Interesting article, lots to agree with.
But I would offer one criticism, that of misdirection.
Paraphrasing James Madison, it is governments ability to govern itself that entitles it to govern its country.
Innovation needs to start within government.
Rather than aiming at setting goals or policies that demand/fund others, the Irish government should first aim to innovate within, wait….., memory working….. ! PPars!!!.
Ok, rephrase that.
The goverment needs to become sucessful at innovation within its own workings. Instead, it seems to be pointing at the horizon and medicating us with platitudes about being World leaders in…., etc etc.
As regards innovation in the economy, the government should simply get out of the way. While the funding is welcome of course, consider the unproductive results of having to interact with government for this funding: joining in the chorus aiming at the unachievable, administration costs, accomodating political and policy whims.
Consider that if we had a government which could do its job (different debate) effectively, effieciently while pursuing innovation in terms of technology and work practise, then, what would be the trickle down effect of that?
Is this achievable?
Maybe if we saw a little more ass on the line from the pol’s and c/p servants..
Al
Irish Universities have two main tasks: teaching and research, which are in many respects complementary. The focus of universities should be on research rather than on innovation in the commercial sense. While universities should of course be able to spin-off campus companies and benefit from their success, the main reason why the state needs to support university research is that is in many respects a pure public good. This has to distinguished from more applied, commercially-oriented research, often with patentable results.
At present SFI dominates research funding and influences the attitudes of University research bureaucrats: thus Economists (and I daresay Arts and Humanities people) are liable to be asked to tick boxes about patents applied for and granted. All very well for Engineering and Bio-medical sciences up to a point, but perfectly idiotic in other areas.
We also have to recognise that not every university in Ireland can be even remotely world-class in everything it does: this is especially the case in Science and Technology where research can be very expensive. For the Social Sciences and humanities, good research costs very little (Colm Mc Carthy can supply an anecdote about the late Harry Johnson to that effect), and there is more room for some real competition.
It was a really good, insightful and to-the-point article.
Of course, after sorting out the banks, the next most important objective of Government must be to stimulate innovation. It is only through innovation that industry of all types and our future economy will develop and thrive.
In the first instance, innovation is about people.
What do people want? What are the unmet needs? What will they pay for?
People (markets) want and need a lot of things that are not dependent on special technology or science, and to an even greater extent not dependent on new technology or science (research). Unfortunately, our policy-makers have demonstrated a blinkered approach over the past decade; they keep looking for the golden bullet of innovation success through S&T research. This is doomed to continued failure, sustained in the interim only by naïve optimism and hope that it, surely, will come in the future.
Of course, some S&T research is necessary, mainly to keep our human capital up to scratch as absorptive capacity – to absorb technology from anywhere in the world as it becomes available. Richard rightly identifies the danger of trying to target the future from an indigenous fundamental research starting point.
An equally important element of absorptive capacity is the capacity to manage the process of converting innovation inputs into economic outputs. This is not a straightforward process, but it can be done with specific and well developed Innovation Management methods and training. This is to disagree slightly with the tone of Richard’s last paragraph. Innovation can’t be mandated, but it certainly is amenable to good process and method.
Regarding the Innovation Task Force, I’ve done a quick profile analysis of the 28 members a couple of weeks ago. (This looks good on a radar diagram, but I can’t get it in here.) Note: these are not rigorously researched data, but it gives some support to Richard’s comments - it’s heavy on the public and academic backgrounds and too light on the industry practitioner background.
Employment Background ITF (current)(%) My Ideal(%)
Academic 25 10
Public 28 10
Investment 8 10
MNC 14 25
SME 17 35
Other 8 10
Also, it’s interesting to look at the “innovation type” experience profile (again, estimates only).
Innovation Type ITF (current)(%) My Ideal(%)
Tech 100 50
Non-tech 0 50
Goods 70 40
Process 10 20
Service 20 40
I’m sick of this talk about how we are too small to have 7 great universities or to excel in everything. We have the entire European Union to draw from and believe me, there is plenty of frustration among scholars plodding through the French and German systems for us to exploit, not mention the huddled masses of China and India. Do you think everyone at Princeton is from New Jersey? Everyone in Irish academics should be encouraged to do their best work, collaborate with the best possible colleagues and funded with every penny they deserve based on quality and not a penny more. Let the specialization emerge organically (i.e. competitively), don’t manage it based on how things used to be.
