Increase the economic value of basic research

Philip Esler: research must inform the activities of those who use it.

But for that excellent research to have impact it must inform the activities of research users, in business, government or elsewhere.

This week Research Councils UK (RCUK) ,the partnership of the seven Research Councils, published Excellence with Impact. This drew on an economic impact study, undertaken by PA consulting, which broke new ground. To date no one has sought to develop and apply methodologies for the assessment of impact, applicable across the breadth of activities, disciplines and beneficiaries associated with all of the UK research councils.

What the case studies show

The study used a number of different approaches to gather the evidence for the economic analysis. This included detailed case study analyses, review of councils’ existing data sources and a consideration of published literature, including a considerable body of material compiled by the research councils themselves.  PA sought to identify impacts in four main categories:

• Development of human capital (primarily through the acquisition of skills which accompany the research process), for example, Engineering Doctorates and PhDs in particle physics and astronomy
  
  
• Business and commercial (dealing with the commercial exploitation of research), such as the Applied Genomic LINK programme
  
  
• Policy (the impact that research has on the creation and application of, primarily, government policy), for example the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change and the Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion
  
  
• Quality of life (which looks more broadly at the diverse impacts which manifest themselves in benefits such as improved environment, social cohesion, health and cultural advances), such as the Centre for Surrealism and research into detectors for medical imaging.
  

A striking finding was that each of the 18 studies demonstrated actual and/or potential impact.  The case studies also demonstrated considerable variation in the nature of the impacts, and even greater variety in the processes and circumstances through which the impacts were manifest.  

Probably the most reassuring finding was the extent to which some of the case studies demonstrated multiple types of impact.  Furthermore, many of the impacts were not necessarily part of the original rationale for the specific investment, which suggests that serendipity and opportunism are important factors for the Research Councils and that there is a need to promote an enterprising research environment.

There is no case for complacency, however. Also reported in Excellence with Impact was a user satisfaction survey undertaken by PricewaterhouseCoopers. The study found that while the Research Councils’ had a strong reputation for maintaining the quality of the research base, users were non-committal about our success at knowledge transfer. While they felt that Research Council staff are knowledgeable and professional, we need to work harder to understand the needs of users.

By better articulating the role we play and improving our engagement with users, we believe that we can significantly increase our economic impact. We anticipate the greater input of users in setting future directions and funding priorities, for example through their involvement in major strategic research programmes and greater representation in peer review.

Communication crucial

We also need to ensure that the mechanisms we use to promote knowledge transfer are as well communicated as possible. This will involve the harmonisation and rationalisation of some schemes, but equally important is their presentation and an easily accessible knowledge transfer “taxonomy”. A Research Councils UK Knowledge Transfer web portal will be created in 2008 to provide a single access point for our schemes.

The creation of UK Technology Strategy Board (TSB), which operates at arm’s length from government has created a further opportunity. RCUK and the TSB have created a joint ‘transition’ group to improve the alignment of our activities. By increasing the amount of funding in partnership with the TSB by all the Research Councils, we aim to engage new business partners.

You will have noticed that nowhere have I signalled any shift in our commitment to basic research. This is because we believe that the balance of our current portfolio of research investments is appropriate.

The challenge for us is to ensure that wherever research lies on the spectrum from pure and applied, we have sought to identify potential users and strategies and to put in place strategies that will enable them to benefit from the research we fund.