‘Boosting the commercial returns from research’ discussion paper: the EMCR Forum’s response

Associate Professor Andreas Fouras, NHMRC Career Development Fellow, Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Monash University

Some of history’s biggest and best ideas have come from the very young. Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone at 18, George Westinghouse the rotary steam engine at 19, and Australia’s Lawrence Bragg won the Nobel Prize for Physics at the age of 25.

One of the key drivers of a successful economy is where innovation leads to entrepreneurship. Here also early-career researchers have a lot to offer. EMCRs who have less established research careers are in a better position to, and are more willing to pivot their careers around a new idea, as EMCRs are far more likely to make the jump from academia to start-up than their more established and perhaps tenured colleagues.

For these reasons, when the federal government released a discussion paper: ‘Boosting the commercial returns from research’ as part of a consultation process with the research community and industry, the EMCR Forum was committed to ensuring the voice of EMCRs was heard.

In its submission to Government, the EMCR Forum strongly supported the overarching goal of creating better translation of research into commercial outcomes and in particular, measures to support and enhance entrepreneurship within the research sector.

In our response, we explained that while many EMCRs are actively engaged in pursuing commercial opportunities, many more are keen to follow this path if conditions for such activities can be improved. Many EMCRs are keen to actively engage with industry and are seeking opportunities for such engagement.

However, a key barrier is the lack of mobility between research and industry. Current funding rules at the ARC and NHMRC heavily penalize researchers who take time off research for industry experience, and unsurprisingly, many researchers are cautious of taking a one-way-trip.

In our response, we encouraged the Government to support the research councils, universities and research institutes in promoting and rewarding industry experience – a strategy with the potential to enhance mobility and thereby greater exchange of talent and ideas between industry and research.

Other key recommendations of the report include:

• Measures to encourage industry funding for innovation. Early-stage ideas currently receive less than 1/6th of the funding received by similar ideas in the USA (compared to GDP);
• Measures to increase the certainty and stability around science funding. For an excellent article on this last topic, I strongly recommend Australia’s Chief Scientist Ian Chubb’s short editorial in the 29 August issue of Science - “Australia needs a strategy” (subscription or free registration required).

Read the EMCR Forum’s response to the Government’s consultation in full here.