The government's 10-year Science & Innovation Investment Framework aims to make Britain one of the best places in the world for science, research and innovation. Not-for-profit organisation London Technology Network (LTN), which promotes innovation by linking business with research scientists in universities across London and the south east, is aligned with the government's strategy to promote innovation.
As chief executive and founder Peter Reid says: "Britain has a long history of developing innovations but failing to gain commercially from them." The LTN is a joint venture between the London Business School and University College London and has representatives on its board from Imperial College London and King's College London, too. The reason he set it up in 2001 was, he says, to "create a marketplace for the transfer of innovation between academia and industry".
Reid had experienced first-hand how difficult it was to access the UK's science and technology research base, but knew the collaboration was very successful when it did work. Following a discussion with the DTI, he won a £4m award from the Higher Education Innovation Fund to develop LTN. The organisation (funded by the EU and three Regional Development Agencies) introduces companies to research scientists from across 250 university departments. Reid says LTN generates "300 collaborations a year" (from sectors as diverse as manufacturing, life sciences and transport logistics) looking to develop new processes or products.
"Businesses are initially suspicious of the ability of academics to help," he says. "But these academics can help them reduce cost, time and risk. They've got world-scale experience and deep skill and they work to a company's budget and timescale," says Reid. There are plenty of examples of successful collaborative projects, he adds, because "the south east of England is the biggest research cluster in the world, bigger than even Boston [Massachusetts, US]. So we're confident that we can match an academic to a company's research and development requirements."
If the gains for industry are obvious, what's in it for the academic institutions? "If an academic finds an interesting business problem, it might inspire him to carry out some new research that other people are likely to care about," says Reid. "It may mean a business will fund part of that research or, through licensing, there may be an opportunity to make money."
He also points out that universities are keen to work with start-ups to encourage entrepreneurship: "There's a genuine desire to be relevant to their community. They don't want to be in an ivory tower, and they're not. It's a way of transferring knowledge to society."
Reid doesn't intend to expand LTN nationally-"like a rash"-but he says the model could be copied in other regions. And he's convinced that UK businesses will only compete on a global scale if they open themselves up to innovation: "British businesses under-invest in new products and processes," he says. "The expertise they need won't necessarily come from inside the business. This process helps business to adapt to global changes."
