Demystifying industry engagement

Researchers able to engage effectively with industry can reap significant rewards. Why then are the stories of success seen more as exemplars rather than the norm? SPP has worked with many researchers to help establish lasting partnerships and collaborations. The SPP team will workshop a practical, step by step approach to help researchers initiate and cement industry partnerships. The interactive session will enable groups to discuss and share some of the challenges and success stories, define an approach that can be quickly deployed, and provide practical examples on how to make it work over the longer term.

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Ben Apted

Ben works with private sector and Government clients to develop growth strategies, secure investment funding, and improve processes. Ben was a general manager in a national retail business prior to joining SPP and takes a practical, pragmatic approach to projects with a strong focus on customer needs.

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Creating and Maintaining an IP-Savvy Culture in your Organisation

Intellectual property rights are important outputs for most CRCs and other research organisations. For many, the creation of a strong portfolio of IP rights will be a pre-condition to commercial, and community, utilisation of the results of their programs. But it's not uncommon for IP management to be seen as a technical add-on to the workings of a research organisation, rather than core business. This presentation, by an experienced in-house IP manager and commercialisation lawyer who has also worked in scientific research, will give practical guidance on how to create and maintain an IP-savvy culture in the context of a CRC or other public sector research structure. Topics will include best practices in capturing, protecting, valuing and managing IP, and the alignment of overall organisational strategy with R&D planning, and with IP management. There will be specific tips on engaging researchers in IP management and commercialisation activities, and on communicating to the Board and the Participants/stakeholders that proper processes are being followed and that IP assets are being valued appropriately. The presentation will also be designed to be of value to 'public good' research organisations, which may be able to benefit Australia's economy and society without local use of the IP system, but which may nevertheless be missing opportunities to benefit Australia through protection and licensing of IP overseas.

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Rob McInnes

Rob advises research organisations, spin-off companies, management and investors in the commercialisation of novel technologies. He is a specialist in the structuring and negotiation of patent licences, collaborative research agreements, and other contracts for the development and commercialisation of CRC and other public sector innovations. In addition to his experience as a lawyer in private practice, he has served as the in-house manager of IP and technology transfer in a multinational corporation. In this role he gained valuable experience in the development of IP portfolios that are comprehensive, cost-effective, and integrated with business strategy. Rob is ranked by Intellectual Asset Management magazine as one of the top 250 technology licensing lawyers worldwide, and is currently IAM's most highly recommended lawyer in Australia. He is one of only five Australian lawyers to have met the requirements for the US-based Certified Licensing Professional qualification. In recognition of his international profile among public sector licensing professionals, he served a two terms as Chair of the Licensing Executives Society's International Industry/University/Government Transactions Committee. In recent years the majority of Rob's deals have involved cross-border licensing, helping clients to establish development and commercialisation relationships in North America, Europe and Asia.

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Open Innovation – Making it work for you

Open Innovation has been taking the Northern Hemisphere by storm for the past 5 – 10 years. The sustained success achieved by Proctor & Gamble’s Connect and Develop program, coupled with popular business publications by Professor Henry Chesbrough on the topic continue to drive its uptake and acceptability. Companies, both large and small, are trying out this business model innovation, hopeful of transforming their innovation performance. Alongside this, in anticipation of strong growth of the practice, new service entities are entering the market at a rapid rate. Even so, Open Innovation is still at an embryonic stage, and few really understand what it is, how to go about it, or what it can deliver. Universities and research institutes are also jumping onto the bandwagon and trying to ascertain how they can benefit from this new model. The aim of this workshop will be to introduce Open Innovation so that participants can begin to understand what this practice is, and how their entities could benefit. Dr Pearson will use a case study of her experience leading Open Innovation at Cadbury globally, outlining some of the challenges and opportunities. Participants will then be encouraged to consider what it means for their organisation and how they could benefit from this exciting approach.

