University Research Commercialisation Scheme | Submission to the Department of Education, Skills and Employment | April 2021

The Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ACCI) welcomes this opportunity to provide input to the Department of Education, Skills and Employment (DESE) on University Research Commercialisation (URC). ACCI has long been an advocate of industry collaboration with research and development (R&D) organisations, including universities. The DESE consultation paper rightly highlights the importance of research commercialisation to increase business productivity and create jobs in the economy. International experience demonstrates that R&D ecosystems can excel at attracting and integrating significant R&D investment and effort to achieve technical leadership and high levels of commercial value-add. The United States has done particularly well in this regard, with successful companies created on the back of R&D collaboration. There is significant opportunity in Australia to increase business productivity through innovation that arises from collaboration in research and development. Australia no doubt has world class universities producing research and centres of excellence. The main issue remains converting the R&D that comes out of universities into commercial success or even early stage R&D collaboration between universities and business. This submission will address issues three and four of the consultation paper as they are most relevant to business.