KEY POINTS:
Businesses and research organisations need to strengthen their links, says a visiting expatriate Cambridge University professor.
Universities should capitalise on the fact that large companies were turning away from "long range" research to focus on the "close range", such as intense development programmes, Professor Michael Kelly said.
Chipmaker Intel was an example. "You won't find a new lab there because it pulls in its long-range research from outside."
About 80 per cent of British firms had no connection to universities, Kelly said.
"There's a resource out there that small companies could make the most of and shouldn't be intimidated by.
"Your average Bob the Builder doesn't have to have a direct link with the university, but something like the Builders' Association could have."
New Zealand companies considered relationships with Crown research institutes, private research organisations, and universities as being among the least relevant when developing innovations, a Business New Zealand survey of 180 firms released yesterday showed.
Kelly said companies had to understand that universities were not businesses and "couldn't deliver research tomorrow".
At the same time, universities should realise that businesses were often risking their shirts in their financial commitment to a project.
New Zealand's "can do" attitude lent itself to entrepreneurs trying to keep control of their idea all the way to market, a mistake which would prevent their companies from growing, Kelly said.
"The person who takes something from the idea to the prototype stage is not the same person who sees it through the marketing and later stages. The skills aren't the same.
"We have to educate our researchers to either stop researching and become the manager, or develop a team and delegate."
Speaking at the Capitalising on Research summit in Auckland yesterday, Kelly said debate was raging at Cambridge over whether it was better to give small companies customers rather than money from grants.
In the US, 5 per cent of Government procurement must come from small companies.
"It gives the company an early customer, which not only puts pressure on them to deliver a product, they can go to the venture capitalists and say, we have a customer and order."
