Report on Proceedings of the Second hesa biennial Research and Innovation Conference

Discussion


Question (delegate from UCT): The issue of funding has been discussed throughout the day. We also heard of a large number of students enrolling for postgraduate study and low throughput figures. Would business and industry be supportive of universities wanting to enable their students to travel abroad and get international exposure, which may make them more employable?
Response (Mr Saki Macozoma): The answer would be yes and no. For that kind of interaction to have any kind of impact, there would have to be some kind of formal agreement between business, universities and the government. When you make an investment in a person, you have to think carefully about what specific skills you are developing. All of these require a kind of understanding and national consensus. If you take the typical South African enterprise, we are driven by industry charters and scorecards. The consequence is that many companies just do the minimum to comply, meaning that these interactions are pushed aside. If something has to happen, it will have to be driven by universities themselves.
Response (Dr Steve Lennon): I would emphasise that the impetus would have to come from the universities. For example, many business schools offer some kind of international exposure as part of their programmes. We know that there is the possibility of leveraging research money over and over, but institutions tend to be quite selfish once they get the money. International collaborative research programmes do have great value to add.
Comment (Ms Sekati, Unisa): Dr Lennon’s input made me realise that I have a concern in terms of the social and human sciences. I’m surprised that we are not talking about poverty alleviation or things that are contained in the Millennium Development Goals. There is also no conversation in our society; we are not problematising the issues. We are not talking about issues of service delivery, unemployment, poverty, Africanising the curriculum, etc. I am concerned whether we should be worried about the fact that we are not addressing issues holistically. We should be talking about the natural and social sciences and humanities holistically.
Response (Dr Steve Lennon): There is a divide between the natural and social sciences, but it should also be acknowledged that you cannot succeed in some areas like biotechnology without taking a holistic view of all the sciences. In some areas if you don’t take heed of the social sciences, you will never succeed. The whole area of innovation for sustainable development has society as its focus, so it has to be better integrated into our research activities.
Response (Mr Saki Macozoma): I think that it is the duty and responsibility of people working in the social sciences to ensure that all relevant dimensions of their disciplines are incorporated in other areas. Similarly, we have to ensure that economics are incorporated where relevant, in a cross-cutting manner. Unless we have a total view, we will not be able to operate in the world of work where we need thinking scientists.
Comment (Prof Ijumba, UKZN): We heard that because of the financial meltdown companies have gone into survival mode, which affected their corporate social responsibility spending. There may also be a feeling among businesses that they are not getting the value that they expect. I think we need to ensure that these parties engage often and in-depth in order to discuss what products the universities should deliver to meet businesses’ needs.

5 COMPETITIVENESS & DEVELOPMENT
5.1 Two sides of the same coin

Dr David Strangway, Former President University of Toronto and of the University of British Columbia, Former President of the Canada Foundation for Innovation, Founder Quest University Canada

Dr David Strangway, Former President, University of Toronto and British Columbia, Former President of the Canada Foundation for Innovation, Founder, Quest University, Canada

LET me first express my deep appreciation for the invitation to present my thoughts on research and innovation. I will make my presentation in four parts: first, my Africa background; second, my experience as an academic and as an administrator; third, as a champion of innovation; and fourth, as a partner in a proposed surge in Africa’s research capacity.
In Africa

LET me now give you a little background so that you can understand my deep commitment to Africa.

I grew up in Angola. My parents were medical missionaries there for 40 years from 1927 to 1967. Theirs was a life in tropical medicine. They built a 150-bed hospital from scratch including all the construction that was needed. They ran a furniture-making factory supplying needs across the area. They developed a comprehensive health-care system, ranging from surgery to infectious diseases to mother and child issues to extensive outpatient work and to active public health measures. They did original research on many tropical diseases such as river blindness, tuberculosis, leprosy and many others. They created and managed a very successful farm that helped them to deal with the myriad of nutritional diseases. And they raised prize cattle for meat and milk. In order to facilitate local farmers they imported ploughs and sold these on very favourable credit terms to local farmers. They trained many African health-care workers as part of their legacy. Their life’s work was remarkably innovative and entrepreneurial. In 1927 the life expectancy was 8 years. By 1967 it had risen to 46 years. It is interesting by the way to note that rich diamond deposits have been discovered close to my old home. This was my boyhood. I went to school in Angola, Zambia and Zimbabwe. My first visit to South Africa was in 1940 when we drove from Cape Town to Angola. And in 1944 we were in Johannesburg when we saw snow.
I am now involved with a very successful NGO that operates in Angola. They have been finding that the normal sources of aid are both decreasing and becoming ever more bureaucratic. It is interesting to watch their approach to social entrepreneurship. They have started and operate a highly successful microcredit bank that in fact makes money to put back into their social endeavours. They have created a furniture manufacturing facility that is supplying furniture for the expanding schools of Angola. Many people are trained and the projects are truly innovative.
Academia and administration

