The Development in Scotland of a University Company Group: The Aberdeen Experience

Abstract

The University of Aberdeen is one of the ancient British universities founded in February 1495. It is a medium-sized University with 6050 registered students and an academic staff of approximately 900. There are 76 separate departments and institutes within the faculties of arts, law, science, divinity and medicine, the latter being the oldest in the English-speaking world. The City of Aberdeen has been at the centre of the development of oil and gas ventures in the North Sea since the 1960s. Though individual members of University staff had assisted in some of these ventures, it was not until 1977 that the University itself directly entered into collaboration with industry by the incorporation of a company-Offshore Medical Support Ltd, in which the University is a joint-venture partner with three major oil companies, British Petroleum, Shell and Esso. The main object of this company is to supply the medical needs of oil industry personnel, particularly offshore. Assisting the work of the company, mainly in the areas of research and training, is the University's department of environmental and occupational medicine. The company funds some of the work of the department from its annual income which is now approximately ?1,000,000. In 1978, the University and British Petroleum entered into a further joint venture, Aberdeen Tree Nurseries Ltd, to develop and market fast-growing strains of broad-leafed trees, arising from research work in the department of forestry. This company has now been sold to a commercial forestry company. The successful development of these two companies, together with increasing levels of work for industry, and a realisation that an unco-ordinated approach to collaboration was unsatisfactory for both the University and industry, led the university to consider how it should develop its links with the latter. A report was therefore commissioned in 1980 on the most appropriate structure to adopt. The writer, who undertook the report, had just retired after practising as a commercial lawyer in the Far East and was particularly interested in the methods of technology transfer to industry then being carried out by universities in Great Britain. Industrial development in the Far East, particularly in the 1960s and 1970s, appeared to give some credence to the saying invented in Britain, patented in the U.S., manufactured in Japan. It was therefore of direct interest to ascertain if the industrial liaison structures which had been set up in British universities were ensuring that university technology was reaching and benefiting industry in Britain.