University-Industry Liaison in the
Argentine ICT Sector
Alejandra M. Alvaredo1, M. Florencia Rossaro1
1 University-Industry Liaison Area, Manuel Sadosky Foundation
Abstract
The Argentine ICT sector has been one of the main targets of public policies designed to promote innovation and industrial development of the country over the last years. For example, software and IT services companies are eligible for significant reductions in income tax and employer contributions, provided they spend at least 3% of their turnover in R&D activities. Moreover, a dedicated trust fund offers financial support for different types of ICT innovation projects under terms and conditions that clearly encourage collaboration with universities. However, university-industry collaboration in ICT remained very low and limited to occasional advisory and consulting services for a long time.
The University-Industry Liaison Area at the Manuel Sadosky Foundation of Argentina was created two years ago to foster and facilitate collaboration between ICT companies and academic R&D groups. The activities carried out since then have been devised to inform, connect, and provide support to all potential parties in such collaboration. This paper is aimed at describing what has emerged to become the key group of the connecting activities carried out by the Area: the organization of match-making round-tables dedicated to specific technical subjects.
The four round-tables carried out so far have been dedicated to the following subjects: (1) image processing and virtual reality; (2) natural language processing; (3) biometrics; (4) optimization of traffic and transport problems. The Area’s role has been manifold, ranging from the identification of the subjects and potential participants both from industry and university, to the processing and management of the resulting follow-ups.
The success of this pioneering series of match-making round-tables can be characterized by the following results: (a) a total of 28 companies and 14 R&D groups have participated; (b) seven companies took part in at least two of the round-tables; (c) a majority of the participants expressed their satisfaction with the initiative, supported its continuity, and proposed concrete subjects for future activities; (d) a recent workshop on one of such subjects was attended by 50 participants; e) three collaboration project ideas have been defined and will be further elaborated and implemented during this year.
Several conclusions and lessons-learned can be extracted from this series. The main ones are: (1) the experience of getting to know each other in the positive atmosphere created by focused technical discussions sparked in many participants the wish to start working with the other party; (2) the mentoring and support provided by the Area was essential to transform these initial sparks of enthusiasm into concrete project ideas; (3) the feedback given by the participants provided valuable information on their main difficulties and concerns; (4) the feedback given by the participants made it possible to identify subject-specific barriers to collaboration and to devise targeted ways to circumvent them.
Keywords
1
Introduction
The first institutional attempts to promote knowledge transfer from university to industry in Argentina date from about 30 years ago, when the largest universities started trying to change their regulations so as to enable them to sign contracts with industry and to administer the resulting funds. The long road travelled since then towards encouraging knowledge transfer and technological innovation by means of public policies has been indelibly marked by three decrees and laws: the implementing regulations of the Law for the Promotion of Science and Technology, passed in 1996; the creation of the National Agency for the Promotion of Science and Technology (the Agency), passed in 1996; and the creation of the Ministry of Science, Technology, and Productive Innovation (the Ministry), passed in 2007, into whose structure the Agency was then incorporated.
The passage of these laws and decrees, together with the drastic increase in the budget allocated to science and technology since the year 2003, has had the following consequences: (a) universities are enabled to sign contracts with industry and to administer the resulting funds, either directly or through ad hoc established organizations; (b) universities are entitled to use part of such funds to pay additional fees to the participating staff; (c) several financing instruments are available to fund technological innovation projects from industry, especially if they are executed in collaboration with academic R&D groups; (d) the budget available for the promotion of technological innovation and knowledge transfer projects has increased significantly. The ICT sector clearly became one of the main priorities of such public policies in 2004, when a law was passed recognizing sofware production as a transformation industrial activity, and a special regime for the promotion of the software industry was approved. The latter also comprised the creation of a trust fund within the Agency that was dedicated to financing innovation projects submitted by ICT companies and entrepreneurs under terms and conditions that clearly encouraged university-industry interaction.