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Sarah Pearson

Dr Sarah Pearson is the CEO of ANU Enterprise Pty Ltd, a company wholly owned by the Australian National University (ANU) and dedicated to the application and commercialization of knowledge generated within the university. Sarah is also a Visiting Fellow at the ANU’s College of Business and Economics. Sarah has had an eclectic career spanning industrial innovation, academia, management consulting, government, and science communication. Her involvement in innovation started when working as a strategic management consultant at McKinsey & Co in Sydney, where she devised strategies for high tech industries and co-authored a book chapter on innovation. She then went on to develop and patent new methods for cancer diagnosis whilst a tenured Physics academic, attracting over $700,000 in grants, including an ARC Discovery project. She later moved into industrial innovation, where she was the inaugural Open Innovation Champion at Cadbury and part of the leadership team at their long term R&D unit in the UK. Sarah has also spent time working in government, as acting Director of Science in the Office of the Chief Scientist where, amongst other things, she managed the Expert Working Groups and Secretariat for the Prime Minister’s Science, Engineering and Innovation Council. Sarah has a DPhil from the University of Oxford in particle physics, and has published her research in the areas of particle physics, medical physics, artificial intelligence, innovation, and science policy. She has published extensively through the media of TV, radio, books, journals, magazines and newspapers, and is an author on seven international patents, for cancer diagnosis and novel confectionary. She is passionate about innovation (along the whole value chain), especially Open Innovation, and keen to support its uptake and growth in Australia.

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Richard Hale

Richard Hale has an MBA from Macquarie University, is a Fellow of the Australian Institute of Company Directors, Managing Director of the Australasia Consulting Group and of Centric Management and Government Solutions. He is also the immediate past Chairman of the Macquarie Graduate School of Management Alumni Advisory Council. His passion for innovation, commitment to strategic thinking, and enthusiasm for commercial entrepreneurialism has helped build his reputation with large, medium and small enterprises throughout Australia. Over the past 10 years he has been heavily involved in the Australian Innovation, Research and Development Sector having been directly serviced and consulted to a significant number of the nation’s Co-operative Research Centres concerning their management and governance. Over the years Richard has involved himself in assisting the Not for Profit sector having held Board Positions in Parramatta Mission and SIDS Australia. Recently some of Richards work from his MBA days was published in a Book entitled “Organizations and Unusual Routines – A Systems Analysis of Dysfunctional Feedback Processes” written by Ronald E. Rice and Stephen D. Cooper. The work relates to using CRAZY systems analysis and how systems data can be flawed and if used in decision making without thought of its integrity can leads to unexpected and crazy outcomes. Richard is also consulting in a variety of other business venture including property development which included aged care facilities and some significant and iconic projects in Sydney including 1 Macquarie St, Sydney. He is a proud family man with a wife and four children aged between 12 and 3 years.

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Joanne Banyer

Dr Joanne Banyer is the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of ABIN and holds a PhD in genetics and immunology. She has held a range of start-up roles in National Security including Science Advisor, where she facilitated development of a national R&D plan with Australia’s intelligence and research community. Joanne spent five years heading Australia’s intelligence community delegation in a science, technology and intelligence quadrilateral with the US, UK and Canada. She established an international improvised explosives counter terrorism quadrilateral, and headed up the terrorist weaponry group in the National Threat Assessment Centre following the September 11 terrorist attacks on the US. She also established the first Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear and Explosives Terrorist Weaponry Directorate. Joanne provided threat advice to the COAG Review of Hazardous materials and was a member of the National Counter Terrorism CBRN Sub-Committee. She has been highly successful in establishing collaborative national and international programmes involving Commonwealth and State governments, the intelligence, law enforcement, and research communities. Joanne has a thorough grounding in IT infrastructure and tool technologies required for data management and intelligence generation in a secure setting.

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Indicators of Good Practice in Collaborative Ventures

This session will report on Year 1 findings of a 3-year program of performance benchmarking. The project purpose is to support the CRC Association in:

• providing robust data to demonstrate to funders/stakeholders the collective benefits of CRCs’ contribution to government, community and industry
• increasing understanding of the value proposition around CRCs
• the unique contribution of CRCs to the Australian/international scientific landscape
• how the development of CRC commercial outcomes benefits the wider community
• supporting individual CRCs in higher level operational issues including consistency in internal performance measures
• continuous improvement at an impact and operational level amongst CRCs.

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Gordon Stone

Gordon Stone is co-Director of national monitoring and evaluation and strategic planning consultancy QualDATA P/L. Clients include CRCs, universities, state agencies, Rural Research and Development Corporations and agribusinesses. Work includes market research and short and long term evaluation projects to assess Impact of organisations, programs and projects against agreed Objectives.

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Collaborating Across Cultures Workshop

In this practical and interactive workshop, which follows on from the keynote speech, participants will variously take on the roles of different third party advisers in consider necessary information and requirements to turn IP into products.

