The Cooperative Research Centres (CRC) program has been under review as part of the National Innovation System Review1 (review). The review was released last week.
The review found that many parties were dissatisfied with aspects of the program. It recommended the program be ‘refreshed, refocused and modified’ and granted an increase in funding to allow for annual rounds to take place over the next five years.
The recommendations of the review include:
- the CRC program’s primary objective be defined as providing support for pre-competitive or pre-applicative research ventures between end users and researchers which tackle a clearly articulated, major challenge for the end users addressing identified risk gaps
- modifying the CRC program to allow greater flexibility in areas including organisational structure, governance models, lifespan (typically 4–7 years but up to a maximum of 10 years where appropriate), membership, IP arrangements and size of Commonwealth grant (up to a maximum of $45 million over the life of the centre), and
- imposing greater requirements on applicants to demonstrate why their proposed structure, including membership arrangements, research plan, outputs, IP arrangements and funding, will deliver a solution to the identified challenge which will be quickly and effectively taken up by end users.
This article was written by Kristin Stammer, Partner, and Cameron Patience, Solicitor, Sydney.
Endnotes
1. National Innovation System Review
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