Fostering cooperation with the private sector

Historically, there has been limited cooperation between public research institutions and the private sector in Morocco. As per our interviews, the main challenges to stronger cooperation between these actors in Morocco are three-fold: (1) in the education and research sector, there is a preference towards teaching and basic research; (2) in the private sector, there is a “cul-ture of trade rather than innovation”, as well as a lack of R&D and entre-preneurial spirit; (3) both at the research and enterprise levels, “there is a strong lack of cooperation and teamwork between different actors.”²⁸ Steps to overcome these challenges are starting to become more visible. There-fore, strategic efforts are needed to bring these actors closer together. Closer cooperation could materialise by: strengthening the activities of stakehold-ers such as IRESEN; developing structures of industry collaboration in uni-versities (e.g. incubation centres, industrial liaison programmes); fostering communication platforms geared towards achieving win-win outcomes for these actors; including private sector experience as a requirement in faculty assessments (e.g. third-party funding, research cooperation, entrepreneuri-al experience); and developing pilot projects that demonstrate the benefits from joint funding and cooperation.

With respect to cooperation between universities and the private sector, some interviews with professionals in the private sector pointed to a certain mismatch between the rather theoretical education given in universities and

28 Interview with a research institute in Rabat on 25 March 2013.

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the practical, experience-based requirements at the firm-level. Others ar-gued that Moroccan enterprises have limited capabilities to engage in R&D and innovation. Also, a temporal mismatch has been mentioned, as it takes time for universities to start preparing new courses on RE and to develop expertise in applied research, which is at odds with the immediate needs of the private sector. This temporal mismatch also materialises in differences with respect to planning horizons. Universities would need to plan two years in advance what programmes they need, as the approval process from the Ministry of Education takes a long time.²⁹ This means that companies would only get the trained students in approximately five years.³⁰ This period is too long for enterprises, as many things can change in the meanwhile in the realm of markets and technologies.

Currently, most cooperation between universities and the private sector materialises in identifying thesis topics for university students. At ENIM, for example, in the field of energy, large companies such as Cegelec (a large company that designs, installs and maintains systems for industry, infrastructure and the services sector, especially in high-demand sectors such as energy and electricity, oil and gas, building, civil engineering and maintenance), OCP, Managem (a large mining company), and more recently national-level agencies, such as MASEN and ONEE, work closely with faculty and students to identify suitable topics for theses.³¹ Such companies have their own research departments, which facilitate cooperation with universities and stimulate interest in working with university students.

ADETEL (a large company that designs, installs and manufactures electronics and software systems), for example, has developed a research collaboration on inverters with the private university Mundiapolis.³² Student internships are also an effective channel for collaboration between universities and the private sector. However, interviews highlight that such internships are less frequent in the RE sector, which is also a reflection of the fact that the industrial sector and the market for RE is still emerging in Morocco.

In addition to technical education, interviews with professionals in the private sector revealed a lack of entrepreneurial knowledge and expertise.

Such knowledge could be acquired through project-level cooperation with

29 Interview with an enterprise in Casablanca on 12 March 2013.

30 Interview with a large company in Casablanca on 12 March 2013.

31 Interview with EMIN in Rabat on 22 February 2013.

32 Interview with ADETEL in Mohammedia on 5 March 2013.

German Development Institute / Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE) 77 enterprises, which may benefit from innovative business ideas. Although strengthening management and entrepreneurship programmes at universi-ties could help close that knowledge gap, there are only a few such pro-grammes at universities in Morocco, and their effectiveness has not been proven yet. A good-practice example in the MENA region, which could be relevant to Morocco, is the Entrepreneurship and Innovation Program at the American University Cairo (AUC) (see Box 10), where a platform has been created for students to cooperate with technology-based firms and venture capitalists on developing new business ideas. In particular, the Venture Lab at AUC is a great example of how students can be exposed to entrepreneur-ial activities as part of their education on campus. This example is relevant, as it underscores the fact that courses on entrepreneurship are not enough;

rather, practical interaction on real projects with relevant stakeholders (e.g.

enterprises, financiers) is critical.

Box 10: American University Cairo in Egypt – Entrepreneurship and Innovation Program

The Entrepreneurship and Innovation Program was established at the Business School of AUC in order to “create an environment that fosters the development of principled and innovative business leaders and entre-preneurs who can make a difference.” The programme aims at giving stu-dents the opportunity to receive a high-quality education with a special focus on new technologies such as solar technologies. The social science skills taught in this programme will motivate the students to feel more in-clined to innovate and participate in the creation process of a new market.

In order to reach this aim of bringing together theoretical and practical skills, the students work in close cooperation with venture capitalists, angel investors and mentors. Furthermore, several conferences, work-shops and seminars are organised in collaboration with members of the private sector and applied research.

