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Bob Driver (UKTI, Dir Hi Tech), Lynn Gladden (ProVC Research, Cambridge), Hermann Hauser

In Cambridge commerce is mostly just the continuation of academia by other means, to paraphrase von Clausewitz. It was great to eat pizza with Amadeus, Base4, Johnson Matthey, GSK (BioScience Park), Philips Research, TWI, Unilever (Goodman) and the Universities of Anglia Ruskin, Cambridge and East Anglia to discuss what we should be doing about the new Fraunhofer-like Technology and Innovation Centres that the government recently announced.

We were keen get together with friends to think about how to respond to the announcement of this funding in the Comprehensive Spending Review on 20th October. Bob Driver (Director High Technology, UKTI) is familiar to many in the region as the original creator of Technology World. Bob had spoken with colleagues in BIS and established that the Technology Strategy Board would be working with industry, stakeholders, and wider government to identify the priority areas, and the scale of investment required for the network of centres by April 2011. He recommended that we discussed any outline plans we had with the TSB and BIS. A vital aspect was the extent that the Technology and Innovation Centres would enable the UK to exploit large global markets worth (or potentially worth) over £10bn pa; and where the UK has technical leadership. Bids will only have to be submitted in the New Year - so while we are quite right to get our act together, we aren't yet late to market. But, as our friends at Intel say, only the paranoid survive.

Lynn Gladden (ProVC Research, Cambridge), Hermann Hauser, Sian Reid (Leader Cambridge City)

It was good to hear from the University and Hermann, the author of the report recommending the development of UK Fraunhofers, and to understand the huge progress that they had made behind the scenes in negotiation with other Universities and with the funding councils.

Dr Hermann Hauser said:
•    he is delighted that his original report to Peter Mandelson has been taken up by Vince Cable, who obviously was under no obligation to follow the same policy as his predecessor in BIS;
•    The Government recently announced £200m of funding for about 12 centres across the UK. The actual figure that will be available is thought to be nearer £250m;
•    There is a a danger that the Government money won’t be allocated to Cambridge as ‘Maxwell’ centres but to other areas in the UK. People made unemployed as universities and public sector employment are cut back in the North East and North West are unlikely to find other local jobs, while our rampant growth (the high tech cluster is growing 10-15% this year) provides many opportunities for similar people here. For humane as well as political reasons, there is a strong desire to send whatever available public funding as far North as possible;
•    The Fraunhofer model is that funding for each centre needs to be 33% Government, 33% academia, 34% industry, and the Germans have been opening roughly one centre a year on that basis including recently units in the United States. To quote Wikipedi:

"The so-called Fraunhofer Model has been in existence since 1973 and has led to the Society's continuing growth. Under the model, the Fraunhofer Society earns ca. 60% of its income through contracts with industry or specific government projects. The other 40% of the budget is sourced in the proportion 9:1 from federal and state (Land) government grants and is used to support preparatory research.

Thus the size of the society's budget depends largely on its success in maximizing revenue from commissions. This funding model applies not just to the central society itself but also to the individual institutes. This serves both to drive the realisation of the Fraunhofer Society's strategic direction of becoming a leader in applied research as well as encouraging a flexible, autonomous and entrepreneurial approach to the society's research priorities."

•    Rumour has it that certain areas have already been highlighted for Fraunhofer-type units here but it is not finalized yet;
•    We feel that Cambridge had a better case than most for the establishment of at least one centre here – we have strong research and effective export-oriented high tech industry delivering many new jobs;
•    There is still the opportunity to influence government.

Hermann Hauser, Lynn Gladden (ProVC Research, Cambridge), Steve Battersby (Senior Director Innovation, Philips Research)

Professor Lynn Gladden said
•    She is working with Herman to determine the impact/implications of new Fraunhofer-type centres in the region;
•    University of Cambridge sees value in the centres;
•    Funding might not be an issue even if BIS allocated it's limited funds Northwards - we might possibly use EPSRC funding to support such units;
•    We have some key areas of interest:
a.    Plastic Electronics would be stronger here than in alternative area of the North East, particularly as the University of Cambridge (with it's spinouts Plastic Logic and Cambridge Display Technology) have a good connection with Imperial College;
b.    Stem cells / regenerative medicine;
c.    Bioinformatics where we have the European Bioinformatics Institute, Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute,  and successful spinouts such as Illumina (Solexa) and more recently Base4;
•    There is definitely time to influence Government. The indications are that the topics (and hence locations) are not a done deal yet but that our case would be stronger if we presented at least two parts of the funding in order ie industry and academia;
•    We are reliant on industry collaboration to make these new centres work. It is jolly useful to have pizza for some interested parties organized by Cambridge Network, originally founded by the University for just such a purpose of bridging from the University to the region and from the region to the world. More pizza will be required ;-)

Peter Oakley (TWI, Associate Director), John Gourd(Johnson Matthey, Planning and Services Director)

We laid plans with Goodman (who look after science parks at Unilever Colworth and Harwell) for ways to make the Fraunhofers we are all proposing complementary. That really isn't very hard to do.  Colworth is located midway between Cambridge and Oxford, and Unilever are already well aware of our ecosystem and what it can contribute.

Hermann Hauser, Sally Ann Forsyth (Goodman, Director), Henk Koopmans (EEDA, Head of Strategic Investments)

But there are lots of open questions:
a)    Raise industry matched funding. £100m is available from some institutional investors, but we would need to work out a business model that would allow the University to covenant;
b)    How much is needed? Hermann says each centre should cost ‘£50-£100m over 10 years’;
c)    Do we plan for two centres, one in Physical Sciences and one In Life Sciences, to match our West Cambridge and Biomedical Campus spaces?

Cambridge ideas will continute to change the world if they are easy to pick up and assimilate. Charles Kingsley wrote that fen people are more arrogant than mountain-men because they see nothing around them taller than the buildings their fathers raised. Our new Fraunhofers will engage a new wave of multinationals in our amazing ecosystem, and we imagine they will keep us humble. Would you like to come too?

Comments

[John Grant]

"Would you like to come too?" Yes, please. Mine's a quattro formaggio.

More seriously, we need to brainstorm what the centre(s) will do, how they will work, etc. And it needs to be done soon. Matt, will you be organising something along those lines?

[Matt Schofield]

Clearly, more pizza is indeed required! ;-)

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