An Interdisciplinary Knowledge Transfer Approach to Facilitate Sustainable Development: Australia as an Example

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The triple helix model has been proposed to facilitate commercialization of intellectual property and involves government, university and industry interaction to increase productivity. Several countries, including Australia have been described in terms of the extent of their adherence to this model. However, the description of commercialization has generally been limited to a few outcomes with economic growth and profit as the only considerations. This paper motivates for the description to be extended to incorporate other benefits such as environmental impact of the products and processes developed. It also looks at how Australia's research and development environment of cooperative research centres and industrial clusters could include knowledge from professionals with a 'triple bottom line' focus. These scientists, engineers and business people would drive this focus in new product development as well as bring in new industry projects facilitating cleaner production and eco-efficiency. This paper discusses a few examples of opportunities and projects a country can, through small improvements, use to become incrementally more environmentally sustainable while gaining economic benefits.

Stream: Economic Sustainability

Paper: , Interdisciplinary Knowledge Transfer Approach to Facilitate Sustainable Development, An,

Alan Howgrave-Graham spent four years working in hydrological research then pollution control in the Department of Water Affairs in South Africa, before spending twelve years teaching microbiology and doing environmental biotechnology research, mostly at the University of Natal where he completed his PhD. He migrated to Australia in 1999 and started a Doctorate in Business Administration specializing in commercialization of University intellectual property. In 2001 he worked at Curtin University at the Centre of Excellence in Cleaner Production before taking up his current position as microbiology lecturer at Monash University. He has published 17 scientific journal articles on anaerobic and aerobic treatment of wastewaters and the detection of protozoan pathogens in water. More recently he published a book chapter on the implications on biotechnology strategies of the Australian system of cooperative research centres and industrial clusters, as well as a journal article on opportunities for cleaner production in West Australian SME's. His research interests are in all the above topics as well as in methods for teaching to large classes and in multicultural settings.