我在一次APEC科技中介事业发展国际研讨会上的总结发言

（2004年2月11日起草）

Plenary Summary

Wu Yishan

Institute of Scientific and Technical Information ofChina

wuyishan@istic.ac.cn

Intermediary, bridging, brokering, match-making, or whatever other term we use, are essential in every field of human affairs. We need bridging between technology suppliers and users, between natural science on one hand, social sciences and humanities on the other, between East and West, etc.

In this workshop, we are happy to hear diverse voices from both advanced countries and developing countries, from Eastern countries and Western countries. Such kind of dialogue itself is a necessary element in any successful intermediary process. In this workshop, we had active discussions or even lively debates. That is to say, we did function like qualified intermediary professionals when we attended this workshop.  

Consensus

Here I would try to summarize a few points with certain degrees of consensus that we learned in the workshop.  

1．            Government role is essential

Almost every speaker in the workshop talked more or less about the essential role played by government agencies. Dr. Michael Raymont’s presentation introduced the Canadian government’s actions in S & T intermediary work, including NRC’s Industrial Research Assistance Program (IRAP), a typical intermediary program. This program created $1 billion in economic value every 4 years, which is very impressive success. Mr. Luis Mejia of Stanford University mentioned that the passage of the Bayh-Dole act in 1980 allowed American universities to assert ownership for inventions funded by the federal government, thus creating a better environment for invention and a stronger need for technology transfer intermediary service. Professor Kong Deyong, a Chinese delegate, thought that strong government support is one of the key factors contributing to the success ofChina’s technology business incubators. As Chinese participant Mr. Liu Youlin told us, Northern Technology Exchange Market was set up with the joint support from MOST and Tianjin Municipal Government. The Innovation Service Platform for the Capital Economy, as described by Mr. Zhang Qiang, a Chinese participant, was also partly sponsored by the government. Dr. Su Jing, MOST ofChina, envisioned an intermediary service among intermediaries—Public Information platform for S & T intermediaries, which will be funded by government at startup stage.  There are too many examples for me to cite one by one.

In summary, relevant laws and regulations, appropriate policies,   government-funded demonstration programs, etc., all these are catalysts for the healthy growth of S & T intermediary service.  

2.  “Triple helix” model is embraced by many countries

Triple helix model of university-industry –government relations was put forward by Professor Etzkowitz and Professor Leydesdorff in 2000 [1]. It tries to capture the dynamics of both communication and organization by introducing the notion of an overlay of exchange relations that feeds back on the institutional arrangements. Although the name of this model was not mentioned by any of our speakers, it could be seen that the idea underlying the model was accepted by a lot of representatives. For instance, Cooperative Research Centers Program inAustraliais an institutional design in full alignment with this model. Mr. Luis R. Mejia said clearly that the interconnectedness between government, academia and industry is a crucial part of an economy’s competitiveness. However, as we all know too well, government, business and university have totally different cultures, so how to make a solid triple helix “rope” is a challenge for all APEC countries.

3. International Collaborations are given special priority

Many speakers emphasized the importance of international collaboration in S & T intermediary service. This emphasis is only too natural since science and technology have become global affairs. For instance, in his concluding remarks, Vice-Minister Carlos Zamorano ofPerupointed out the necessity to strengthen the relationship with technological centers of excellence in other APEC countries. UnderCanada’s IRAP program, 6-10 technology missions are arranged each year to investigate opportunities for building international S & T partnerships.  Mr. Peter Jonson ofAustraliathinks that intermediary experts would be as open as scientists in knowledge sharing. We did witness this openness in this workshop. In Jorge Yutronic’s presentation on Chilean experience, most of his success stories involved different degrees of international cooperation. Mr. Andrew Young of Hong Kong told us that Hong Kong  Polytechnic University is increasing collaboration with international partners in its technology transfer effort. Professor Kong Deyong informed the audience  that in order to help Chinese businesses to enlarge international presence and utilize international scientific findings,Chinahas established several international business incubators abroad.

Besides, the exchange of information and the comparison of best practices among APRC members should be a prerequisite for conducting effective collaboration, as some speakers said.