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Lindley Edwards

Lindley Edwards is the Group Managing Director of AFG Venture Group (www.afgventuregroup.com) and its various subsidiaries. Previously Lindley was a State Manager (Vice-President) with Citibank. Prior to this position she spent nine years with Macquarie Bank and was an Associate Director with the Corporate Banking Division. She is a Fellow of the Financial Services Institute of Australia. Lindley holds two undergraduate degrees one in Accounting and the other in Banking and Finance. She also holds post graduate qualifications in Corporate Governance and in various Financial Services regulatory courses and is currently studying for a PhD in Philosophy. Lindley has been a state finalist in the Telstra Businesswomen’s awards for Private Sector less than 100 employees. In the year 2000 Lindley was admitted to the Australian Businesswomen’s Hall of Fame. Her publications include:

• "Building a Winning Team"
• "From Invention to Investment"
• "Becoming Investment Ready"
• "Risk, Risk Management and Closing the Deal"
• "Making the Right Connections"
• Reflections on Leadership –Exploring the Journey From Within” ( published by Asialink)

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Bruce Muirhead

Bruce Muirhead is the founding Chief Executive Officer and Professor of Eidos Institute. Eidos Institute is the recent recipient of an Australian Business Innovation Award (2010) and a Lord Mayor's Innovation Award (2011). He has more than 25 years experience in building partnerships between the public and private sector, focusing on the connections between economic, public and social innovation in the development of community capacity at local and global levels.

As CEO, Muirhead is responsible for profiling the Institute, identifying and influencing emerging ideas, researching initiatives and opportunities, and implementing the management and project development requirements, as well as the initiatives that will identify and expand the Eidos goals via member collaboration. Prior to joining Eidos, Muirhead was the founding Director of The University of Queensland’s ‘Boilerhouse’ Research Centre.

Following the murder of an elderly Ipswich resident, he held a leadership role in the Goodna Service Integration Project, which was acknowledged by the Australian Government as one of ten national projects, alongside the Sydney Olympics and the response to the Bali bombings, for creating large-scale collaboration to respond to Australia’s priority challenges. Awards for this work included a UQ Teaching and Learning Award and finalist in two consecutive Australian Awards for University Teaching.

Muirhead was an invited participant to the Prime Minister’s Australia 2020 Summit. He writes and travels extensively and over the past few years has been invited to speak on collaborative innovation at conferences in the USA, South Africa, Europe and UK. He has contributed to a number of international committees and boards including Education, Citizenship and Social Justice (SAGE), Queensland Ministerial Advisory Committee on Equity, Itel Community Telco, Infoxchange Australia, Bremer TAFE, International Consortium for Higher Education, Civic Responsibility and Democracy. He is a Graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors.

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Anthony Murfett

Mr Anthony Murfett is the General Manager of the Cooperative Research Centres (CRC) branch in the Australian Government Department of Industry, Innovation, Science, Research and Tertiary Education (DIISRTE). The CRC program supports medium to long term end user driven research collaborations between universities, industry, government and other end-users to address clearly articulated, major challenges facing Australia, some of which are global. Anthony has worked across a number of areas within the industry and innovation portfolio. These include federal government budget initiatives such as the Commonwealth-ANU strategic relationship; coordinating the Australian Research Council’s funding programs and working at IP Australia in IP policy and patent examination. Anthony has a background in biotechnology and immunology.

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Increasing Postgraduate Completion Rates

As you may know, the CRC Association already boasts better-than-average completion rates amongst PhD candidates. But if you supervise, coordinate or work with emerging researchers, you'll know that there is still room for improvement. And innovation. Because, let's face it – many PhD's and research projects are stalled not through a lack of resources, but a lack of initiative and motivation. It's all beer and skittles at the start when everything is full of potential, but then after the initial honeymoon our motivation wanes and produuctivity grinds to a vague, slow crawl. It doesn't have to be like this. In this intense, interactive and insightful workshop, Dr Jason Fox will expose you to some of the freshest thinking in motivation science and applied gameful design. You'll learn how to empower your researchers to build and sustain their own motivation, to keep them in productive flow, and to have them reaching milestones with greater momentum. If you're ready to unlock massive new productivity in your research projects, this is the workshop for you.

