Breaking down barriers

I am always struck, when I attend one of the many workshops that we fund, by the immense value of getting the right people in a room together. Whoever they may be, when you put some Chinese experts on something in a room with some British experts on something, the magic starts to happen.

Let me explain what I mean. Last week I attended a workshop in Beijing on UK-China Innovation and Technology Transfer collaboration, ably implemented by the China Britain Business Council and CAS Holdings (the commercial arm of the Chinese Academy of Sciences), and funded by the UK government’s Prosperity Fund. It was attended by a selection of top UK universities and Chinese research institutes, incubators and technology transfer centres.

The value in putting these people in a room together with an energetic chairperson is twofold. Firstly, and most obviously, specific opportunities for people to work together come to light. UK university: “We’re interested in licensing Technology X for development, it has potential applications in clean energy.” Chinese technology transfer centre: “That’s just the kind of technology we’re looking to develop for the Chinese market, and we know who might want to invest in it.” I’m oversimplifying, but you get the idea. Business cards are exchanged; potential projects are discussed.

Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, this kind of face to face communication helps to break down the barriers of cultural difference, misunderstanding and fear of the unknown, which so often get in the way of successful collaboration. “Ah, so that’s how they do X in the UK.” “Ah, so in China it’s important to do X.” On this occasion for example, the Chinese participants learned about the agreements UK universities use for academics who start their own companies, to manage conflict of interest. The UK participants learned that Chinese investors tend to prefer late stage technology that is close to market. Everyone learned about the differences in the role of incubators in the two countries, and everyone agreed that a key need for China is more professional training in intellectual property valuation and knowledge transfer, to increase the pool of people with the right skillset for innovation collaboration. (This is something we have been working on with PraxisUnico already, and there is clearly a demand for more.)

The workshop also included a session on intellectual property, looking at the support available for UK and Chinese entities transferring or jointly developing IP. Worth highlighting is the UK-China Collaborative Research IP Toolkit, launched by the UK Intellectual Property Office during the recent State Visit of Xi Jinping to the UK.

All of this helps to build the trust and confidence necessary for mutually beneficial collaboration. It doesn’t happen overnight; but step by step, meeting by meeting, we are slowly but surely breaking down those barriers. A follow up workshop in March in the UK will help to build on the relationships started here.