Speaker 1 0:00 Right Hello and welcome to today's webinar benefits of assisting faculty with consultancy services provided by Autumn. My name is Sami Spiegel, one of autumns professional development managers and I will be your staff host for today. All lines have been muted to ensure high quality audio and today's session is being recorded. If you have a question for our presenters, we encourage you to use the q&a feature on your zoom toolbar. If you have a technical question or a comment, please feel free to use the chat. We encourage you to submit your questions throughout the session so that we have time to answer all of the questions at the end of the presentation. If you need closed captioning during today's session, the Zoom live transcript feature will be turned on and available on your toolbar. We will also be using polls during today's session and thank you in advance for your participation and contribution to the class conversation. You'll see those pop out throughout throughout the presentation. Before we begin, I would like to take a quick moment to acknowledge and thank autumns online professional development sponsor Marshall Gerstein, IP, we appreciate your ongoing support. And now I'd like to welcome today's panelists. Loris that ski is the Executive Director of Innovation for the University of Louisville. In this role, she is responsible for identification, evaluation, protection, commercialization and partnership development for research discoveries. Laura has a diverse background as a research scientist, entrepreneur and startup advisor and brought experience bringing innovations to market. Laura has served as the autumn board representative for ATTP and recently served as chair for the audit of the autumn board of directors. Helen Atkinson is Deputy Head of consultancy services for Cambridge enterprise which supports almost 400 consultancy projects per year. Ellen and team help academics throughout the lifecycle of their consultancy projects, including advice on pricing, negotiation contracts, and managing the financial administration. Ellen has a BSc in geography from the University of Cambridge. She's a practice oral mentor and has contributed to practice oral consultancy training courses. Helen joined Cambridge enterprise in August of 2014. And Jackie Barnett, is the head of consulting services at Oxford University innovation, the wholly owned innovation company at the University of Oxford. She has over 20 years experience in research, commercialization and technology transfer, and has during that time manage tech transfer offices contract research and consultancy functions letter regional tech transfer office, launched a Regional Innovation Forum established an incubator and had both non executive and executive roles on the boards of startups and spin out companies. Jackie was previous, previously the president of the Southern African Research and Innovation Management Association. I was on the Council of ATTP, and one of the chairs of HTTPS course review committee. She's a registered rttp, and is currently a PhD candidate, exploring the impact of spin out companies. We are so excited to learn from you all today. Thank you for being here with us. And with that, Laura, I will pass it off to you. Speaker 2 3:02 Well, thank you so much, Sammy, and thank you everyone for being here. Today, we've prepared what we hope is a really fun session. And just an FYI, to everyone, it will be interactive, we're going to be having some polls. And when we were preparing the content for this, we thought it would be really nice to have a discussion of some of the most common questions and areas that people think about when pulling together a program that's designed to help faculty do more consulting and smooth their path with the consulting services that they'd like to engage in. So we've got four main topic areas, we're going to cover the benefits of having a consulting program, we're going to touch on policies and structures, then we're going to go into some practical considerations around agreements, payments, etc. And then talk about driving efficiencies. So we're going to start off with our first poll, and Sam is going to stay with us while we have these discussions, so that she can help us run these polls and analyze the results after So Sammy, press the button on the first poll. Here we go. First of all, is where do you work? And everyone you'll have approximately one minute to answer this question. So go ahead and submit your responses quickly. And then we will take a look at who we have in the audience together. So I'm seeing a lot of answers for academic tech transfer or academia in general. That is the majority of our audience here today. And you guys are fast answers. That's nice. Nobody wants to hang out waiting So very good. Well, thank you so much. We've got 17 of the 19 people who are participating today and have answered thank you for your responses. So academic check transfers, the resounding winner, that's what I expected with the topic of a webinar like this, because I think academic tech transfer is where the majority of this consulting dialogue will happen. So we can stop that, Sammy. Unknown Speaker 5:38 Our second poll should be up now. Speaker 2 5:45 And this one is administrative support. So the question here is, does your organization provide administrative support, even intermittently to aid those doing consulting work for hire? So the basic answers are yes or no. But the yes is broken out into? Yes, it's done in a general research admin or sponsored programs space? Yes, it's done by the local academic department, school or unit, or yes, it's done in the tech transfer side of the shop, or the industry engagement piece. Speaker 2 6:29 And Sammy, I'm not sure if I'm seeing a different screen than the rest of the audience. Speaker 1 6:33 So we'll show the results in just about two seconds. We're just at a minute now. So if you have a last response, feel free to submit it. And we'll share those in just a moment for the audience to see. Speaker 1 6:48 All right now everyone should be able to see those responses and how it's distributed. Unknown Speaker 7:00 I do that see the responses on the screen. Speaker 1 7:05 I think when we start showing them to attendees, that might be when the instructors lose the view, which isn't helpful. So attendees, I'm going to hide it for a moment. Laura, Unknown Speaker 7:13 can you see it now? No. Speaker 1 7:16 Okay, we ended up with one of 18. Yes. In general research admin or sponsored programs. One for Yes. By the academic department. Three for yes, in tech transfer or industry engagement. Six said no. Four said other and three are not sure. Speaker 2 7:37 Okay. So there's a fair number of folks that don't either don't have services at all in terms of providing even intermittent consulting services to faculty, so administrative services to help them do this consulting work? Or that they don't know that we don't know if we actually have those services