Commercialisation in the Humanities

On to the next SPIN panel now - and I've had a coffee now so that feels much better. The panellists here are Toss Gascoigne from the Council for Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences (CHASS), Steve Copplin from the Creative Industries Enterprise Centre, and Stuart Cunningham, the acting Dean of Creative Industries at QUT. The topic of the panel here is the question of commercialisation in the humanities and creative arts.

Stuart begins by pointing out the increasing focus on commercialisation in the Australian higher education sector - it is now being positioned as the third strut of university business in Australia (in addition to teaching and research). There is also a perception that universities have not done very well in this field so far, and the Cooperative Research Centre programme has come in for some criticism recently as well. Instead of being in a reactive position, Stuart suggests, universities need to get ahead of the wave and become proactive; in the humanities and social services (HASS) sector they need to identify what are appropriate commercialisation strategies - especially at a time when science-based modes of commercialisation still dominate. (Stuart notes that even in Richard Florida's work science-based models such as patenting still predominate, for example - because they are easy to measure and often lead to commercialisation. However, in a creative industries enviroment they are a poor measure of performance.)

Creative outputs are a crucial contributor to the national economy in the U.S. in Australia, however. Creative disciplines are crucial inputs into highly commercial businesses (publishing, broadcasting, entertainment, services, design, etc.). But public policy in commercialisation and education does not draw this connection, largely because the highly commercial industries remain poorly connected to universities in terms of research and development.

So, what would be the most appropriate forms of commercialisation in the HASS sector? Stuart identifies three or four models:

• research-driven commercialisation through commercial research commission - a services model of commercialisation at the behest of industry or government, and perhaps the most common at this point
• partnerships - instead of a pure client/server relationship where partnered activities occur across a range of forms of engagement; this is the base of the CRC model, but might also be possible outside the CRC model
• research-driven commercialisation - where actual research in creative disciplines produces commercialisation opportunities
• commercialisation through patents - there have been a small number of cases of patents granted in the HASS area, but this is probably less likely

Toss Gascoigne now speaks about CHASS's activities in this field. CHASS has begun to make some representations to the Australian federal government on this issue, and is beginning to be represented on relevant government panels; there remains a common perception that the HASS sector could not be commercial which still needs to be overcome. In conversation with Education Minister Brendan Nelson the issue of commercialisation in the HASS sector was one of the key topics, in fact, and Nelson ha asked CHASS to identify commercialisation opportunities in the field.

CHASS has begun to run some focus groups and online questionnaires on this issue now, to identify current and potential practices in the field, and has drafted a report following on from this activity which will be launched within a month. One of the key questions which emerged, however, was how to define the term 'commercial' - what constitutes commerciality in the HASS field? The working definition for work with commercial value now is 1. having market value, 2. being useful, 3. involving a partner from industry. 'Commercial' also remains something of a dirty word in the HASS sector, with some respondents preferring terms such as 'relevant' or 'socially relevant'.

What is also interesting is that many industry partners in the HASS sectors were federal, state and local government organisations, with privately moneyed partners making up only a relatively small percentage (just over 10%, if I heard that right). Further, most services offered to such industry partners were educational or consultative in nature. The motives for this work were largely that such work added useful experiences (and additional income) for Ph.D. students working on such projects; in contract research there were also directly commercial motivators. Money gained from such projects varied widely, incidentally. An often-mentioned term was collaboration as well - especially in creative projects. This is despite the fact that many current funding models do in fact discourage collaborative, cross-disciplinary approaches.

So why do people aim to commercialise? Many universities (especially regional ones) felt that they needed to demonstrate their relevance to their field and their community; some also felt that such real-world experience would improve their teaching performance and the experiences of higher degree students. (So, not all of commercialisation is about money...) Money gained from commercialisation was used for equipment and other improvements to the working environment; commercialisation could also aid academics' careers in their efforts towards promotion, but this was handled very differently in different institutions (some see commercialisation efforts as a distraction from core academic work!). There remains limited recognition of research outputs at universities for works which are not included in the Australian government recognition scheme for academic work, and this applies both for creative practice as research and for commercial work without direct academic results.

This also affects workload allocations for academics working on commercial projects. There is also a feeling that there remains a strong disconnect between academic (i.e. publicly funded) and commercial (privately funded) ways of working - and of course intellectual property remains a minefield... And generally university structures remain less that well suited to work with commercial partners - they are unresponsive to commercial partners' needs.

The CHASS recommendations, then, are that there needs to be a promotion of public recognition of HASS research. It would also be useful if common practices could be implemented across universities (as simple as standard proforma documents, for example), as well as the development of a generalised commercialisation skill set in academics. Governments also need to better evaluate and recognise HASS commercialisation activities, which may require a change in their metrics. Further, there need to be stronger incentives to undertaking commercial research, and industry needs to become more aware of what opportunities there are and what costs exist for the university sector.

Steve Copplin now follows on, discussing the potential reasons for the industry to become involved in collaborative projects with university researchers - is it purely philanthropy? Steve's role in the Creative Industries Precinct is to drive commercialisation of research through providing space and support for eleven startup companies located on the Precinct, and some of the companies are now also collaborating amongst themselves in a group called Egg Inc. Beyond the eleven, there has been significant demand from other companies to locate themselves here, and in a second stage of the CIP some 4000 m² of additional floor space (adding to the existing 800 m²) will be made available. These companies are particularly interested in gaining access to students and academics (which also opens up questions of exploitation, of course...). Levels of work for students generally are work experience, work for hire, and employment opportunities afte completing their degrees.

A recent development is also QUT's growing involvement with the Briz31 community television station in Brisbane; while students in journalism here have produced news for the station for a long time already, QUT has now injected some $250,000 into the station and will thereby participate in the station to a much larger extent (including also business plans and advertising). Further, QUT is also involved with the Brisbane-based computer games industry, also as part of a State Government drive to enhance and grow the industry. Recently Steve was also approached by Brisbane writer Nick Earls to help raise the money for a movie based on his novel 48 Shades of Brown; the production will go ahead in June and will likely involve QUT facilities and students (who might shoot the making of, for example).