As a result of these ICT-specific regulations from 2004, (a) ICT companies are eligible for important reductions in income tax and employer contributions, provided they comply with at least two of three requisites -qualitiy certification, a minimum percentage of export and/or a minimum percentage of R&D expenditure relative to turnover-; (b) depending on the particular instrument, the collaboration of ICT companies with academic R&D groups is sometimes a must but always a plus in the evaluation of applications for public funding; (c) the budget allocated to the promotion of innovation and knowledge transfer projects is so high that it sometimes remains under-executed due to lack of adequate applications.
In spite of all these favourable regulations and measures, university-industry collaboration in ICT still remained very low and limited to occasional advisory and consulting services for the next years. Key stakeholders from academia and industry
invited by the government to express their opinion on the matter agreed on the benefits of fostering applied research and technological innovation through collaboration, yet they had some differences in the identification of the problem and thus in the actions proposed to solve it. However, they did coincide in the need to create and empower specialized ad hoc organizations to act at the interface between ICT industry and academia.
As one of the main outcomes of this rich debate and consensus process, the decision was made by the Ministry and the two most important business chambers of the Argentine ICT sector, the Chamber of Business for Software and IT Services (CESSI) and the Chamber of Business for IT and Communications (CICOMRA), to jointly establish a new non-profit organization. This new public-private organization would have the mission to connect the scientific–technological infrastructure with the productive sector in all fields related to ICT, and the vision to promote applied research, add more value to ICT products and services, and contribute to the country’s economy and society.
The Manuel Sadosky Foundation (the Foundation), named after Argentina’s and one of Latin America’s computer science pioneers, was created by a presidential decree in 2009 and started operation in 2011. Its board of directors is presided by the Minister of Science, Technology, and Productive Innovation, and its two vice-presidencies are held by the respective chairmen of CESSI and CICOMRA. To date, the Foundation has a permanent staff of 20 members and about 10 consultants working on different projects. According to its statutes, the Foundation´s main objectives are to promote the formation of science and technology networks with both academic and industrial partners; to advise national, provincial and municipal authorities in ICT-related issues; to foster the creation of new ICT companies; and to formulate collaborative R&D, innovation and human resources projects.
After some preliminary attempts to detect and formulate university-industry collabora-tion projects, the need for an area dedicated to identify specific obstacles, as well as to devise and implement solutions in a case-by-case, bottom-up fashion, became evident. The initial structure and objectives of the new University-Industry Liaison Area (the Area) were approved by the board at the end of 2012, and its operation started in May 2013. The Area’s main objectives and activities will be presented in the next section. The process followed to identify the main barriers and the activities undertaken so far by the Area in order to boost the initiation of collaboration projects, i.e. the series of match-making round-tables dedicated to specific technical subjects, will be described in Section 3. In Section 4, the main results achieved so far will be presented and discussed. The conclusions and lessons learned in this process, along with the next steps planned for the Area, will be summarized in the final section.
2
The University-Industry Liaison Area
As mentioned in the previous section, the Area was created with the aim to identify the major obstacles to collaboration in a bottom-up fashion, and to devise and implement specific solutions to circumvent them. To make this happen, the Area’s team of 4 members was built with a multi-disciplinary composition, combining ICT, technology and innovation management, as well as social science backgrounds.
In the initial planning phase, the underlying perception was that the Area’s activities should have to contribute in finding a solution to problems such as: lack of detailed information on the myriad of public financing instruments, difficulties in understanding and following the project formulation methodology required for public funding applications, lack of experience in the formalization of collaboration agreements that include intellectual property and confidentiality conditions, difficulties in finding the right collaboration partners, etc.
