What ails our small industries? Could “flipping the model” be the answer?

Your guess is as good as mine. Well, all most. But a report from a “special task Force on Diversifying the New York State Economy through Industry-Higher Education Partnerships” indicates that perhaps our small industries should change the way they do business. In particular the way they bring about new ideas and innovations. You see, all along the way, industries have depended on either their own people or those working in research institutions to come up with ideas. However, because of cost constraints, most small industries and enterprises can’t afford their own R & D department, or even if they have one, little comes out of it. Whilst most researches are done at universities and state funded research institutions, the ideas that come out of it doesn’t fully feed into industry demands, simply because researchers don’t understand industry demands, or they are out of date. How then to resolve the mismatch?

What the New York State Economy special task force recommended was that instead of the industry people looking for ideas from the institutions, the industry people must go to these institutions to tell them what to research, and to come up with ideas that the industry needs. Now, that is a no brainer and something that should have been done long time ago. In an apparent emphasis of the importance of idea creation, the task force indicated that “intellectual properties are the raw material that leads to the creation of companies, jobs, and wealth”. Period. They also charted a way for New York based industries to talk to New York Universities. Julie Shimer, CEO of Welch Allyn, a New York-based medical equipment manufacturer and a member of the task force said “industries need to change the habit of waiting for researchers to come up with ideas, and instead should challenge them to develop ideas that would help our strategic needs and plans”. The idea is simply called “flipping the model”.

It is indeed a sad truth that there are tons of ideas sitting in the vaults of institution of higher learning, some of them have even obtained patents that are near expiring and without any takers for commercialization. And all those work paid from the people’s money! One of the obvious reasons is that academia is run for the sake of expanding education; it is not run to complement the industries. Looking at the heart and model of most universities, even some who are touted to be modern will show that academia is a traditional showpiece, one that has not changed its practice since the early days of education. It is a very inefficient machine. It creates mounts of books, research papers, most of which sits in the vaults, waiting for the day someone to pick it up and work on it. Unfortunately, there is no urge to change the system in these silver citadels because somehow or rather, the budget to run them is always available. You seldom see universities getting bankrupt! But just for how long, you may ask? This “flipping the model” idea might just be the start of the wind of change, and for good measure too.