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Nigel Palmer

Nigel Palmer is a Research Fellow with the University of Melbourne's Centre for the Study of Higher Education. Nigel was previously National President of the Council of Australian Postgraduate Associations from 2007-2009, and CAPA's National Policy and Research Advisor in 2010.

His research interests include student participation and equity, higher education quality assurance and management and research and research training policy and practice.

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Finding Needles in Haystacks!

This session aims to give practical guidance to research leaders to help them identify potentially patentable subject matter amongst the work being done in their teams. Greg Bartlett will present an explanation of the patent law concept of “inventive step” while using actual examples and sample patent claims. He will also provide education on reading patent claims to help understand how patent specifications define inventions and towards the end of the session, the audience will be confronted with a couple of mock research outcomes and asked to find the needle in the haystack. The aim for project leaders is of course not to be ensuring patent applications get lodged for every needle they find, but to ensure that their CRC gets an opportunity to look at each needle to see if a patent application should be lodged. It’s one thing to decide not to proceed with a patent application for an invention – it’s another thing to not even know what inventing is being done!

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Greg Bartlett

Greg Bartlett originally joined Phillips Ormonde Fitzpatrick in 1984 whilst completing his honours degree in chemical engineering at Monash University in Melbourne. Greg was awarded the Institute Prize by the Institute of Patent and Trade Mark Attorneys of Australia for high academic achievement in the patent attorney qualifying examinations in 1988. In 1997, after six years as a partner in a West Australian firm of attorneys, Greg returned to Phillips Ormonde Fitzpatrick as manager of the Adelaide office, becoming a partner in 1998. Greg was formerly a Senior Fellow of the Law Faculty at Melbourne University, lecturing in their Master of Intellectual Property, and has also lectured at the Adelaide University Law School in intellectual property subjects. He has himself concluded a Graduate Diploma in Science and Technology Commercialisation at Adelaide University. Another external activity that Greg enjoyed was his 6 years as a Government appointed member of the Professional Standards Board for Patent and Trade Marks Attorneys. Greg is experienced in all facets of advising local clients on obtaining patents, registered designs and registered trade marks, particularly in the areas of pharmaceuticals, chemicals, mining and optical, as well as a number of general mechanical areas. Greg undertakes regular business travel throughout Asia, most often to Japan, but also to China, Korea and Singapore, and has more recently also been travelling to Germany.

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Denise Morton

In her role as Chief Executive Officer at Effective Governance, Denise leads the Governance Team providing a range of services that include reviewing the board’s performance both as a whole and at individual director level, developing board and committee charters, evaluating CEO performance reviewing governance processes and procedures and the provision of general governance advice. From working with a variety of clients including ASX listed companies, government owned corporations, CRCs, not-for-profit organisations and university councils, Denise has developed in-depth, practical knowledge into a broad range of governance issues. As a result of her ongoing extensive work with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Community Health boards developing and delivering a sustainable governance system to their individual organisations, Denise has co-authored The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Directors’ Toolkit for Sustainable Governance. Denise has presented on governance topics for Chartered Secretaries Australia, the CEO Institute and Abacus. She has an MBA from the University of Queensland, is a graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors, and is chair of Youth Emergency Services, a not-for-profit organisation that provides housing and support services for homeless youth and for youth at risk of being homeless.

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Engaging effectively with the media

Working with the media can be unfamiliar territory for many experts and downright scary when things go wrong. But the opportunities are great, not only in publicising the work you do but also in terms of informing public opinion and contributing to debate on issues of national importance. Whether you’re working in a controversial area such as water resources, GM crops or climate change or in a more obscure field, there are many avenues to have your voice heard and some very practical steps you can take to make the experience a positive one. This session will take a look at the changing media landscape, drawing on six years of experience at the Australian Science Media Centre (AusSMC), an independent, not-for-profit organisation that works at the coal face between research and mass media.

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Susannah Eliott

Susannah has a PhD in cell biology from Macquarie University, a Graduate Diploma in Journalism from the University of Technology, Sydney and more than 18 years of practical experience in science communication with the science-media nexus as her primary focus. In 2000, Susannah moved to Stockholm, Sweden as Communications Director for the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP), an international network of scientists working on global environmental change. She moved to Adelaide in September 2005 to help establish the Australian Science Media Centre. In 2010, she chaired the Expert Working Group on Science and the Media for the Federal Government. For a more detailed bio of Susannah Eliott, click here.

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