With these goals in mind, the Area’s initial activities were defined with the purpose to inform, connect, and provide support to all potential parties in university-industry collaboration. Among the Area´s main activities, it is worth mentioning the following:
› identification of all key collaboration players in academia and ICT industry by extracting information from diverse sources;
› creation of a website with summaries of the most relevant financing
instruments for ICT innovation and collaboration projects, the corresponding glossary, and a compilation of interesting related links;
› elaboration of specially-tailored reports on available public funding for different types of collaboration projects and applicants, as well as search for industrial and academic partners, upon request;
› facilitation of the use by ICT companies of an Agency funding instrument aimed at granting first employment in industry of persons holding a doctorate;
› organization of meetings and workshops on subjects related to university-industry collaboration for university-industry representatives;
› design and implementation of university-industry match-making events on specific technical subjects.
The preliminary conclusions that could be drawn from the Area’s first activities showed a similar tendency to that already observed by other stakeholders from the Ministry, the Agency, and relevant university liaison or technology transfer offices: the real bottle-neck in the process of promoting university-industry collaboration in ICT was the lack of mutually appealing project ideas for such collaboration.
It was thus decided to focus the Area’s efforts on the design, implementation, follow-up and analysis of actions aimed at enabling the match-making of mature knowledge offer from R&D groups with possible innovation demands from ICT companies.
3
Match-making round-tables on specific technical subjects
Based on the conclusions expressed by key actors in different national workshops dedicated to university-industry collaboration, the Area’s own experience, and the results from international surveys such as those reported by Davey & Galán Muros (2013) and Starov et al. (2014), it was assumed that the lack of relevant project ideas for university-industry collaboration in the Argentine ICT sector could be explained by one or more of the following reasons:
› insufficient technology push from academia due to:
- excess of bureaucracy within universities, especially in matters related to the marketing, negotiation and management of collaboration agreements;
- lack of researchers’ motivation to get involved in knowledge transfer activities;
- lack of critical mass and experience of academic R&D groups to timely deliver practice-oriented, high-quality results;
- lack of results from R&D activities that are mature enough for their transfer to industry.
› insufficient demand pull from industry due to:
- lack of awareness of university R&D activities and results;
- lack of confidence on researchers’ ability to produce practice-oriented results and to comply with deadlines;
- fear that confidential knowledge will be disclosed and that intellectual property conditions on results will be unfavourable to business interests;
- limited ability of business to absorb R&D results due to lack of highly-qualified staff;
- low priority of technological innovation as an enabler for business growth and competitiveness, as compared to other variables of the domestic economic conjuncture.
In view of the possible difficulties and concerns from either or both collaboration parties, the Area started looking for mature R&D results from academia, on the one hand, and for priority innovation demands from ICT companies, on the other, with the purpose to launch its match-making activities with an event dedicated to one of the subjects for which a good offer-demand match were found.
In pursuing this goal, it was realized that despite some attempts carried out by the Ministry, other governmental authorities, and some of the business chambers in the last years, the innovation demands from ICT companies had not yet been surveyed and processed in a complete, ready-to-use way. Furthermore, it soon became clear that the issue had not been included in the short-time agenda of any of the main actors involved, so that it would not be realistic to count on such demand information in the near future. For this reason, the use of a match-making methodology such as AIMDay (Larsson, 2013) was disregarded at the initial planning phase, because the trigger of this five-step
process for matching organizations needs with academic expertise is the presentation of questions the organizations would like to have solved by academia, and none of such questions were available at that stage.
But for all the uncertainties, it was still decided to launch a first series of university-industry match-making events, since there was no doubt about the benefits that such a pilot undertaking would have in terms of first-hand practical experience to be gained by the Area, and also as a contribution to strengthening the drivers of successful university-industry interactions: communication, understanding, trust, and individual relationships among the actors (Plewa, 2013).
With the aim to facilitate an effective and convergent communication, the match-making events were devised to deal with specific technical subjects, instead of macro policy debate topics, and to have a round-table format, with no more than three R&D groups presenting their expertise on the chosen subject for an audience from no more than 10 ICT companies. The expected outcome of such round-tables was the formulation of concrete ideas for collaboration projects on the corresponding subject, which could then be further elaborated into a complete project definition by the collaboration partners with the support and mentoring from the Area.