In particular, the Flat6Labs is a programme that was created in coopera-tion with the Sawari Ventures to provide technology visionaries with the necessary resources to bring their vision into reality. Four times a year, Flat6Labs hosts teams for a three-month period and gives them access to the facilities, expertise, mentorship and support needed to make the most of their talent. The teams participating in this programme receive

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seed funding in the range of US$ 10,000 as they attempt to define their product, develop their core application, construct a well-balanced busi-ness plan and commercialise their enterprise. In exchange for a 10–15 per cent stake of equity in their companies, these entrepreneurs are given the chance to face the real-world challenges and obstacles of creating and maintaining a start-up in the local and global environment. To support the team, AUC has developed an Entrepreneurship Development Program, which consists of 10 sessions, taught by faculty and mentors with entre-preneurial expertise. These sessions must convey concepts of investment, marketing, finance, product design, legal procedures, networking and other aspects relevant to enhancing necessary skills for entrepreneurship.

At the end of the three-month period, Flat6Labs holds a Demo Day event, where the start-ups are given the opportunity to showcase their products to potential investors. If any one of them is successful in the bid to es-tablish a fully furnished enterprise with promising market potential, it graduates from Flat6Labs and receives additional funding, in the range of $US 40,000.

Another important initiative that emerged from the Entrepreneurship and Innovation Program is the creation of an incubator for start-ups across Egypt: the Venture Lab (V-Lab) (Dalakian 2013). AUC’s incubator will be initially fuelled by the start-ups that are competing in the Venture Lab Challenge aimed at selecting five to six start-ups for incubation. The V-Lab is sector-neutral and does not take equity in any of the start-ups;

most of the applications received are technology-enabled start-ups, fo-cused on building new mobile apps, renewable energy solutions and re-tail platforms. By drawing on good practices of business incubators and customising various options to the specific needs of Egypt, V-Lab is a unique initiative in the MENA region.

Source: AUC (2013)

At universities, research cooperation with the private sector is generally co-ordinated through administrative bodies such as the Industrial Liaison (or Affiliate) Offices (see Box 11). One of the main contributions that these offices make in fostering cooperation with the private sector is increasing transparency of research and education programmes within the universities, actively seeking potential areas of collaboration and managing the

often-German Development Institute / Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE) 79 times complex system of commercialising technology out of university re-search labs. Such offices are quite common at universities in North America, but they are increasingly common in Europe as well. Developing countries are also showing more interest in these institutions. Companies pay a fee to become members of these programmes and to benefit from the services of-fered by universities with respect to access to new ideas and projects, events, and to engage more actively in student recruitment. For these institutions to be effective enterprises, they must see many benefits from engaging in such cooperation, and universities must have valuable assets to offer.

Box 11: Industrial Liaison Offices

Industrial Liaison Offices are independent departments in universities that are responsible for the university’s relationship with industry, gov-ernments and other external institutions. Schaettgen and Werp (1996) point out that theIndustrial Liaison Offices could also manage demands to seek out experts on particular subjects inside of the university.

An assessment of Industrial Liaison Offices in Ireland and Sweden has shown that increased partnerships between universities and industry resulted in greater funding for research, and thus greater funding for high-technology equipment (Jones-Evans et al. 1999). Furthermore, teaching and training improved substantially, as it was more focused on solving everyday industrial problems. Recommendations from the as-sessment point out that there should be more national guidelines on how industry should link with universities.

Kuhlman and Van der Meijden (1989) underline that Industrial Liaison Offices can differ from country to country and from university to univer-sity; some Industrial Liaison Offices would focus more on establishing entrepreneurial links with industry or even providing good relationships with industry in order to find jobs for the students, whereas others would focus on technology transfer.

Another channel for stimulating the flow of knowledge between universities and the private sector is by encouraging faculty to spend some time in the private sector, and by valuing private sector experience in the recruitment process. At the same time, interesting opportunities should be created for

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entrepreneurs to engage in teaching or co-teaching courses at universities.

However, as our interviews revealed, as long as universities have a limited endowment for research equipment, a focus on basic rather than applied research, and a strict emphasis on technical education rather than systemic integration of technology with policy and systems analysis, the private sec-tor sees limited benefits from engaging with the higher education secsec-tor.