available or not. So that is the result, the resounding majority, and there were only a couple. One, there are only a few responses. Let's see, I can see it now five in total, that said, yes, it's occurring somewhere. But the majority of the responses were no, I don't know, or something else. So that's really interesting. And I'm hopeful that after hearing this discussion, maybe some more of us could think about the way that the think folks in the in the UK are perhaps the most advanced in the world, in providing these consulting services, to their faculty to drive consulting. So my first question to our panelists here, Jackie and Helen, are around the benefits of having a consulting program. I think the benefits to the faculty members are pretty obvious, right? So they get a chance to put their work into practice, they get some financial incentive, but from your experience, what's the benefit to the institution or your organization? And how has this helped by having a formal support function for consultancy services? Speaker 3 9:23 So perhaps, I start jacking and you can pitch in, I think, for us at Cambridge. So hello, everybody. First of all, I think for us at Cambridge, one of the really important things is that we've acknowledged that consultancy activity is actually a fabulous way of universities demonstrating impact but are having impact. So there's been numerous studies that have shown actually consultancy a really efficient way to take the existing knowledge from our academics within University and put it to good use. And we all know that in today's society actually demonstrating the impact that our universities Have is increasingly important to local government and national governments to international governance. So actually, we've found by having a managed service helps with that twofold really, firstly, it becomes an institutional activity instead of a individual academic activity. So that enables us to capture information about the activity to be able to report on that and to be able to really talk about the impact that our academics can have through consultancy, but also in, in making it part of the support that we provide as an institution, it actually makes it easier for the individual academics to engage in that. So not only can we demonstrate the existing impact, we're actually also encouraging people to do more of this useful activity. So I think that's perhaps top level why the University recognizes it's something that's really important for us to support. Speaker 4 10:57 Yeah, I mean, following on from that, I think one of the things that we're trying to capture, actually quite difficult because of the the the timescales involved is what happens to that. So a consultancy project can start as a single academic, doing some work for a company, and we've had those leading on to multi million pound research projects, which obviously benefits University directly, or that it provides funding for students to get involved to, to for their real world impact his own say. So I think there's a lot of reasons why the university thinks it's important that consultancy activity is happening, but also is managed, because then it's easier to keep track of what's actually going on and where they lead to. We've just signed the 18th project with the same non governmental organization that has led to a number of research contracts as well. So it's really an entity in the area of migration and labor. So it's really important impact work through consultancy. Yes, the academic has benefited financially says the department. And it's led to some really big research project. So it's growing everything that we do, and not focusing only on the research aspect of it, but growing that whole value chain. And Speaker 3 12:17 as you said, Jack, it's really difficult to track that and to actually start tell the full story of what our consulting projects have led to. And we had a stab at being a bit more structured about that. And we looked at some output from just two years worth of consultancy work. And actually, of the respondents, they told us that that just the consulting project they had had led to additional 10 million in research funding. So that's just consultancy work from two years worth, and only those that responded to our survey. So that really did encourage us, we say that one of the benefits is that it leads to long term relationship with the university. But it was nice to have a bit of proof of that. So I think that demonstrating impact is one of the really important factors and leading on to long term relationships. But there's also a more tangible benefit immediately in that consulting projects can have some financial reward for the institution, as well as the individual academic. So that can be twofold, really. So some of the consultancy projects, may use facilities of the university. So it could be you've got some facilities that are underutilized. And actually, if you could get some additional income in for your departments by using that as part of consultancy, that's a really nice way to get additional resources. But actually, some of our academics even choose to donate some of their money from consultancy back to the university, which is easier for them to do because we manage it centrally. So even in one year, we we give roughly 2 million pounds back to the university. So is that direct financial benefit to the university as well? Speaker 4 13:58 Yeah, and I think that's, we haven't always had the data to back it up, it's really important to get that data, we've just shown that we actually give more to some of the departments than they get from licensing because the bulk of the money goes to them whereas obviously with license fees, it's split with a number of different you know, the university central gets the tech transfer office gets the academics get whereas when a department does services work or consultancy directly all its donated to them, they essentially in our case getting 90% of the of the income and that's huge. And when they started seeing those numbers, they're sort of saying sitting up and saying okay, this is this is a real benefit back to the departments which really does start filling a hole in their in their financial Speaker 2 14:49 coffers. Yeah, I think in the US when I've done reviews of up I would say somewhere between You know, 103 100 Consulting agreements for individuals, that I think of consulting agreements is kind of the gateway drug to technology transfer, if you will. When industry wants to engage with a university, they're typically looking and targeting a particular individual in a particular program with the development of a particular diagnostic or drug or material in mind. So they they target a person, and then through that person's research activity, they try to pick their brain and pick this experts brain about this new product that they have in mind. And so it's interesting to hear your responses about the value of the monetary value of these consulting services being