The impact of the Cooperative Research Centres programme is being assessed – just as a new research commercialisation policy is being developed

The assessment, following one in 2012, includes 20 questions on the progress, practise and performance of CRCs and the short-term objective-focused CRC Ps.

Some of them will be useful for the now being debated national plan on taking the outcomes of research to market, such as;

* has the CRC Programme generated a culture of industry-research collaboration, with firms and researchers seeing value in collaborative partnerships?

And

* how well CRC Programme participants match the intended target group and is the reach sufficient to realise the required scale of change?

The programme is mentioned favourably by some research lobbies in submissions to the research translation review (CMM March 1 and April 22).

If this assessment is positive, and completed in time, it will add to the case for using the CRC Programme, or at least something like it, in the new strategy to commercialise research outcomes (CMM April 13).