MY own career in geophysics involved extensive work with mining companies. I was a researcher developing new and innovative tools for mineral exploration, some of which are still used today. This was followed by several years on the faculty at MIT doing research in magnetism and electromagnetism. From there I became the chief of Earth and Planetary Science for Nasa during the Apollo missions and man’s landing on the moon. This experience was all about innovation and I learned about contracting out the needs of the project to meet the public requirement of demonstrating the superiority of US technology. Here, I interacted with the best of the scientific community from around the globe, as we worked to rewrite the book on the origin and evolution of the solar system. It is interesting to reflect that the United States’ landing of a man on the moon was not for the purpose of science. Yet it was the driver of this scientific revolution. This reversed the usual pattern as application led to basic science. The outcomes of the Apollo missions could be summarised as, one, a vibrant space technology private sector and, two, a vibrant scientific community of planetary scientists. Some would say this was the establishment of a functioning innovation ecosystem. During my career in science, I authored over 160 scientific papers.

But fate then took me to a new place. I became the president of the University of Toronto and then of the University of British Columbia over a period of many years. I experienced the frustrations of trying to create an environment where students and faculty could thrive and contribute back to their country. If we were to maintain the autonomy and freedom of expression so vital to the modern university, it was my view that students and faculty alike owed a commitment to develop and use their expertise on behalf of the taxpayers who provided the major part of their support. Of course I worked hard to provide the support needed to ensure that we could attract and retain the best academics. This became increasingly more difficult as time went on as the government provided per student resources decreased steadily.

It was during this time that we extensively developed the incubators and spinoff companies that led to the strengthening of the research and development cluster around the University of British Columbia as key to driving innovation. We created and built several facilities that housed and supported several hundred innovative spin-off companies. By charging rent, we were able to do this at no net cost to the university. At UBC we kept the right of first refusal for the university for patenting and licensing. We took shares or royalties on those we chose to pursue. This added to our revenue stream and permitted us to reinvest in promising research projects that had a prospect of spinoff. But it must be said that the major objective was not to make money, but to help build the innovative capacity of our city and province. Many would say that this is likely the most successful research park in Canada. We also provided a location for a number of research labs run by private sector groups of companies, especially in the forest products sector.

Like all university presidents of course we were always searching for what you call third stream funding. In the late 1980s and early 1990s we launched a major fund raising campaign. This fund raising campaign raised nearly $300-million. At that time, this was by far the largest fundraising campaign in Canadian history. It needs to be understood that the concept of private sector fundraising was in its earliest stages of development in Canada. At that time, Canada had not yet adopted the much more aggressive US approach. But since that time, there have been significant breakthroughs by Canadian universities and over the years the culture has developed. But it must be remembered that fund raising is a long, slow process requiring building real teams to support the president, the chief fund raiser. A couple of things were critical to this early success. We always kept our case statements in draft and sought advice from potential donors. We never asked donors to make up for government funding shortfalls and always presented ideas that allowed us to do new and better things. We never put the money into day to day operations, only into capital and endowment. In the earliest days the provincial government matched our donations and provided immense leverage as we approached donors. Today, more than 20 years later, the culture of third stream funding has matured in Canada. UBC just announced a campaign for $1,5-billion and is more than half way there. It is my experience that donors are typically much easier to deal with than governments, as they respect and understand the need for independence and autonomy.
UBC was also fortunate in its land asset close to the City of Vancouver. Some of this was used to develop a very successful market housing project selling 99 year leases to developers. These have done extremely well and the UBC endowment now stands at well over $1 billion dollars.
Canada for a period developed a successful Corporate Higher Education Forum that brought together CEOs of universities and CEOs of the business world. The common dialogue was helpful in bridging the divide. It later lost momentum when the university CEOs pushed the corporate CEOs to start lobbying government on their behalf, rather than focusing on the common interests. There are very successful similar organisations in Japan, in the US and in Australia that continue the important dialogue. There is little doubt that such a forum can strengthen relationships between the university and the corporate sectors. I still remember a meeting with a number of CEOs of pharmaceutical companies that were seeking to help the university build an important research facility at the university. After listening, I finally asked them why with their own substantial resources and research labs they wanted to work with the university. Simple they said. If we do it, no one will accept the results. If you do it, the results will be accepted. In other words they valued our total independence and autonomy and supported us as these were critical to the future of their industry.
Champion of innovation