really defined and, and monetized you know. So it's, I think people underestimate the value of getting in at the ground floor with helping your faculty members do this work. In the US, I know that especially based on the poll here, many of the US in technology transfer or in general research administration, may not ever know, when a faculty member is engaging with an industry partner, yes, they might fill out a form for conflict of interest or something of that nature. However, we might not ever see your review that that goes to some CLI committee. And so the value I think of helping and aiding with the consulting agreements, is in knowing who those potential partners are, and then being able to help drive a bit more of a professional sales pitch, if you will, about the other things that the university has to offer. Because the individual faculty members or PIs are not going to necessarily pitch other core lab services or other things that complement what the industry partners trying to accomplish, because they're just thinking about their own laboratory and their own role in many cases. So I found I find that interesting. Speaker 3 17:23 Absolutely. And you can if you start that relationship early by facilitating the consultancy project, you can also help the client navigate through the minefield of working with universities, help them explain how the setup works, get them used to contracting with a university on perhaps a smaller scale, before they then have to go for the more full blown research collaboration agreements. Speaker 2 17:45 Helen, what do you think are have in your mind are the disadvantages of having managed programs, something where you have a like a known process and steps to follow, etc? What are the disadvantages to that? Speaker 3 17:59 I mean, if I'm honest, I'd have to really bite my brains to come up with some disadvantages, because I just think having a system in place to support this type of activity is generally a good thing. But the one thing that might do is, it may put some academics off, if they feel like it's another part of the university's bureaucracy and other parts of like, you have to follow these administrative steps. And it may sort of reduce that academic freedom a bit. So I think you have to be very careful if you set up a program to support it, that you're mindful of making it as accessible as possible to the academics and making it as painless as possible. So I think that's probably one disadvantage that can be seen as a bit more bureaucratic. And then jacket, and if you've got any others, but the only other thing that I can think of is if you make it a formal activity, you're actually in one way you're managing the reputational risk, because you have a chance to review who the client is you have a chance to put appropriate contract terms in place. But by bringing it in and making it a University of Cambridge project, if something were to go wrong, then it's badged as University of Cambridge, whereas we're for consultants doing it in their own right. They're doing it in their own right. So but they're the I mean, I had to wrack my brains to think of any disadvantages. I don't know if Jackie, you've got any others? Speaker 4 19:26 I mean, I think from our point of view, I think it depends on your system. I think we'll hear later about the different systems and Cambridge has a, an easier system than the than the Oxford system, just the nature of the university policies around doing outside work are different. So I think that bureaucracy and the hassle because if an academic doesn't by themselves, and they don't fill in the right forms, it's only if they get found out, whereas if they come through us, we have to make But filling in the right forms and going through the policy. So I think those sorts of things, but provided you can make sure the benefits of a consultancy and managed consultancy program outweigh those disadvantages. And we have many, many academics who, who stay with us who come to us year after year because of those benefits where they could do themselves. I think that's, then then you will, then you'll overcome those disadvantages. Speaker 2 20:29 Jackie, how do you add at Oxford incentivize academics, and drive them toward these managed consultancy agreements and the program that you have for that? Speaker 4 20:41 I mean, I think the I see that there's a question in the, in the in the q&a around selling it to innovators, particularly if they've previously done it themselves, I think it is a challenge we find, with the newer academics, with the postdocs with early career academics, we sell it to them that they don't have to set up their own system, they get protected by the university, we make sure that the contract actually protects them and protects the university. A lot of them get this contract. And it's like, what do they do now. And we say we take all of that off, we can genuinely negotiate a higher price, which is a really good incentive to the academics. And we, we facilitate the the the being in accordance with university policies, as I said, the university policies are challenging, but we facilitate that. And then we chase up the debts, we do all the financial background, you know, we make sure that everything's in place, and we pay them. And I think the key is to make sure that you're paying academics quickly, they're not having to fight for their money, they're getting statements from us, you're turning around the contract really quickly, because you know, that if we're going to take a long time, often, it's the client is taking a long time, we can turn contracts around, sometimes within 24 hours, if the client is, you know, so executing. So I think it's all of those things, with people who've set up and doing it themselves already. It's more challenging, because obviously, they're used to doing it, and they've done it for years, and they know what a contract looks like. And only if they have a problem do they come to us, we're finding that some of the stuff that's bringing them to us is data protection, and the whole, you know, personal data, and all of those things, liabilities are increasing, IP clauses are getting more complex export controls from our side. So some of those things are making contracts more complex, and they look at it and they think I need help with this. And then they come to us. So it's making sure your system your services seamless, you're never gonna get everybody, some people always going to do it themselves. But I think you can, as long as you have a really good inefficient service, they will start coming to us. And usually we can get a higher fee. So I'll add the fact that we have to add a fee actually doesn't take away from their fee. Speaker 3 23:05 You're right. And I think another one of the carrots for academics is particularly early stage ones, as you mentioned, Jackie, is if they do the work for us, they're covered by our insurance policies as well. So not only do we give them the contractual support in terms