4. Effective and diversified S & T intermediary mechanism is an integral factor to success

All roads lead to Rome. Due to different cultures and different development stages, it is reasonable for various countries to adopt diversified mechanisms for S & T intermediary, but all effective. Dr C. M. Kirk,New   Zealand, thought that the mobility of workers between organizations is one of the most effective ways of transferring tacit knowledge, so the government ofNew Zealandset up the “Technology for Industry Fellowships” program to promote people transfer.  In most countries, science foundations are responsible for financing basic research and other up-stream R & D activities, but inChile, FundaciónChilealso involves itself in business incubation, a down-stream activity, and did it well. InPeru, technological innovation centers act as important agents for technology transfer. Stanford Professor S. Rowen told us that in Stanford University, Office of Technology Licensing decides whether to apply for a patent. If a patent is granted, OTL will market it to industry. In return, OTL usually takes a small amount of equity stock (1% -3%) as part of its licensing process with startup companies. I would like to stress that the professional role played by OTL cannot be overemphasized. Similarly, Hong Kong Polytechnic  University established Institute for Enterprise to centralize management of patent application, commercial agreements, industry contacts and corporate marketing. As a contrast to the cases in Stanford and Hong Kong Polytechnic University, in the mainland China and maybe also in some other developing countries, there are few, if any, intermediary agencies that function like OTL or Institute of Enterprise and provide most needed help. Thus, more often than not, individual scientists or independent inventors have to struggle single-handedly for protecting their inventions or seeking applications to their research results. They often experience a lot of frustration or failures before they swear to themselves that they will never try technology transfer again. In spite of relatively fast economic growth in developing countries, they still have a long way to go in producing more mature S &

T intermediary institutions.

5. Different understanding of S & T intermediary interferes with focused discussion

It is easy to observe that we do not have an agreed definition of S & T intermediary. Some speakers define S & T intermediary narrowly as the conversion of innovative ideas into economic outcomes, or commercialization, while others understand it widely as anything related to S & T development, including: technology service; technology parks; technology business incubators; metrology, standard, testing and quality system; information service; consulting service; intellectual property rights service; S & T evaluation; science talent head-hunting, and so on. Therefore, it is very difficult to hold a focused dialogue and reach consensus. Such an unclear definition will be detrimental to the realization of the role supposed to be played by S & T intermediary mechanism in the framework of national innovation system. It is our hope that in the future workshops, we should avoid, as much as possible, the concepts with ambiguous connotations.

Unique Ideas

In addition to finding common grounds, I think that unique ideas and comments made in the presentations should also be pointed out since they are able to throw valuable insights to our audience. Next are some examples of such fresh ideas:

--Mr. Peter D. Jonson ofAustraliamentioned the commercialization of small technologies. We all remember what Schumacher described as “appropriate technologies” in his famous work, “Small is Beautiful”. Although this was a controversial claim, many years of experience in developing countries have proven that simplistic overemphasis on so-called high technology is self-destructive, and the utilization of small technologies based on traditional knowledge is meaningful even for industrially advanced countries. Therefore, S & T intermediary agencies in developing nations should make more efforts to collect and transfer appropriate small technologies.

--Mr. Jonson also introduced a specific proposal before the Australian government to fund a “brokerage” service that would help overcome two barriers in commercialization process, which are the shortage of people with commercialization skills and shortage of finance for early-stage preparation of potentially attractive S & T projects. I believe that these two types of shortage could be found in many developing countries, too. Therefore, this proposal might well be borrowed or “copied”.

--Ms. Zhao Mulan has done an excellent analysis about the cruel reality thatChinahas to “cover the distance of two steps at one big stride”. She meant that while S & T intermediary in advanced countries is designed mainly to address market failure, developing countries likeChinaalso face  an immature market. Therefore our S& T intermediary service has to overcome two barriers: immature market and market failure, which exacerbates “the growing pains” for S& T intermediary service inChina.  

Personal Views

In addition to the above summery, I would like to add a couple of my personal views as to how to improve S & T intermediary service in developing APEC countries.

