its record in R&D spend iunimpressive. UK business research is concentrated in a narrow range oindustrial sectors and in a small number of large companies.”

Lambert review 2003

Research collaborations arising from a chance encounter

Bottom-up, the academic has to be interested and research related;Could be long lasting and successful, usually bi-lateral and serially fundTypically small scale and not on the radar of the university nor the indu

Strategic collaborations

Top-down, difficult to instigate with individual academics;Potentially important for possible business development opportunities;Usually appears in university strategy documents and .... ignored!

Barriers to University-Business Collaboration“Universities don’t understand the business world”.

The Ivory Tower of academia.

The precious academic (Applied research, ugh!)

The global economic downturn

The IP issue

Short term-ism (SMEs)

Academic workload management (early career staff)

Fully costed research (sustainability)

The decline of corporate research laboratories (“not invented here”)

Opportunities for University-Business CollaborationOutsourcing

Trans-national corporations

Human mobility

Government intervention (economic growth, knowledge economy, £ & ¥)

Sharing of resources

Sharing best practice (sustainability)

Internationalisation (The Japan - UK “Scheme”) and connectivity

Curriculum development and industrial involvement in non-research university activity (the skills issue)

Innovation & Research Strategy for GrBIS, December 2011

The Japan-UK “Scheme”: PrioritiesInitiate a range of “standard” development activities (quick wins)

Summer schools (Nagoya model);Internship programmes;“Show & tell” workshops;Bi-annual symposium in UK/Japan & etc.

Communication strategy to attract potential industrial partnersProduce high quality web site and some “paper” literature;Produce a core-team audit of research strengths and 5-10 important industrial partners.

Develop an initial range of collaborative research mechanisms

Graduate studentsPost-docsAcademic staff exchanges.

Universities & industrial partnersThe subscription cost;

Some seed funding for, say, academic exchange or graduate tuition;

Travel costs;

Access to university/industrial facilities;

Staff time (academic, research and professional services).

The Japan-UK “Scheme”: Costs & strategy

MechanismsCreate UK/Japan university pairs having similar research priorities;

Set a series of industrially related targets and goals for each pair;

Consider the delivery of undergraduate modules in partner universities with “local” flavour.

What’s in it for the academic/university?New, additional research income streams;Grand challenges from a different perspective;International student placement and internships;Student mobility, staff secondments;Best practice e.g. - the sustainable university.

What’s in it for the industrial collaborator?Opportunity to solve a problem;Business development opportunity (training, CPD, market access);Recruitment of experienced, multilingual staff;Access to governmental funding opportunities;Mechanisms for innovating business practices which might be outside of the cultural experience of “the locals”.

The Japan-UK “Scheme”: Benefits

Dr Tomokazu Tozawa

Visiting researcher from Kaneka Corporation in Liverpool Chemistry Department between 2007–2008Industrial sabbatical supported by Kaneka, local costs met by the University of Liverpool

A worked example; UoL Exchange with Kaneka Corporation

Tozawa et al., Nature Mater., 2009, 8, 973Nature Chem., 2010, 2, 750Nature Chem., 2010, 2, 915Nature Comm., 2011, 2, 207Nature, 2011, 474, 367

Influential outputs:

‘Porous organic cages“Visit has opened up a whole new area of materials research”

(acceptance address of RSC Corday-Morgan Medal recipient, 2008)

Jūken (獣拳, "Beast-Fist")

Japanese-UK Knowledge Exchange

Network

JUKEN