Without it will the ideas to commercialise come from?

The previous government’s research commercialisation plan extended to incentivising universities via the research block grants programme. And so, the Department of Education Skills and Employment issued a paper on how the RBG cake should be sliced (CMM April 6).

Responses are in, including QUT’s which suggests the scheme is not a starter, because of, “the over-winding of the system away from fundamental discovery research upstream towards application, translation and commercialisation downstream. … Fundamental research is the feedstock of application research and development and without new discoveries coming down the pipeline our applied research outcomes will soon run dry.”

The submission sets out specific flaws with the proposal, not least that the implemented Watt Review (CMM December 7 2015) addressed the same issues as the present DESE prop and it is too early to know what Watt wrought.

But QUT does not sound optimistic – questioning assumptions that discovery research is optional, “in the hope we can freeload off other jurisdictions and simply rely on the fundamental discoveries they make – fails to take account of the empirical reality that industry overwhelmingly engages where the knowledge is found.”