The organization of the match-making round-tables consisted of the following steps: (1) Selection of the specific technical subject: for the first, second, and fourth
round-tables, the choice was made from the perspective of the available academic offer, prioritizing the quality and predisposition towards collaboration of the academic R&D groups, as well as the innovation potential of their results if transferred to industry. The subject of the third round-table was selected on the basis of the suggestions made by participants to the two previous ones.The four round-tables carried out so far have been dedicated to the following subjects: (1) image processing and virtual reality; (2) natural language processing; (3) biometrics; (4) optimization of traffic and transport problems.
(2) Identification of academic R&D groups: the identification process was intimately related to the previous step, and it focused on the groups’ background, as well as on the maturity and applicability of their subject-related results. The groups that accepted the invitation to participate in the round-tables were advised to emphasize the innovation potential of their results during the presentations, and to use a communication style closer to science popularization than to that of an expert conference. Two to three R&D groups participated in each round-table.
(3) Identification of ICT companies: this process became more professional with the increasing experience gained by the Area. For the first round-table, the identification of business participants only consisted in the preparation of an invitation, including a summary of the topics to be addressed by the R&D groups and a mention of possible application fields in ICT industry, which
was then distributed among all CESSI members. With growing business information available to the Area through its own field work and network of contacts, web searches, processing of newsletters and press-clippings, etc., it became possible to identify and address companies in a targeted way, making reference to the potential interest of each of the round-table subjects for improving or expanding their particular product and service catalogue. During the preparation phase of the first round-table, companies had the possibility to pose special questions to the researchers prior to the event so as to help them prepare more practice-oriented presentations, but since there was no response to this initiative, it was later dropped. An average of 7-10
companies participated in each round-table.
(4) Format of the round-tables: the time assigned to the round-tables was half a day, including a first presentation session, a longer break for networking, and a second, open-ended session dedicated to discussion. Due to the pilot nature of the series, it was decided that the discussion session would rather have brain-storming characteristics, instead of resorting to elaborate facilitation techniques, and to eventually consider the need for methodological improve-ment upon evaluation of the first experiences. Only one hard rule was stated at the beginning of each discussion session: comments, opinions and ques-tions had to be related to the subject of the round-table; those on all other re-lated topics, such as public funding, collaboration agreements, intellectual property, etc., could be expressed in the corresponding section of the feed-back forms prepared for the event. This free format for the discussion of specific technical matters turned out to be very positive, which was evidenced by the excellent degree of participation, constructive exchange of ideas, and good atmosphere perceived by all attendees.
(5) Follow-up: immediately after each round-table, the comments made in the feedback forms were processed and the meeting minutes, including the main outcomes from the feedback forms and the complete list of participants, were prepared and sent out. Based on all the information generated and discussed during the meeting or expressed in the feedback forms, the Area elaborated a group of tasks to be tracked periodically (e.g. elaboration or refinement of collaboration project ideas), as well as a list of recommendations to be taken into consideration in the Area’s further course of action (e.g. other technical or non-technical subjects to be addressed in future university-industry events).