Fund excellence.
Excellence attracts intellects.
Intellects innovate.
Stay out of their way.
@John Sheehan
There is a fixed cost in running a department. People in small departments, regardless of the discipline, therefore spend a disproportionate amount of time on management. Besides our conference and email network, we also benefit from casual contact over coffee and in the loos. It helps to be in a large and excellent department.
@John D
I agree. If the 7 universities were allowed to compete, and if unsuccessful departments and even universities would close, I would be the last to set a target for the number of universities in the Republic. That’s not how it works, however. Universities are instruments of regional policy, and Paddy Jr must be able to study anything within an hour’s drive from Mummy and Daddy.
We’re good with the blue sky aspirations but we wont become like Denmark, for example by wishing it.
Just read some of the Dept of Enterprise and Employment’s agency reports and press releases and you will find lots of jargon, superlatives and propaganda but little of critical assessment.
Enterprise Ireland claims a survival rate of 90% for its start-ups in the past decade - which is not believable - while, Iona, the biggest spinout from an Irish university in the past two decades, is acquired by a US firm of more recent vintage and it merits not even a comment from a policy maker.
Any implications from the shambolic rollout of broadband?
It’s not clear what the goal of the science policy is - support multinationals or develop local firms but the usual pattern with the latter is that they are acquired by a bigger overseas firm and have a limited impact on the Irish economy.
There is a lot of money currently available and detail on spending but the ambitions beyond ministerial dreams of a Stanford University developing in Ireland, are modest.
SFI has a target of 30 start-ups in the next 5 years, which may see about six surviving.
As regards China, this is a comment from Prof. Seamus Grimes of NUI Galway:
Irish Software Association (ISA) chairman Seán Baker, recently told a meeting of researchers and software executives, that research needs to involve commercial input from a much earlier point in the process. He also warned academic researchers that overvaluing intellectual property inhibited commercialisation.
Professor Danny Breznitz of the Georgia Tech, an innovation expert, who has advised the Irish government and State enterprise agencies, said in 2007 that Irish businesses lack the confidence to become world business leaders. He said Ireland was not creating enough new businesses, and when new businesses are set up, the financial supports are not there to keep them innovating. Professor Breznitz said he feared that Irish research is too narrowly focussed on biotech and the ICT (information and communications technology) sector. If a country wants sustained economic growth it has to focus on innovation, not only on the research side but on the commercialisation and the growth of productivity, he said.
Professor Bhidé of Columbia said in his book The Venturesome Economy, that the US venture capital-backed businesses he studied, use different people and procedures than the typical lab doing high-level research: they employ a much smaller proportion of PhDs in their technical staff, and their overall workforces contain a larger proportion of managers and sales and marketing staff - - people who are close to users.
@Michael
“Enterprise Ireland claims a survival rate of 90% for its start-ups in the past decade - which is not believable ”
Actually if this is true it may be where the problem lies. What we should be seeing is up to 80-90% failure rate but the remaining 10-20% are the ones that become the new big players of the future. Perhaps they’re playing too safe.
We need a Dragons Den approach to new startups, a readiness to take risks in new ideas and not beat people up when some of them fail.
@Richard Tol
I understand and share your frustration with parish pump politics distorting resource allocation but perhaps you are too defeatist. There are those who are making a stand for quality over regionalism. From day one, SFI funded Trinity and UCC far more than anyone else because their grants were far better and the home team heroes just had to deal with it. This courageous approach has delivered rapid results and deserves recognition and support. We still have a lot to learn but we are improving very quickly. The idea that we would go from virtually no research to silicon valley in 5 years was always absurd. We are getting there though.
@John D
SFI is better than average. I would take it a step further. If 2 of the 7 Departments of Astrology are excellent, 2 are okay, and 3 are struggling, then the subvention of the 3 should be reallocated to the 2 excellent ones.
John Sheehan above mentions a Harry Johnson anecdote. Dismissing grumblers in the UK economics profession who complained of ‘inadequate funding’, Harry remarked: “All you need to do economic research is cigarettes and coffee”.
Does Ryanair count as innovation, because it copied a US airline- after Michael O’Leary failed to sell the then-loss making airline to Aer Lingus, as instructed to do by the late Tony Ryan? IMO, it does - as it brought something new and different to the European travelling public - a certain kind of closeness to customers.
Fostering innovation in business requires more than investment technology, science or engineering. Sometimes, it does not require any such investment at all!
