Book Description
Knowledge transfer is an essential component of innovation. It is defined as "about transferring good ideas, research results and skills between universities, other research organisations, business and the wider community to enable innovative new products and services to be developed". This inquiry focused on the effectiveness of the research councils' knowledge transfer activities with particular respect to: promotion of collaborative working between researchers and partners in industry, including in the creative industries and in Small and Medium size Enterprises (SMEs); stakeholder engagement and communication; results and performance management and; co-ordination between the councils and the role of Research Councils UK (RCUK). The Committee found weaknesses in strategies for promotion of knowledge transfer. Some Councils focus too narrowly on technology transfer with little attention paid to the wider issues, such as policy development. The councils also focus their attention on informing stakeholders rather than consulting on stakeholder needs. In addition, there is a particular need for the research councils to enhance communication and engagement with the Regional Development Agencies and SMEs. There is little evidence of research council co-ordination or sharing of best practice in knowledge transfer. Also, despite their clear remit to co-ordinate and harmonise, there appears to have been no added value from RCUK in this area. Whilst some councils have a simple funding structure for knowledge transfer, in other cases, a high level of confusion has been created since there are so many schemes in operation. Since the councils conduct little internal impact analysis of their knowledge transfer schemes, it is difficult to see how they can effectively allocate funding to different knowledge transfer activities.