First, in some developing countries, the task of industrialization has not finished before the task of informalization puts new challenge. Therefore, we should not forget that one major barrier for the growth of S & T intermediary service in developing countries is the very week degree in  specialization in economic and social affairs, which in advanced countries, specialization had been fully developed and mature during the industrialization process. We should keep in mind that without enough division of labor, without long enough chains in economic field, and without sufficient number of links along these chains, there will be never sufficient demand for intermediary service. If this judgment is correct, then the government should pay extra efforts to encourage specialization in all circles, because full specialization is one of the prerequisites for healthy development of S & T intermediary service. We have noticed that in Chinese provinces where specialization is relatively mature, say Zhejiang Province, intermediary service has been under full swing without much promotion from local governments. Although government support and incubation are important, Zhejiang’s success story is more enviable.

Second, intermediary service in general and S & T intermediary service in particular, involves bridging different cultures, for instance between academic culture and business culture when we try to conduct technology transfer. As I pointed out before, the dialogue among our workshop participants is not easy, let alone among groups with totally different values. Conflict among cultures has very often destructive power, which is why technology transfer is always so difficult no matter it happens in a mature market economy or in transitional economies, and why excellent professionals in this field is always in short supply. What needs to be done is to speed up the training of more professionals who are indeed familiar with different cultures and engage them in intermediary service. This will be an onerous task, because, just as multi-disciplinarity is easily said than done in academic community, just as popular science writers, who are also cross-culture communicators to certain sense, are in great shortage in any country, training of professional intermediaries is a universal challenge to current universities or other training agencies.

Third, as Dr. Luo Hui, MOST ofChina, pointed out, in the fourth generation of technological innovation, the role of independent inventors will be more prominent. Historical experience has proven that independent inventors in every country had always tough time trying to commercialize their inventions or protect their intellectual property rights. If the above judgment is right, then independent inventors will require more comprehensive and better service from S & T intermediaries. We should get ready to offer such service.

Recommendations

1.    APEC members should allocate more funds and give more moral support to promoting and improving S & T intermediary mechanisms. Developing APEC member states might caution themselves that in a not fully mature market environment, the growth of S & T intermediary service is all the more difficult. Patience and persistence are needed in culturing a healthy milieu for developing S & T intermediary mechanisms.

2.    Intermediary professionals are a special type of talents, a rare asset, who must be excellent communicators between different cultures in their broadest sense. The supply of qualified intermediary professionals is always short, particularly in developing countries. Enhanced training and education of future intermediary professionals should be put into priority agenda for all APEC members. In this regard, international collaboration should be further intensified so as to train more professionals with international visions and exchange best training practices among member states.

3.    Since APEC members are different in cultures, values, traditions, or in economic, scientific and technological capacity from one country to another, there will be no universal model fit for every society. Therefore, APEC member states should explore most appropriate mechanisms in S & T intermediary based on their own unique features. Realizing faster technology innovation calls for better intermediary mechanisms, in return, improvement in intermediary service requires more innovative approaches and practices.  

4.    While developed economies or big economies have pushed forward to development of technology incubators, trading platforms, and promotion of technology transfer, some developing or small economies are difficult in moving to that position because they have not built a clear intermediary mechanism, especially S & t intermediary mechanism, partly due to the fact these countries do not have a sufficient national innovation system. APEC should play a key role to bridge te gaps between developed economies and developing economies in this regard, by raising the awareness among government leaders about the eminent global trend towards knowledge-based economy, and by implementing some demonstration projects that would serve to teach these leaders how to carefully formulate various policies to integrate information resources, develop S & T human resources, and build linkage among government, business and academia.

Finally I’d like to say that this workshop marks a very good beginning. We should have more similar venues for communication and dialogue in the future.  If communication among us fails, there will be no much hope for growing a really sustainable intermediary service in all APEC members and in the world.

References

[1] H. Etzkowitz and L. Leydesdorff, The dynamics of innovation: from national systems and “Mode 2” to a Triple Helix of university-industry-government relations, Research Policy, 2000, 29 (2): 109-123