As briefly discussed in the previous section, the cooperation between re-search institutes and the private sector in the field of RE is being stirred by the creation of IRESEN and MAScIR, with a specific mandate in this direction. IRESEN, in particular, is targeting smaller-scale projects in which local companies have greater capabilities to engage. For example, togeth-er with OCP and foreign enttogeth-erprises, IRESEN is exploring how to apply CSP technologies for small-scale pilot projects (approximately 1 MW) in the context of green cities and co-generation. Another project on which IRESEN has cooperated with OCP is the creation of a research, testing and training platform for RE in Ben Guerir over eight hectares, where univer-sities and enterprises conduct experiments with different technologies. To support research on the Ben Guerir platform, IRESEN has also obtained funding from the Korean Agency for International Cooperation to set up a thin-film PV plant with a focus on the whole value chain and on applications in different industrial sectors, such as agriculture.³³

To stimulate research cooperation between universities and the private sec-tor, IRESEN has issued three main calls for proposals from university re-searchers, one of the main conditions being that the project is jointly devel-oped with a domestic company. In order to be eligible for such collaborative projects, companies have to be at least two years old and have a minimum of eight employees. While implementing the project, IRESEN performs a constant process of monitoring and evaluation. Currently eight projects are being supported by this programme.

MAScIR has been very successful in initiating research collaborations with the private sector (e.g. OCP, Managem) and internationally (e.g. Aircelle of Safran Group in the aeronautics sector). In the solar energy sector, MAScIR has been working with ADETEL (on the development of trackers, project

33 Interview with IRESEN in Rabat on 25 March 2013.

German Development Institute / Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE) 81 funded by R&D Maroc³⁴) and Cleanergy to apply for one of IRESEN’s calls for proposals. In 2012 MAScIR was one of the winners of these grants for an SWH project.

These two research institutes, which have built significant R&D capabili-ties in a relatively short period of time, should be further supported with research funds, and their activities should be integrated in – and aligned with – the industrial development strategy.

The cluster concept is one channel through which cooperation between pub-lic research institutes and the private sector can be geared towards fostering higher levels of industrial competitiveness. Successful industrial clusters have demonstrated that whenever public research institutions and important industrial players have cooperated closely, more innovation capacities have been created, contributing to higher levels of competitiveness. Porter (1990) and others have already shown that for new industrial sectors, leading firms, which are large companies experienced in a certain industry area, often-times prefer to locate close to universities in order to access knowledge spillovers, thus permitting the exchange of ideas of different actors and en-hancing technological capabilities. Clusters can help in bringing together actors working on innovation, sharing knowledge and improving R&D.

Cluster initiatives are not new in Morocco. MCINET aims to establish 15 clusters by 2015, for which it has created the Fonds d’Appui au Cluster. As a result, currently six clusters are in place: CE3M (a cluster specialising in electronics, mechatronics and mechanics created in 2010, comprising 32 SMEs, five universities and engineering schools, three large enterprises, two professional associations and three thematic commissions); microelec-tronics; IT (“numerique”); two clusters for fishing products; and a cluster for luxury products in Marrakesh.³⁵

A cluster initiative for the solar energy sector has recently been initiated by MASEN. Although current efforts are much more focused on the private sector, placing higher importance on bringing public research institutions

34 R&D Maroc, Association Marocaine pour la Recherche-Developpement, is tasked to in-itiate and promote innovation and R&D in Moroccan enterprises. Financing for R&D Maroc comes from several large companies in Morocco aiming to complement research funds from the Ministry of Education and Research (through the programme INNO-VACT) and initiate research programmes that are of interest to large companies (e.g.

OCP, Nareva Holding, Air Liquide, DLM).

35 Interview with MCINET in Rabat on 25 March 2013.

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to the centre of this cluster initiative could contribute to a more integrated approach for the long-term development of the sector. MASEN’s solar cluster initiative is supported by GIZ and has so far been focused on identifying a group of firms to take the lead in the conceptualisation of the cluster.

At first, the emphasis was not necessarily on clustering around a specific geographical area, but rather on developing a strong network between different stakeholders based on specific capabilities. As our interview with the Association de Cluster Éléctronique, Mécatronique et Mécanique du Maroc (CE3M) highlighted, the approach that MASEN is taking with the development of the solar energy cluster is more “bottom-up”, differing from government-level initiatives that have been used for other sectors, which poses some challenges for this process.³⁶ However, the initiative is too novel and, hence, too non-transparent for us to draw any conclusions about its effectiveness at this time.

Existing cluster initiatives in Morocco, such as CE3M, work in that direc-tion. In the past couple of years, CE3M has developed interests and activ-ities in the renewable energy sector as well. Its objective is to establish a functioning partnership between universities and the private sector by help-ing it to identify fundhelp-ing sources for projects. Its mission is to make dif-ferent actors in specific sectors cooperate on innovative projects in the RE, medical and electronics sectors. The solar sector in Morocco is currently too underdeveloped, with a very limited number of companies manufac-turing specific parts and components for solar energy. Therefore, CE3M’s approach has been to focus on companies in complementary sectors, such as electronics and mechatronics, and encourage them to enter the solar en-ergy value chain, building on their cluster infrastructure. While these two cluster initiatives – CE3M’s and MASEN’s solar clusters – work currently in parallel, MASEN’s solar cluster concept might profit from the extensive cluster experience of CE3M.

36 Interview with CE3M in Rabat on 25 February 2013.

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