of where the contracting party, not them, but that their work is covered by the insurance straight off as well. So that's a carrot to get the early stage ones. Definitely. Speaker 2 23:27 Yeah, and your conversation makes me think of, you know, what are the what are the incentives to maybe the president of your university to support and support the programs and the programming to have these consulting services. And I think about the conflicts of interest and managing these projects, in lockstep with university policies as we're our policies are getting more complex, and especially in the US federal reporting requirements around engaging with non US partners are becoming more and more detailed and complicated. I think it would be of great benefit to have consulting agreements, administered largely through the administration of the university, just to avoid big articles in the newspaper about somebody's terrible conflict of interest that they had in getting involved with a company that was for example, approving a drug that they administered in the clinic, or something of that nature. Where some of these big conflict stories can happen. It's almost like you're investing to avoid, avoid a big problem in the future with with a conflict or some really bad press which can be, you know, really take you by surprise and do a tremendous amount of damage. Yeah, you're right, I Speaker 3 25:06 think sort of the reputational risk these days is much more than it's been in the past. So one of the things that our university likes is that we do due diligence on all the clients that we work with, for the very reasons that you said, to make sure that we're not working with dodgy companies, or dodgy individuals that would look back at the bad when it hit the press. Speaker 4 25:24 Just fine on on the conflicts of interest, I think we are an optional service, as is Cambridge. One of the things that is not optional is in the first year of the spin up company, the found the founders who consult to their own companies have to go through us and it's specifically around conflicts of interest, they have to write a conflict of interest management plan, they have to go through so that they can't be going to their own company. And then suddenly, there's a research collaboration, they're using equipment at the university, they got students working and all that, you know, which had to lay wearing. And that's so they have to go through us for that first year. Because conflicts of interest have, yeah, it's becoming even more of an issue than it has in the past. Speaker 2 26:07 It's are so such a big part of what we do. I mean, if we're if we're doing tech transfer, we're going to have conflicts of interest, there's going to be this tension between sort of the for profit and the nonprofit world because we're operating in a nonprofit environment, but trying to make products that ultimately will get used and make impact in the world. And how does that happen through commercial for profit companies. So there's always going to be this intersection between the not for profit and for profit world in a way that has to be by today's standards more carefully managed. So we're going to be moving on to our policies and structures section. So I see the additional question and chat but Sam is here to administer a couple of poll questions for just for fun and excitement. Right. All right, let's Unknown Speaker 26:57 get the first one launched. Speaker 2 27:03 The first one is is consulting permitted at your institution? Yes, now there's a limit on how and you can check as many of these as you like. So check all that apply Speaker 2 27:27 yes, no limit on how much time you can spend permission has to be granted a conflict check is done prior Unknown Speaker 27:42 to about 15 more seconds. Unknown Speaker 27:59 Okay, we're gonna share the results everyone should be able to see. Speaker 2 28:06 Okay, so we had the vast majority of people saying yes, consulting is permitted. That yes, there is a time limit on how much time one can spend engaged in consulting. And then fewer responses about little under half of the respondents said that permission has to be granted ahead of time and less even less than that, responding that a conflict check is done prior to approve consulting approval. So that is great. Now we have one more poll question. And this one is about the money is there a charge for administering the consulting agreements, meaning a charge by your academic organization? Unknown Speaker 29:24 Like we should have music here Jeopardy. Speaker 3 29:27 Sing if you like, I won't Oh, no, you don't want that Speaker 1 29:32 means about 10 seconds for any last responses. I saw one more just come in. We're gonna display the results. Speaker 2 29:47 And everyone should be able to see now. Great, so about 50% of the time, there is no charge, about another little over a quarter of the time. People don't know if there's a charge or not a small number, say it's something else. And two or 12% of the respondents said it's a percentage of the contract. I'm surprised by that, that we had people saying, yes, they're so awesome. All right. So my next questions are really going to center around policies. And my and so I'm wondering what policies at your institutions in the UK in relation to consultancies? Like, what what are the policies documents actually say? And does this help or hinder the overall process? So Speaker 3 30:48 in true Cambridge style, it's academic freedom, that wins any discussion. So our policy on consultancy is incredibly light touch, it's actually quite hard to find anything documented, but what people are allowed to do. But the basic principle is, our academics can do as much or as little consultancy as they like, there is no upper time limit on it. The only stipulation is that it mustn't impact on their teaching and research duties. And they also if they feel there might be a conflict of interest, they have to talk to their head of department before they do the consultancy activity. So top level is they can do as much as they'd like, they can also choose to do it in an entirely in a personal capacity if they choose to do so. Or they can choose to use our service. So we're an optional service, I think, as Jackie mentioned earlier, but we don't require the university doesn't require any sign off at all by their heads of departments. So they can do as much as they like they can use our service if they want or not. And they don't have to have any head of department approval for the activities. And in some ways, Speaker 2 32:06 a question like that. Do you have a sense of how many faculty members actually use you versus want to go on their own way? Or do Speaker 3 32:15 you know what's really hard is you can't tell, because obviously, we only have the stats about people who come through us, we don't know about those who don't. But what we tend to do, there was an academic publication, I can't remember by who a few years ago that said, it's approximately, I think