Australian is known as a nation that conducts high-quality basic research, and the Government wishes to maintain this reputation. … The Government considers, however, that a greater proportion of such research should be in fields that have the potential to improve the nation’s competitive position. …. We have a poor record in translating the results of basic research into effective application.

– John Dawkins, Higher Education: a policy discussion paper, December 1987

Overall, the Australian research sector is highly productive, internationally connected, and recognised globally for high quality research. … Despite this strong performance in producing excellent research, our ability to translate publicly funded research into commercial outcomes lags behind comparable countries.

– Christopher Pyne and Ian Macfarlane, announcement of a new research commercialisation strategy, May 2015

There are various perpetual critiques of Australian higher education, and the idea that we don’t do very well in commercialising research is one of them. As the ABS figures reported in the chart below show, there has been a significant shift in research towards the applied end of the spectrum. But it remains the case that Australian businesses infrequently report universities as a major direct source of innovation.

Perhaps some good will come of the latest round of policy initiatives, but I doubt it will be enough to stop similar analyses being offered 25 years from now. Universities just aren’t particularly well suited to producing commercially-oriented research. They attract people whose main interest is curiosity-driven research, not people who want to make money. Academics are much more likely to apply for grants that don’t involve collaboration with industry than those that do, even though industry grants are easier to get. The university status system is oriented around publications in theoretically-inclined high-prestige international journals, not solving the practical problems of Australian industry. While incentives for particular types of research activity matter at the margins, they are unlikely to change university culture.