R&D partnerships between industry and academia can be of great benefit to both parties, but setting up an effective collaboration agreement can be tricky. This talk looks at some of the pitfalls, funding sources and tax incentives.

2. Collaborative R&D:
academia, tax, ip & incentives
G-J van Rooyen
Software Engineering Colloquium
24 May 2012

3. The case for R&D partnerships
Short- or medium term access to domain
specialists collaborating on your R&Ddf
Incentives for collaboration
THRIP, S11d rebate
Ideal space for development of prototypes or
proofs of concept
Grow your own talent pool

4. The Pitfalls
IP management (Stephan)
Project management
Tech transfer
Nature of deliverables (“best effort”)
We'll briefly touch on ways
to minimise these risks

5. Identifying opportunities
Good R&D collaboration opportunities between
industry and academia include:
Business need for applied research on non-
critical-path technology
Exploratory R&D
Domain expert required
Long-term recruitment

6. Let's Make a Deal
Deal directly with specialist collaborator
Industry and academia: different drivers
Understand what both parties want from collaboration
Interest is free; focus might not be
More about understanding “worlds apart”:
http://slideshare.net/gvrooyen/joining-worlds-apart

7. Love in the Time of IPRA
Intellectual Property Rights from Publicly Financed
Research and Development Act, No. 51 of 2008
Don't let it spoil the love
Limits IP rights when state funds were (also)
used to create intellectual property
Can be managed (e.g. “full cost”)
Primary deal risk

8. Enjoy your THRIP
Technology and Human Resources for Industry Programme
Designed to help industry access expertise at
research institutions
Government fully or (usually) partially matches
contribution by industry partner
Can it marry with full-cost model?
http://thrip.nrf.ac.za

9. Pravin Giveth: S11d rebate
Section 11d of the Income Tax Act 58 of 1962 (amended)
100% rebate for R&D activities
Can be supersized to 150%
Narrow innovation-driven definition of R&D
Compliance needs to be “baked in” into
collaboration agreement
Successful use unknown

10. Making it work
Tech transfer tricky to manage
Reports and theses poor vehicles
Tech transfer offices are there to help
Graduate brains transfer tech extremely well
Graduate recruitment tricky to manage
Can be extremely valuable screening and recruitment
process, if relationships are built over time
Prototyping vs. product dev

11. Conclusion
Collaboration with a university can add
extremely valuable depth to your R&D
Costs can scale from nothing (“interest”) to
moderate (“focus”) to full (“assignment”)
Can greatly assist with talent acquisition
(substantial issue for software companies)
Do get in touch!

12. Thank You
G-J van Rooyen
gvrooyen@sun.ac.za
@gvrooyen
sun.ac.za/medialab