14 July 2010
Interfacing business with academia (Caledonian Mercury)

A recession can often be the best time for a new business to start or an established one to change direction. But one problem for both is how to turn a good, innovative idea into a profitable product. For the past five years, an organisation called Interface has been helping them do just that.

In many parts of the world, the worlds of business and academia mix relatively easily. In North America and Australasia, the idea of a company looking for help from an expert in a university is seen as quite natural, as is an academic taking his or her bright idea out into the marketplace.

In Scotland however, barriers have been erected between the two. Many of our universities have been seen as ivory towers, devoted to pure research. Big business has been prepared to invest in this but smaller firms have looked at the concept with suspicion.

A key objective of Interface is to break down those barriers. It works with 26 universities and research institutes from the Borders to the Outer Isles. It identifies academics and students who are willing to work with companies. It then match-makes them with firms looking for help.

According to Dr Siobhán Jordan, the organisation's director, it helps to have had "...a number of funding initiatives in Scotland which have proved a means of off-setting the cost of a business working with a university and that's always in incentive in these cash-strapped times."

The principal one, she says, is the Scottish Funding Council's Innovation Voucher Scheme. That provides up to £5,000 for the companies looking for short-term help. They have to match that funding in cash or kind, such as materials or facilities.

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