Knowledge exchange bodies pinpoint barriers to innovation in Scotland

The reluctance of industry to engage with "template agreements" is one of the problems facing collaborative research in Scotland, two knowledge exchange organisations have said.

The suggestion was made jointly by the Association for University Industry Links and PraxisUnico in response to an informal consultation by Scotland’s Life Sciences Advisory Board and the Innovation Scotland Forum, which both advise the Scottish government on the life sciences and innovation respectively. 

Templates and processes exist to simplify the sharing of intelletual property between universities and business. Auril and PraxisUnico consulted on one such set of template agreements, published by the Intellectual Property Office as the Lambert toolkit. However in their consultation response, they observe that “industry is hugely reluctant to use the toolkit”. Instead, there is “a fallacy that ‘hot shots from industry’ will automatically be more capable of doing more and/or better commercialisation deals".