You can imagine then how privileged I was to be invited to be the first president of the Canada Foundation for Innovation. This foundation has now distributed on a competitive basis over $5 billion and with matching funds over $12-billion to provide the latest research facilities to help retain and attract the best from around the world. In fact in the recent budget, the programme has been refunded and extended for another five years. Projects were proposed by universities and teaching hospitals. Funds were made available for newly recruited faculty to provide them with start-up labs and computing facilities. On a large scale, the Foundation funded Canada’s first synchrotron. It funded a light pipe cable under the ocean to develop the world’s first underwater observatory now in operation. It funded a number of very significant genomic and proteomics facilities. It was during this time that the program of Canada Research Chairs was set up. The federal government funded 2000 faculty positions to be held at universities across Canada. Half were for early career researchers and half for senior career researchers. The number of chairs was awarded in proportion to the success of each university in competing for funds from the three granting councils. This reinforced research excellence in research universities but was open to all. Universities like Toronto were awarded well over 300 such positions. But smaller universities could also profit from this competition. Applications from the president of each university in these two categories were dependent on the university itself establishing a formal research plan. Then they had to show how these applications reinforced their own plan. It was common to hear that the requirement to set institutional research priorities was one of the major benefits. These plans typically focused on the important developments of the time. Many new clusters of excellence were either created or were helped to move into the category of excellence. Centers of Genomics, Centers of Nanotechnology, Centers of Environmental Research, Centers of Social Science dependent on access to massive federal data bases and many others were created or enhanced. These two programs have recently had their ten year reviews and have been judged to be among the best of their kind in the world. Several countries have emulated the model including South Africa. Brain drain in Canada has been changed to brain churn, as they say. Canada’s capacity to compete has been strongly enhanced. In many cases this support reinforced the important private-public partnerships that are so important to innovation. The wise universities exploited this opportunity.

All of these steps were designed as the economists would say to build the supply side of innovation by building the research capacity to very high levels. But the economists would say that to build an innovation society, there must also be a demand side. I think we can all agree in general, that an innovative society needs both supply and demand. In recent times my country has been examining the question of why Canada’s private sector is not more innovative. A number of studies, including my own recent report, have examined this question carefully. Generally, it is assumed that it is the private sector that is not as innovative as it should be and that they should be pressured into adopting a more innovative culture.
But let us look at this more carefully. Many would agree that the United States has been one of the most innovative countries in the world. What becomes clear is that government itself is in fact the largest driver on the demand side. By focusing on smart procurement, they drive demand by contracting to meet public needs from the private sector and from the university sector. I saw this directly during my own years in the space programme. And the government procurement process drives much of the demand side of innovation by being the first purchaser. Whether the procurement is to meet defence needs or new energy needs or communication needs or health care needs, governments have a very important role to play in building the private sector capacity to meet demand, just as they do in driving the supply side of innovation. This demand is driven to a large extent by the public need as well as by the needs of the private sector. It is instructive to note that in the US many of the large national laboratories are funded by government, but operated by universities or the private sector. The National Energy labs are operated outside government and of course this leads to exploitation of the capacity this has created to drive further innovation. The European Union is moving strongly to capture the benefits of contracting out public research and development needs. It has been estimated that the US contracts out 20 times more of its research and development than the whole of the EU combined. The EU is planning to provide major financial support when two or more countries agree to contract out their needs. I have recently reported to my government on how to stimulate private sector innovation.
I understand that South Africa’s commitment to the Square Kilometer Array is doing just this. Let us hope that southern Africa wins the competition.
What is different about the world of innovation is that as the World Bank says Innovation is nonlinear because the demand side and the supply side are inextricably linked”. Or as a recent book title says, “Demand - Creating What People Want Before They Know They Want It”.
Proposed surge in Africa’s research capacity

NOW let us turn back to Africa. I think everyone here would agree that Africa must build its research and development capacity and that it must focus on building the capacity in both the supply side and the demand side. In fact there are many activities on this front taking root all across the continent, as jurisdiction after jurisdiction moves to educate its people at the advanced level and to carry out demand-driven research.

