Art and Business: A Royal Combination

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The result is a collaboration that is more focused and targeted than a course sponsorship, which couldn't possibly allow such access or direct communication. And sponsoring a research fellow costs somewhere between £20,000 and £25,000 ($39,000 to $48,000). (In contrast, running a studio project within the RCA in which a class works on a brief, costs between £20,000 and £50,000.)

In its first year sponsoring a research associate, Visteon asked him—Serge Porcher—to look at the connection between driver and vehicle. After extensive initial research, Porcher latched onto a throwaway comment: "Why can't the car dashboard be more like a PC?" He ultimately developed a customizable, hierarchical system of in-car information, with data displayed on the dashboard by means of rear screen laser projection. Visteon liked the idea so much it ended up spending around $125,000 to create a full-size model, which it exhibited at London Design Week. It has never, says Simon Harris, "failed to get a good response."

Then Visteon sponsored a second associate, Jeong-tae Kang, and asked him to consider lighting inside cars. "It's a problem that sometimes people get distracted or dazzled by other people's headlights," says Harris. "Kang's solution was to have some kind of light on in the car all the time, so your eyes are slightly accommodated. We hadn't thought about it like that. Whether or not it's possible or valid, it opens up a whole new line of thought."

A Select Few

And that, says Myerson, is exactly the point. "My view is that it's not the role of design schools to be sending engineering drawings to China." And so far the companies working with RCA seem pleased with the arrangement, too. Founded in 1999, as a "state within a state," in Myerson's words, the Centre will take in around £1.5 million ($2.9 million) this year.

Competition to take part in the research associate program is steep—this year there were roughly 50 applicants for the 10 spots. But Myerson is reluctant to increase the number of research associate positions, saying it doesn't make sense for an elite design school to run a massive innovation program.

"The back end of innovation is a professional consulting role, and we don't want to compete with the employers of our graduates—or our own graduates who are setting up innovation and design companies," he explains. "We want to use the unique setup of an art and design college, and the broad span of expertise and the academic freedoms that we have here, to ask the interesting business questions and challenge the accepted ways of doing things."

Click here for a slide show of concepts borne out of the research associate program at the RCA's Helen Hamlyn Centre.

Helen Walters is the editor for BusinessWeek.com's Innovation and Design Channel .