For a small business-person wondering if anybody in a university can help with an R&D issue the big problem is how to find out who to ask. So, many don’t. The Group of Eight and Business Higher Education Roundtable get this. Yesterday they sat down with people from SMEs and government to talk about what can be done.

The agenda addressed comms and connections, initiatives and incentives and who should insure practical proposals don’t fall through the cracks, chasms more like, between ideas and application.

The meeting was also an opportunity for the Go8 to advance the emerging idea of a translational research fund, to transform basic discoveries into products and services. This is what the Medical Research Future Fund is designed to do for medical science but there is no equivalent resource for other fields. The Eight adds redirecting funds from the R&D tax concession is a way to pay for it.