Africa certainly has demands that could be tackled in the form of grand challenges and that will in turn lead to breakthroughs in basic science. It is important to note that academies of science have been developed across the continent. Africa knows perfectly well what the needs are whether it be health care, food security, mother and child, environment or developing and using its natural resources for the betterment of its people. For example Angola has just opened six new universities and is running a series of national STI conferences in support of the new national policy. The challenges are many, but it seems to me that building the capacity to train, attract and retain the best researchers is absolutely necessary.
Today I would venture to say that Africa needs thousands of Dr Strangways (my father). But this time, they must be trained and educated in Africa to deal with the many demand issues that face so many African countries. Of course South Africa with its incredible national plan fully recognises this and is fast strengthening its capacity. Many developed countries have a GERD/GDP of 2.0 or more. The EU is planning to reach 3.0 and China has committed to reach 3.0. Most African countries are well below 1.0 so there is a long way to go. South Africa is close to 1.0 with a target of 1.5. It seems to me that South Africa should be setting its sights higher to reach at least 2.0.
It is for this reason that I have proposed the concept of a One Thousand Africa Research Chairs programme modelled on the Canadian programme. The concept involves creating a surge in African capacity in research. From this base of strength at home, African institutions can then carefully select their own most appropriate international partners. The concept of 1 000 nodes of excellence across the continent linked together in a mutually reinforcing pan-African research network is attractive. South Africa is clearly already leading the way.
I am pleased to inform you that we have developed a concept paper with the African Union Commission. A task force has been created that reports to Commissioner Ezin and this task force will develop a strategic implementation plan and a business plan exploiting the synergy between the Pan-African University project and the 1 000 African Research Chairs project. We are working with the European Union and Commissioner Ezin is aiming to be able to present this African project to the G8/G20 and others in 2013 for their consideration. I have just come from a meeting in Nairobi organized by the African Development Bank, the African Union and UNESCO on Science, Technology and Innovation across Africa.
And just to conclude, I have recently had the privilege of founding a new, independent, not-for-profit university designed to be different. This university is very small, highly successful and focuses entirely on undergraduate students from 36 countries. Canada like many other jurisdictions, including South Africa, is struggling with the question of differentiating universities to meet the parallel and sometimes conflicting needs of providing education to meet the large and increasing demand on the one hand and to build the graduate and research capacity on the other. In my province of British Columbia, a few years ago there was a need for an expansion of the system. This expansion allowed the province to use the expansion to drive the differentiation process.
New institutions and expanded mandates showed how the system could use the growth as the tool of differentiation. Ontario is facing the need to expand the number of student places. One proposal is to expand by creating three undergraduate universities as a tool of differentiation. The reason for creating the new not-for-profit private university was to explicitly show that differentiation by creating an undergraduate university could lead to excellence without a research mandate.. We have recently been recognised by the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) as being in the top ranks across all of North America. NSSE surveys 280 000 students at 750 universities. Although only five years old, Quest University Canada is at the top of the rankings. Recently our national newspaper recognised Quest as helping Canada to close the creativity gap.
5.2 Government support of innovation