it was 15 to 20% of all academics carry out consultancy work. And that's kind of across all different types of institutions. So that's the only thing that we can really benchmark ourselves against in terms of, of our academic community here at Cambridge, are we reaching about that percentage, and actually, in a lot of our schools, we are, we're above that percentage. So we, we think we've got quite quite the majority of people who are doing this activity coming through us. But who knows, because we don't know about what we don't know. And that's one of the real disadvantages of our very light touch policy really, is that whilst we can talk about and report about the consultancy activity that does come through our office, we're clearly not getting the full picture. So that's one of the drawbacks of our policy. On the whole, though, I kind of quite like that light touch policy, and particularly in somebody who has to front the service, it's quite nice for it not to be a compulsory route for academics. So academics are actively choosing to use the service, which means that we have to show the benefit of it, we have to be efficient, and we have to have customer service, sort of at the forefront of our minds. But it really does set you off on a different relationship with your academic. So I used to work in the research office where it's very different because academics have to use your service. And you're seen as part of the the university general administration. So it's a it just provides a bit of a nice and dynamic, I think from the outset. But yeah, but there are lots of problems with a very light touch policy. But there are benefits to it, too. And I think Jackie, yours is almost a slight touch, but with a few more caveats. Yeah, Speaker 4 34:15 I mean, we have, we do have a consulting policy. And I think somebody's asked about, you know, is it in the IP policy or another policy, it is a separate policy on consulting, it's obviously there's an outside work policy as well, which is also there and people can do up to 30 days of outside work a year and it's got to be with head of department approval. So, theoretically, one should be able to track how many people are coming through us because the consultancy policy says you can do consultancy, and you can choose to use us or you can choose to go privately, but you still have to get approval regardless of which route you go and you can use up to 30 days. The challenge is is that the system at the moment is in paper, because we would not like to be in the 21st century. Free. And so only one faculty actually tracks it. So that faculty, we know about 50% of all consultancy work comes through us and 50% is done privately, there may well be other people doing it and not even reporting it, which is which is possible. So, yes, so we do, we don't have a very kind of very detailed policy. And it does sort of deal with, you know, it's because consultancy is not intended to develop IP. Generally, it's not covered in a consultancy policy, we obviously have it in our contracts about what happens if IP gets developed. But it's not part of an IP policy. And we don't really cover it in the IP policy in the in the consultant policy, because you're not intended to develop IP, we look at every contract and we say, is this research or not. And unfortunately, sometimes it's a gray area, I look at projects. And I think I could argue this either way, I could say it's consultants assets research, the academics usually want it to be consultancy. Because we can turn contracts around in a week, and Research Services is going to take six months. But sometimes we genuinely have to throw it back at the institution. And sometimes we can get around it, depending on the nature of the work. If we think that IP, the intention is for IP to be developed, then we we tend to throw it back at research services. So it's very, it is quite light touch. But there's more bureaucracy, in our in our policies. Speaker 2 36:33 Can you think of an example Jackie, where you had to make this distinction or throw the ball back over the net, that it really wasn't consulting? It was research and why you handle IP differently in a research contract versus a consulting contract? I'm Speaker 4 36:57 trying to think the one I've actually thrown back at the University recently is not necessarily because it's research, but because it's data. So a big client wanted to has been producing from clinical data. And once our academics to really get what they can out of it. They wanted to come through us because suddenly there was some money involved. And it just got complicated with how do you then cost, what they're doing that actually they're using that data for research purposes for other research purposes, they could develop IP. So we had to look at that. And eventually we went back to this academic and we said no, every time, you know that he'll come to us with a little piece of information. Okay, it looks like consultancy. They're just doing some analysis for the for the client. And then suddenly, there's other people involved. And suddenly they're using the data for other purposes. And suddenly this IP issues. At that point, we say to research services, actually, you need to handle this academic, not usually that happy, they understood, they understood completely. But the problem is then the delays. And they've already waited a year before it even got to our desk, because of the delays inside the university was a real challenge with capacity and research contracts departments. And Speaker 3 38:12 I think you're right, that's a really difficult area. And that's one of the things we might talk about later, when you think about structure, in that one of the problems of being outside the university administration, and not in the same office as the research collaborators and people who deal with research collaborations is that you do have to be very careful about those pinch points where actually that something could go either way. And the thing that we try and avoid is the game playing. So an academic chooses the route either for purposes of efficiency or pricing. So we have to work very closely with like our research office to make sure that we're we're aligned in terms of how you price things depending on IP ownership, so that there isn't underhand decision making as to which of our offices handle projects. Speaker 2 38:58 So what are the different models that you've seen for the setup of consultancy support? And what do you see are the advantages and disadvantage of these different model structures? Speaker 4 39:10 I mean, I think about so in fact, Cambridge and Oxford is quite similar in that we're part of the essentially the tech transfer company, slight differences. Cambridge has a subsidiary of Cambridge enterprise, whereas Oxford University innovation, our team is embedded in it, which is great because it buffers our cash flow. But it's they pretty similar models. I have seen the the models at UCL, for example, and at Imperial