Innovation Through the Liaison with Academia and End Users

This chapter discusses the importance of establishing dialogue between academia (one of the innovation stakeholders) and the end-users (the beneficiaries of the research), and how governmental bodies have instigated and fostered these linkages. An overview is given of the main UK government organisations that have driven research in forensic science from the 1980s to the present day, together with government reviews of the forensic landscape impacting upon research and development. The interactions between government, academia and end-users to drive innovations in the fields the fields of fingerprints, DNA and digital forensics are described, and it is concluded that there are significant differences in the way the collective research community in each field has approached development and implementation of novel technology. Examples are reported where such three-way collaborations between academia, end-user and government have produced highly effective end products, but there is also scope for improving effectiveness of dialogue between these parties, particularly in the rapidly evolving digital forensics discipline.