Ms Naledi Pandor, Minister of Science and Technology

The Honourable Minister of Science and Technology, Ms Naledi Pandor

IHAVE just returned from a conference in Kenya for science and technology and finance ministers to look at ways to expand research, development and innovation activity on the African continent. I think if one has an opportunity to meet with colleagues on the African continent, it would be wise to talk about a diversity of initiatives, some blue-sky research and building of real partnerships to enhance productivity in research.
I think we need a re-investment in higher education if we want to achieve our ambitions. There are many partner organisations keen to invest in the revival of higher education and universities in Africa.
The OECD reviewed South Africa’s Innovation Policy in 2007. The OECD concluded that there was limited horizontal coherence and integration between agencies focused on innovation, and no Cabinet-level co-ordination. Business was insufficiently involved at the levels of large, medium and small-sized firms. The concept of a National System of Innovation had gained little currency beyond the sum of traditional research activities. Key actors like government departments and higher-education institutions were also not fully involved. We therefore need to re-order or re-orient our systems to make up a National System of Innovation. Technical, economic and social systems were poorly understood, particularly on the demand side. High-order skills in design, engineering, entrepreneurship and management were also highlighted as particularly lacking. Although entrepreneurship in particular is often cited in connection with innovation, the National System of Innovation was making little inroads in terms of poverty reduction. The OECD further concluded that South Africa would need to compete for high-end skills in the global talent pool, where other countries used a number of initiatives to attract suitable talent.
After the review, the Ten-Year Innovation Plan was developed. This plan did not absorb all of the recommendations and comments of the OECD, particularly in terms of the partnership between business and the public sector. We also did not give full attention to issues of governance and how we should create more effective institutions. We did take on some other measures they recommended, for example, an agreement to establish the Technology Innovation Agency, and the IPR Act and the IP Management Office (all of these issues were already recommended in a review conducted in 2002).
Our country struggles with the notional possibilities of a knowledge economy; many people do not understand what this refers to. If one talks of a system of innovation, there is even more bewilderment. A few weeks ago the Speaker of Parliament was persuaded to include the knowledge economy on the agenda of Parliament. Imagine how difficult it is to get funding for this area. We live in an age of knowledge in which society has become increasingly knowledge-intensive and dependent on social institutions to create knowledge and educate people.
South Africa experiences a serious unemployment problem, where most jobs are becoming increasingly professional and knowledge-based as the world is going through a period of immense technological innovation. If one were to look at how technological we have become, one statistic will suffice: 5-billion people world-wide have mobile phones. Yet there are still people who doubt whether the cell phone industry and the internet create more jobs. The problem is that the jobs created and the jobs destroyed are of different kinds; as the internet makes it easier to book travel online, travel agents are becoming obsolete, but programmers are finding a great many new opportunities opening up to them.
Universities seem to have seen their mission as producing talent, and not technology. Our universities are not keen on interacting with business, and do not have an adequately entrepreneurial outlook. Many academics complain about having more managerial functions than academic functions; this is a debate we need to have. Just look at MIT and the number of enterprises it has spawned – Boston now features as a huge business entity in the US, mainly because of MIT’s influence. How involved should universities be in business? Would collaboration with business compromise higher education? Should universities focus on pure research rather than applied research? Where will the resources come from?
With the latest round of research chairs in Canada, it was found that some academics felt that business (particularly in the IT sector) had too much influence on the academic agenda. We would like to see institutions encouraging young people to think about new technology, products and services. Young people should be encouraged to take risks. We should infuse a new spirit of entrepreneurship into our youth.
All of us would agree that innovation is impossible without research, meaning that our universities will decide how innovative South Africa becomes. Apple is known as one of the most research-active companies in the world. Yet, what they did was to take existing ideas and shake them up, designing better products. They’ve done it with computers, music, cell phones, and I-pads. They take something and re-invent it to make it more exciting and effective.
The Commissioners of the NDP was joined by the Ministerial Committee on the Science and Technology Landscape in expressing the view that business research should be encouraged through a tax incentive, but this initiative has been under-subscribed because of what business claims is the over-bureaucratisation of the scheme. We have simplified it, and are keen to see what benefits it holds. We have failed to capitalise on local knowledge generation, despite considerable expertise in areas like mining, viticulture, water, etc. Our surveys show that too little business-focused research and development is conducted in our universities. It would be well worth exploring whether there are any local businesses that commissioned research overseas, and if so, how we can change this. At last count, we concluded that about $18-billion was spent by local businesses outside of the country on research. We should be asking how we can be more responsive to private sector needs, getting some of that money to benefit our own institutions.
The outcomes of support programmes like the Technology for Human Resources for Industry Programme (THRIP) and others have been noted, but we need to do much more to improve government, business and university partnerships. Research and innovation is not mentioned in terms of industrial development, which we aim to address. We should encourage the mobility of scientists and scholars by interacting with the Department of Home Affairs. The issue of work permits of up to 7 years for foreign academics reflects new thinking that is essential if we want to attract innovative thinkers and academics to South Africa. We should build international linkages as components of healthy knowledge transfer and exchange. I am pleased with our achievement of making SA a beneficiary in the EU Framework Programme and have attracted significant funding for our scientists.
Social innovation business is an area which needs particular attention. It has grown enormously worldwide over the past 10 years, and is a means to advance development and business goals. If we were to look for examples in South Africa, the Royal Bafokeng is probably the best example where social innovation is used to good effect. The activities around social innovation and the implications for society and at a personal level should be clearly understood. Socio-economic work has to be conducted in a much more innovative way, extending to local and provincial levels.
We intend to pull universities and business together into the realm of social innovation. Collaborative agreements and policy harmonisation will be necessary. We will also focus on post-school education and training, working closely with the Department of Higher Education and Training. We intend to work with the Department of Trade and Industry, and the Departments of Economic Development, Public Works, Social Development and others concerned with social and rural development to address social development, health and basic education issues. We are looking at what role we should play in enhancing innovation in both the economic and social domains.
As we concretise these plans, I hope the university sector will play an important role in advising us. We think that if we involve all of government, we will not get anywhere because it will be too cumbersome a group to manage, which is why we aim to focus strategically on a few areas. We may well have to shift when we read the Ministerial Committee’s report, but I think innovation in the social and economic spheres is crucial.

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