are where they have a consulting company, which is completely separate from their tech transfer company. And they're really big. They, they they seem to have any sort of, I don't know, sort of a scale effect because they're really successful and they and they do that they have really big teams to do this. They also drive different types of projects quite often they sort of project management capability whereas in our office were more facilitation capability than actually managing in detail in the projects. So that those were the two main subsidiary models. The third one is obviously being inside the university. And I had when I was at Bristol, I started looking at setting one up and looked at the advantages and disadvantages of both. And I mean, the advantages of an internal is it sort of, it's part of the university that governance is part of the university. It's not alien, or commercial, office external. External, there could be more protection for the university's charitable status, big thing in the UK, it's a bit more arm's length, there's reputational issues, were Oxford University innovation, I don't know how much arm's length we can get, you know, there's, there's some theory that we're, we're quite separate, we can more easily track and monitor things quite quite often. That there is this, you know, throwing over the fence? And when do you do it? I think the disadvantage of the internal model and I I concluded that it wouldn't work internally, to be quite honest, is because often finance just don't understand the university finances. But they're academics and we pay them and therefore they should just do the stuff and why do they need any of that. And we got to a situation where the academics were getting something like, you know, 15% of the of the fee, because there was all these costs that have to be taken off and taken off and taken off, and then we're going to share the surplus, which just didn't work. And of course, nobody's using the service. And those are the challenges of being in inside the office inside the university. You know, it increases your core staff, which is an issue for universities. It's a, it seems to be you get distracted into other activities. So I came to the conclusion that if you want to do this properly, you you probably you probably going to need to do it externally. I think there are some examples where it's been done internally, quite successfully. But you need to ring fence, you need to have your own support staff, and you need to be able to act quickly. If you have to go through a bureaucratic financial system will go to legal services every time you want to change a clause on a contract, it's just not going to work. Yeah, Speaker 3 42:12 I think you're right, Jackie, I think being a separate legal entity, having a bit of autonomy means that we can just be much more flexible, much, much quicker. And also by charging a fee. So to provide the service, it means you can properly resource our teams. So I think we're quite lucky Jackie, and that both of us can turn around contracts pretty quickly. Because the way that we've set the fee means we have enough staff to do the contracts. And if I think if you become part of the university, you just in in the bigger pot of things calling for resources. So I think that's kind of one of the main benefits of having it as a separate organization. Speaker 2 42:47 Helena Jackie, do you know anything about how your administrative departments were first set up, because in the beginning, somebody had to sort of take this leap of faith that, okay, we're going to seek people in these chairs, we're going to pay them. And they're going to get these consultant agreements, inked and get some money flowing, but it's going to take some time. So can you talk a little bit about how that decision was made. Speaker 3 43:12 So it's a bit of a continuum of a long story really. So because Cambridge enterprise itself, so the whole technology transfer office, actually used to be part of the university's administration. So all of the technology transfer function, so tech transfer, seed funds, and consultancy, all sat within the university administration. And it was back in 2006, that it was decided to spin out that activity, and then become a company in its own right, which obviously, is at the point at which you're making very big decisions about bums on seats and setting up a company to do this. So that's like the Cambridge enterprise story took us. And sort of the tech transfer office has been around in some form, probably since the 70s. And it but it wasn't until 2006, that they were set up as a separate company. And then in terms of the consultancy activity, it's actually something that's just grown organically over time. So if we look back at the last 10 years, in terms of the volume and scale of contracts we handle, they have gone up exponentially almost. So we've had about a 4% increase over that time period. So the team has just grown to keep up with the demand of the contracts. And actually, because we charge the fee, we get the money in order to employ people to do the work. So there's not much outlay in terms of risk, because we know that we recover our costs, but it's grown over time. So the team has expanded from two people 10 years ago to now there's nine of us, but that's just grown as as the demand for the services grown. Speaker 4 44:50 Yeah, I think Alex was slightly different because the and again, I wasn't around, but the the tech transfer office and was Oxford University innovation was outside before the consulting became part of it. And there was actually consulting services inside the university. And at some point about 12 years ago, they made a decision to move it into the tech transfer function. I'm assuming it's because of the commercial nature of the work, the fast turnaround, because it just, it wouldn't work inside the university, I think the university was trying to get rid of a lot of that commercial stuff. And so they moved it out. So it happened inside the university. And I think that many of these officers do start inside the university realize, actually, it's really difficult to function quickly and efficiently inside the university, we're just University is not set up for that, and then move it out into a separate company. Speaker 3 45:45 And having a separate company has also got benefits from sort of like the tax position as well. And so we can do more commercial type transactions without having an impact on the the overall University's corporation tax position, or even their charitable status, as you mentioned earlier, so they're their financial drivers for why you do that as well. Speaker 2 46:04 Yeah. Okay. We're gonna switch gears. Now, in the interest of time, we're getting short on time, we want to talk a little bit about practical considerations, you know, the inking of agreements, the conflict of interest checks, etc. And my next question is, if you are in this separate office, how do you ensure consistency with