4
Results and dicussion
It can be stated without hesitation that the first, general and extremely positive result of this pioneering series of match-making round-tables is that it could be made to happen, i.e. that the ideal number of representatives from both parties in collaboration felt
moti-vated to participate in each of the four events of the series, and that respect, curiosity and increasing enthusiasm for the possibility of getting to work together were a com-mon denominator to all of the events. This statement is based on the observation of the different sessions, on the opinions expressed by the participants in the feedback forms, and on the fact that 25% of all participanting companies attended at least two of the events of the series. A few facts:
› a total of 28 companies and 14 R&D groups participated in the four round-tables;
› most of the companies were represented by more than one participant;
› seven companies took part in at least two of the round-tables;
› a majority of the participants expressed their satisfaction with the initiative, supported its continuity, and proposed concrete subjects for future activities. Another relevant result relates to the wealth of explicit and implicit information that could be obtained from the discussion sessions and the feedback forms. This infor-mation essentially showed that “Devil is in the detail”, which in this case means that many of the obstacles and challenges regarding university-industry collaboration appear to be strongly subject- or implementation-dependent, and that they can only be identi-fied by means of subject-specific, hands-on collaboration activities. A few examples:
› priority subjects for match-making: the subject of the third round-table, biometrics, was selected because of the suggestions made by the participants to the first and second ones when asked about subjects for future match-making activities;
› degree of detail for the definition of match-making subjects: the subject “natural language processing” is too broad, and when it comes to forstering the realization of its business innovation potential, more detailed definitions, such as text processing for automatic moderation, text processing for speech analytics, text-to-speech systems, automatic speaker recognititon, automatic speech recognition, etc., are required;
› lack of regulations: one of the outcomes of the round-table dedicated to biometrics was that, in order for Argentine companies to undertake the ambitious project to create a national software development kit for biometric applications, stronger regulations are required;
› insufficient capacity of the R&D system: image processing is a very large area of expertise with a vast field of industrial applications, but there are still too few R&D groups specialized in the subject;
› need for additional actors: the development of new traffic and transport software solutions will be stimulated if municipalities are also invited to take part in the dedicated match-making events;
› need for more information on related non-technical subjects: participants to all of the events expressed in one way or the other that they lacked
information , experience or both on the elaboration and negotiation of university-industry collaboration agreements;
› lack of priority to undertake collaboration projects from the part of industry: despite several follow-up meetings organized by the Area with potential candidates to start collaboration projects on natural language processing and biometrics, none of the initiated bilateral contacts between university and industry representatives prospered without further intervention of the Area. The final group of results worth mentioning at this stage refers to the quality of the information extracted from the match-making events with regard to its efficacy for the design and implementation of new collaboration-fostering acttivities. Three examples:
› detection of high-priority subjects for collaboration: the discussions held during the round-table dedicated to biometrics showed the great potential the subject has for ICT companies as well as the availablity of mature results on the part of universities;
› need for practice-oriented information on collaboration agreements and intellectual property issues for ICT projects: a recently organized workshop on this non-technical subject was attended by almost 50 participants, a majority of them from industry but also many from university technology transfer offices willing to understand more deeply the particularities of the intellectual property protection of software;
› need for further incentives to undertake collaboration projects: in order to compensate for the lack of priority that the initiation of such projects appears to have on the part of business, a new line of activity was envisioned: seed funding and facilitation of initial phases of collaboration projects, in which the Foundation will commission R&D groups to provide technical assistance to companies interested in adopting the new results in their business activi-ties. The financing of such preliminary projects, two of them on natural lan-guage processing and the other one on biometrics, has been approved by the board and will be further elaborated and executed during this year.
5
Conclusions and next steps
Although excellent public policies and funding instruments aimed at promoting technological innovation in the Argentine ICT sector have been under implementation for over a decade, university-industry interaction in ICT remained very low for a long time. In this context, the Ministry of Science, Technology, and Productive Innovation, together with the two most important business chambers of the ICT sector, CESSI and CICOMRA, decided to establish a joint non-profit organization, which would have the
mission to connect the scientific–technological infrastructure with the productive sector in all fields related to ICT, and the vision to promote applied research, add more value to ICT products and services, and contribute to the country’s economy and society. This jointly established non-profit organization, named the Manuel Sadosky Foundation, was created in 2009 and started operation in 2011.
The University-Industry Liaison Area at the Manuel Sadosky Foundation was created two years ago with the objective to identify specific obstacles to university-industry collaboration, as well as to devise and implement solutions in a case-by-case, bottom-up fashion. Its initial activities were broadly set to inform, connect, and provide support to all potential parties in such collaboration.
