Communication Enhancement Sample Clauses

Communication Enhancement. The survey responses from Industry highlighted two further areas where improved communication could pay dividends for Industry. Firstly, Industry reported that the National Laboratories are generally poor at providing feedback on equipment performance once operational, which is in ▇▇▇▇▇ contrast to the detailed discussions around design and specification of the equipment prior to installation. It is self-evident that providing more detail about in- service performance, and feedback on possible improvements, would assist industrial R&D and may prompt additional opportunities for co-innovation or inward innovation from Industry. Such feedback would also further strengthen National Laboratory – Industry relationships, and may well provide the supplier with additional case study material to generate external sales, improve economic impact and help sustain the Supply Chain. This relatively minor change in approach could lead to significant benefits for all parties. Secondly, Industry would benefit from a simplified roadmap of upcoming RI projects with an estimation about how likely they are to be funded and information about the likely sub- system/ component requirements. There are a number of sources for such European roadmaps (e.g. ESFRI) but Industry, particularly Small Medium Enterprises, report that it is often difficult to evaluate discrete technology requirements, size of potential markets, and likelihood of funding approval. ▇▇▇▇▇ could adopt the role of producing regularly-updated simplified technology development roadmaps for an Industrial audience, as a further mechanism for promoting the role of its coordinated technology development, test and validation infrastructure in the innovation landscape. A further observation from the survey feedback is the increasing use of patent searching by Industry to solve R&D challenges. The proliferation of search tools, and of suppliers offering patent searches as a commercial service, means that some companies have now allocated dedicated resources to this activity. At least one of the AMICI Partners has undertaken commercially-funded work on a TF as a direct result of a routine patent search (material science for the space sector) undertaken by a company with which it had no previous relationship. Therefore, patent information should be added to the standard matrix of information provided by each TF, for patents either developed directly on/for the TF, or patents that have been secured by other users following u...