approach to the overall agreement and the overall relationship that other departments two might have with this, this industry partner? Are the things you have to be mindful of in those contracts? Speaker 3 46:41 I mean, I think, sorry, carry on. No, you go, you go, Jack, Speaker 4 46:44 I was gonna say that our our model agreements, we have model agreements, which are, initially were checked by the university's legal team, we have our own legal team out what actually one lawyer, he's fantastic. And he does everything for us, He makes sure that if we get a client contract that our normal terms are in that plant contract. So we do, we did have that precedent. And all the university at the university doesn't themselves, they make sure that, obviously, they have to go through through the same route. So I think that the legal team at the University would make sure that they sent some consistency across the US. I mean, we have pretty good autonomy, though. I mean, we don't check every time, we just make sure that we're not inadvertently doing something that's research and creating IP that we're giving away. I think that's the big thing for us, we look very carefully at particular clauses around IP. And I think that somebody asked him in the questions is How is IP ownership dealt with in consulting agreements, we allow the client to own the IP, because the intention of the consultancy agreement is not to create IP. And I think what's key is to look at what the person is doing. So I was having a really big argument with a client because they kept pushing back on our clauses, and I kept thinking, but you're not understanding this. And then I finally looked at the scope of the work because the scope, I mean, we look at the scope of the work, but we don't look at it in detail, because the academic that's there but but then the scope of the work that the client wanted the academic to do was design and develop, create, instead of actually advise on the design and development of or advise on the creation of. So again, she was trying to use him as an employee, instead to create IP, instead of actually an advisor to advise on the IP. So we have to be careful about that. So IP belongs to the client. And we have had instances where IP has been inadvertently created, and it belongs to the client. And that's, that's life. But generally, it's so based on that client's background IP and what the client is doing that actually it's fine. Speaker 2 49:00 Yeah, I think that the big bright line is, what a consulting agreement is, is advice on the industry partners. The industry partners product, their method, their process, they've already got this thing created, it's in some neat little box. And now they want some advice from a consultant about perhaps how best to launch it perhaps which patient populations is it fit the best? What kinds of hurdles might they encounter with launching such a thing? That's the kind of advice that they want under a consulting agreement versus a research agreement. It's more like, okay, let's test and improve and make make the next generation of this thing. And that's a research agreement or a service agreement that would belong in a laboratory function. Speaker 4 49:53 We do actually do service agreements and there is a question around consulting agreements versus service agree In minutes, we do consulting agreements, which would be advice. application of knowledge, essentially, we do also handle service agreements for the university. So if an iPad if a client wants access to a university piece of equipment, we will put that into place for them. We also will put into place when you unit where a client wants to send in samples, or you know, or somebody to do some consulting with some service. Sometimes our consultancies need. So they're advising on the design and development of something, but they actually test something in the lab, we call that consulting with service. And provided we cost in the use of the university's resources, and the department signs it off and gets that money. That's fine. So it's lots of ways of skinning the cat. It's not just only consultancy, its consultancy, its services, its analysis and testing, its use of equipment, and all those things in between, we actually manage under Managed consultancy program. Speaker 2 51:02 That's interesting that you manage all of those things, because then you can make those distinctions as to which type of agreement it should fall under best. Yeah, great. I'm gonna switch gears since you talked about about money. And go to the question that we've prepared about money for ourselves. And that is, one of the benefits we mentioned earlier is that some of the money can flow back to the university if you have an institutional support function for consultancy? How do your finances work? Do you have your own systems and how does the money flow? Speaker 3 51:36 So at Cambridge, we do have our own finance team, which is great because it can means we can be efficient and effective, and we can distribute the funds. And there's really three main things that we do with the income from consultancy. The first thing is, once we receive a payment from a client, we take our cuts fee, but that's not one of the three, but we're just making sure we're taking our fee. But then actually, we can pay academics directly. So if we pay our academics for the work they do, it's not through the university's payroll, we're paying academics, as if they are doing the work in a self employed capacity. But we can also pay departments for use of their facilities, as Jackie says, so our university can invoice us and we can distribute the funds in that way. And then the third thing we can do with the income is because we have a separate legal entity to the university and separate tax group, if our academic chooses not to take the income personally, we can actually make the choice to donate that to the university as a charity. So then we can flow that money back in to the departments. So that's the main way that the way our finances flow. And the key really, though, I think it's Jackie mentioned earlier is, if you, even if you're within the university is actually good to be able to have your own dedicated finance function, so that you can make payments really quickly, because that's one of the really important parts of the service we provide. Speaker 4 53:04 Yeah, and as it's very similar, the only difference with us is that we what we have what we call departmental consultancies. So one at Cambridge, an academic or choose to give, gift it to the university hours, upfront, say, No, I'm doing this as a departmental consultancy. And we contract with the department to do the work with them as they're named academic. And therefore, the money just flows directly to them. It's not it's not a sort of gifting of the money. But it's very similar. Essentially, we pay people personally, as self employed independent contractors, or we pay the departments and we obviously pay the department for services. There