Only a few months after the new Area began operating, it became clear that the bottle-neck in the promotion of university-industry collaboration was the lack of appealing project ideas for both parties in collaboration. It was thus decided to concentrate the Area’s efforts on the design, implementation, follow-up and analysis of actions aimed at enabling the match-making of mature knowledge offer from universities with possible innovation demands from ICT companies.
A series of match-making round-tables dedicated to specific technical subjects was de-vised and implemented between August 2013 and October 2014. The four-round tables carried out so far have been dedicated to the following subjects: (1) image processing and virtual reality; (2) natural language processing; (3) biometrics; and (4) optimization of traffic and transport problems.
One of the conclusions that could be drawn from the bottom-up experience of the round-tables is the confirmation of what had already been observed by other stakehold-ers in the recent past: the main reason for the weak univstakehold-ersity-industry collaboration in ICT is the low priority assigned by industry to technological innovation as an enabler for business growth and competitiveness, as compared to other variables of the domestic economic conjuncture. The other possible weaknesses and difficulties of the system, both from the “technology push” as well as from the “demand pull” point of view, that were summarized in Section 3 do also play an inhibiting role, but their relative impact is clearly lower.
The causes for the lack of priority that technological innovation has had in Argentina as a key factor to maintain or extend competitive advantage are manifold and can be traced for several decades. In a country which has been subjected to deep economic crises, high inflation rates, and pendular public policies for many years, with strongly divergent opinions among economic stakeholders on how to better increase competitiveness and profit, the prevalent business spirit is characterized by short-term planning based on intuition and by the perception that global business rules –such as those emphasizing the importance of innovation- are not applicable to the “special case” of the Argentine economy.
Systemic changes in the economic business environment will take a long time to occur, because they will not only depend on the long- and mid-term effect of sustained public
policies, but also on the global international context, and on the emergence of new actors with different expectations and motivators. However, there is no doubt that targeted bottom-up actions, as the ones reported in this paper, can nurture and accelerate such change processes significantly.
Another general conclusion of the pioneering series of round-tables is that it was a success just because it could be made to happen. The fact that the ideal number of rep-resentatives from both parties felt motivated to participate in each of the four events of the series, and that the created atmosphere was perceived as positive and constructive by most of the participants, indicates that the series contributed in strengthening the drivers of successful university-industry interactions: communication, understanding, trust, and individual relationships among the actors.
The results of the series also show that many of the barriers to collaboration are strongly subject- and implementation-specific, and that it is only possible to identify them in an effective way by means of subject-specific, hands-on collaboration activities. These specific barriers range from lack of regulations for some subjects to insufficient size of the R&D system for others, and encompass issues as diverse as the degree of detail of the classification employed for defining the subjects of effective match-making events, or the need for additional participation of particular governmental authorities.
The final group of conclusions worth mentioning at this stage refers to the quality of the information extracted from the match-making events carried out so far with regard to its efficacy for the definition of new collaboration-fostering acttivities. Motivated by the successful experiences made when responding to the participants’ feedback –the round-table on biometrics and the workshop on collaboration agreements for ICT projects-, the Area’s action planning is strongly focused on the implementation of follow-ups that resulted from its own previous work.
First of all, the Area will keep on defining the pilot phases of projects on natural language processing and biometrics for which the Foundation will provide financial support. The Area’s role involves finding mature and motivated partners from both sides of collaboration, assisting in the final scoping of the collaboration project, and providing support in the coordination of the joint tasks.
Furthermore, the Area will organize new match-making round-tables which are in continuation of the other two reported in this paper: on optimization of traffic and transport problems, with participation of municipal authorities and possible extensions towards the broader subjects of smart cities and/or Internet of Things, and on the processing of satellite and aerial images.
Finally, the Area will continue its efforts to stay informed about all key actors, news, and events, as well as to expand its network of contacts. And of course it will endeavour to keep its eyes open for any opportunity for university-industry collaboration that might appear in the dynamic ICT sector of Argentina.
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