TCD’s William Kingston has been writing about this for years. For his publications, see http://people.tcd.ie/wkngston
But given his criticism of civil service practices and culture, he is unlikely to be invited to even present some ideas to the Government Task Force. These ideas focus on clever legislation, more than on funding activities.
It was this kind of smart legislation, in the original form of Tax Relief on profits from export sales, that supported the drive attract FDI. As response to the 1950s economic crisis here, it had merit.
We need simlar casts of mind in the public and private sectors.
Watching C4 news tonight, Britian seems to be focusing on the opposite end of the spectrum at the moment, (probably a gross simplification), namely apprenticeships.
The report said that despite a concerted effort aided by Alan Sugar, they have not been successful at stimulating recruitment within the trades thru sponsor subsidies, facilitation, etc.
Considering our shrinking work force, tax base, etc; perhaps the nation should be focusing on innovation at this level too.
Germany and Sweden have been world leaders in metals. That is old tech but it provides wealth for playing with nano-tech within a large effective business organization. It took centuries.
The fascination with garages and what goes on there is a reflection of a desire for easy money. The easiest is opm. Banking is an exact model of what is wrong with this country. Money is only lent to ….. get this … short term winners!
So it is just as well that it does not require capital to innovate.
Some of you are mathematicians. You know Hamilton, an Irishman, invented quaternions. No one had a use for this branch of maths until Clerk-Maxwell used them to make electrical and magnetic forces intelligible. A century later and quaternions are now used for 3D graphics, as they use four dimensions.
But in fact, few people understand electricity at all. Heaviside simplified the math and reduced the number of equations by dropping things out of them. Thus modern theorists are deprived of the full picture. Tesla, who was far more innovative than Edison, was making use of the originals. But he may have had access to other influences as well. Innovation only recommenced lately beaming a small amount of power a metre or so to recharge a mobile phone or whatever. Tesla was blowing things up with his transmitted power. But at that time there was no way of metering consumption, so his backers ceased funding.
An attempt to understand these equations would reap enormous benefits. But there woukld be very few fit to teach this. This is a neglected area.
Abiotic oil is now becoming more accepted. Speculative oil well drilling on land may be useful to find what is below and to reap what oil seeps up as the recompense for the cost of drilling into the rocks below our feet. The primary purpose is to find out what is there. If the temperature gradient is large enough then we have geo thermal power. This is amost a mature technology in Iceland and is beyond dwvwlopment stage in England USA and Australia.
Richard Tol’s paper was useful. But solutions are always top down. The one good thing aboiut the depression is that many assets will drop in value and allow solutions to come to the top. Inflationary bubbles prevent long term answers as there is too much competition with short term gains for long term projects to come to fruition. There is also going to be more leisure time for many …. once they have sent of this weeks batch of CVs …. We couild do worse than fund some hedge row lecturers to set up ad hoc schools on their topic.
If the government has decided that secondary education is poor value then it should proceed to reduce teachers by more than the reputed 5 teachers per school. It could then institute classes over the net for those who wish to learn. Apprenticeships beckon for the rest. The secondary schools can teach those who still cannot read or write. The money saved can be invested in better on line courses for those who can use this medium. And then we can tackle third level ….
You wrote: “There is a fixed cost in running a department. People in small departments, regardless of the discipline, therefore spend a disproportionate amount of time on management”. True, but I have two reservations: (i) the management element has been needlessly increased in recent years: more administrators means heads of Department have to spend more and more time meeting and communicating with them (ii) the really big fixed costs on the research side are in Science, Engineering, etc. I would maintain that minimum efficient scale is to some extent endogenous and varies a lot across disciplines.
Also, the minimum size to sustain good academic programmes is higher if Universities insist on PhD programmes. In the Social Sciences, this insistence has lead to the neglect of good Masters programmes, and it has been a struggle in some institutions to correct this bias. Often the effects of small or medium scale can be countered by co-operation: UCD, TCD and Maynooth now co-operate in a joint PhD programme: the initiative came from below, and was not thought up in some grandiose strategic plan.
Interesting that you remark about Harry Johnson spending “a career travelling in search for mental sparring partners and avoiding administrative drudgery”. I wonder how he would have reacted to the brave new world of Programme Managers, Vice Presidents by the dozen, Strategic Research Plans, Teaching and Learning Committees, and so on….