are some, we've been having debate recently about paying three people through payroll, because some of the, when an academic does it once every three years, they don't have to register for tax, because in the UK, if you've only got one job, you don't have to fill in a tax return form. I know it's slightly different in the US. It's different in my home country as well. But in the UK, you don't so people are saying I'm getting 1000 pounds, or let's say 1500 pounds, because 1000 pounds is the limit 1500 pounds one year, and they're not going to fill in a tax return form. So they say Why can we be paid through payroll, and we looking at that the problem is, is that it takes six months to pay them through payroll, and they also unhappy. So it's just if again, the systems inside the university are not set up for these small amounts, quick turnaround, paying people. So we haven't gone down that route. But there are universities that do that. Edinburgh, for example, has an external company doing consultancy, but they pay via payroll. So there are models, there's there's all sorts of models to actually make the funds flow. Speaker 3 54:49 I'm just going to answer the question that was in the q&a really quickly because it's related to this donating the getting tax refunds. So if an academic wants to donate the money from their project, They have to tell us at the outset, they have to fill out a waiver form, which means that the money that was intended for them personally, is no longer intended for them personally, so they don't have to pay tax on that income. But that's why we need to know before the project happens, so it's not seen as tax dodging, so they don't get tax refunds as such, but they don't do taxes due on that money that was originally intended for them. Speaker 2 55:24 But we are running short on time, I think we have time for one last poll. And while we put up that poll, and this poll is going to be on which issues are difficult or painful for managing consulting agreements, and the answers there are getting informed getting informed that it's even happening. So being aware, negotiating pre contract of the specifics of the project, the rates, the dates, etc, handling post contract, agreement on IP terms, passing the conflict of interest check, and nothing is difficult. It's all smooth sailing. So this is a pic one. Speaker 1 56:10 One is I'm sorry, if I formatted that incorrectly, it Speaker 2 56:14 should have been a multiple, but it should pick the one that's most important to you, or the biggest problem. Speaker 1 56:23 And if there's something different, that's the most challenging, and you want to add it to the chat, feel free to submit there as well. Speaker 2 56:31 And then as folks are submitting that, Jackie and her longevity final final comments about some of the barriers to efficiency, when you are in this separate organization structure. Speaker 3 56:47 I think actually being a separate organizations structure on the whole leads to more efficiencies. But some of the things to keep in mind are, in order to be efficient, make sure you're properly resourced. So set your fee appropriately. So you've got enough people to do the work. And then think about some of the practical considerations we mentioned earlier. So have model agreements in place that you can use really quickly. One of the things we found really benefited from is from having really clear documentation about the process, so that anybody that comes into the role can do the job quickly. But then, I guess in terms of it being a separate organization, it's really important to keep good relationships with the key teams within the university, that can have an impact on how well you can function. So even if you've got a separate finance function, make sure you're keeping in with the finance division, you know who to talk to in the insurance office, and that you've got that good relationship with the research office, those things that fall in that gray area, don't get lost in being battered around. Speaker 2 57:48 And, Jackie, you'll have the last 30 seconds before we look at our pain points. Speaker 4 57:54 I mean, yeah, I agree with Helen, I think it's really is about resourcing it properly, because we're, if you're an optional service, which we are, it's very different to tech transfer. In most UK universities, where you're not an optional service, we have to be efficient and effective, we have to get money in we have to pay out almost immediately, we have to keep informed with our with academics. So therefore your systems have to support that. So if you you know, one of our challenges is was to have a centralized ops team and a centralized finance team where I don't have control of what they do. So it's really and it would be worse in a big institution, rather than in the company. It's even challenging in a company. So I think it's absolutely key if you're going to do this ring fence it manage it properly, because efficient. If you're not efficient and effective, you're going to lose people and they're going to do it themselves. Speaker 2 58:49 Very good. Okay. And our final reveal, and the final input from the audience on the pain points where the two biggest ones were, number one, just awareness that the consulting is happening in the first place. And number two, is agreeing on the IP terms. I think one of the things that I'm hearing that's different in the, in the UK versus the US is that when we're doing consulting agreements, we're classically not using our own developed agreements, because we're not providing this as a service in general, we're using their agreement. And so their agreement is is very different in terms of what we might agree on. So I think that's one one big distinction. One big difference. And also a large benefit of having a program is, you know, having those agreements and it makes it makes efficiencies came able and you know, it makes you able to do more of that work. So, with that, I want to thank everyone for being here today and participating. I hope you enjoyed our session. Sammy, do you have any closing words? It's Speaker 1 1:00:00 just a few closing words. First and foremost, thank you, Helen, Jackie and Laura for joining us and sharing your expertise and knowledge and attendees. Thank you so much for joining and participating. We appreciate you, you know, asking questions, answering polls, all of that to help make this an informative discussion. And as a reminder, a recording of the webinar will be available in the autumn Learning Center within a few days of this event, and that is included with your registration. And don't forget to complete the webinar evaluation which will open when you sign off from this session and sent in a follow up email tomorrow as well. This helps us to serve your needs in the future. So thank you all again so much. We really appreciate you being here with us today. And I hope that everyone has a great rest of the day and week ahead. Thank you all Transcribed by https://otter.ai