@John S
Methinks that your point that Ireland’s departments cannot simultaneously run a decent master’s and PhD programme underlines my point that they are too small.
In Johnson’s days, universities were attended by the select few. Nowadays, we have mass education at 3rd level. I would not want to turn back that clock.
Along with “regional” and “industrial”, “innovation” is yet another costly pronoun in search of a “policy”.
I would completely disagree with the common perception that Ireland experienced an “education based boom” in the 1990s, prior to the bubble that ensued subsequently.
Pro-cyclical fiscal, monetary and incomes policies (alongside rapidly expanding global activity) that were prevelant from the 1990s are all that are required to explain the first part of the “Celtic Tiger”.
Therein lies the trap. To falsely ascribe an inital return to dull employment on “innovation” or “knowledge” or other ill defined and poorly proven concepts opens up the way to years of more pork barrelling and tax funded waste.
Quality, not quantity in 3rd level education, with renewed focus on research. No directive or prescriptive role for government in such funding. Marry that with a reduction in the subsidies, tax fiddles and regulation that feed crowding out (the “green” industry is now a genuine threat to genuine innovation in this regard).
@Richard Tol
I did not say (and certainly did not intend to give the impression) that Irish University departments were too small to run good Masters and Doctoral programmes. This may be true of some of them, but not all. Those which run well-designed Doctoral programmes can almost certainly run good Masters programmes as well. My point was rather directed at University administrators, who in some cases saw little value in Masters programmes (because they are following a Natural Sciences/ Medical model, where you tended to go straight from first degree to PhD, and Masters were not seen as research degrees and therefore not a priority).
Clearly some departments ought to be focused on undergraduate and perhaps undergraduate + masters programmes only.
We have had mass higher education in Ireland for several years now: it is not an excuse for the imposition of so much administrative drudgery on academics. The experience of being administered by people who know very little about the disciplines they purport to administer is not to be recommended.
While we may have drifted away from the original topic of innovation policy, I would maintain that no such policy has any real hope unless we produce well-educated Bachelors and Masters graduates as a first step. Some universities need to reminded of this.
@John S
We agree that choices need to be made, and good choices at that.
Still, a large department can mount several solid teaching programmes at the same time. A small department cannot. A large department can more easily accomodate the whims of policy makers than a small department can.
One small set of changes which may facilitate bottom up innovation is to adjust bankruptcy laws to remove the fear of failure. We should also consider continuing to pay social welfare payments to those who start business (and perhaps to their employees?) while the business is yiedling low profits - though obviously we would need to have some form of monitorring to ensure the businesses will become viable and perhaps restrictions regarding the allowable industries.
At present unless an entrepeneur has enough savings to live on for the forseeable future (and to pay wage until cashflow is secured) to live on or can convince somebody of the merits of their idea, the business will not be started - this cannot be optimal.
Given the high unemployment rate and low prospects of an immediate return to work for many people this is unlikely to lead to excessive costs which we are not already facing.
Richard’s article certainly raised an important point in relation to the Irish innovation system and its need for overhaul.
What intriqued me about the repsonses to the article was the significant bias towards colleges and the concomitant indication that the respondents see innovation as predominantly science based.
Frank Devitt’s contribution was different. He contexualised innovation in the way it is being done more and more in modern wealthy economies. And of course there is the trend where modern western economies rely on services to return about 70% of GDP.
If Ireland is to have a well functioning innovation system we should pay more attention to the fact that customers are the users of products and services and it is they who decide whether the products or services will be successful or remain largely unused.
A mindset that sees innovation as predominantly a college or college -related activity misses this fundamental point. While it is instinctively plausible to agree that we should be always seeking new knowledge, an obsession with this approach leads to ignoring the fact that about 98% of all innovation are brought about by working and re-working the existing stock of knowledge. While much is made of patents ,only about 2% of all patents relate to pioneering solutions and 97% never recover the cost of filing.
I believe a very diferent approach is needed where we put the role of business at the centre of our innovation system. There will be problems that innovative businesses will need to solve if they are to respond to significant customer needs and in some cases they will need access to the expertise of the colleges. As well as this,, the colleges also have a role in the production of graduates who themselves are able to carry on creativity and problem solving roles in industry.
If the complementary roles a of business and the colleges are brought into balance in our innovation system, we could expect far more useful innovative activity than we see now.
In this context, the annual innovation survey carried out by the German Institute for Economic Research evaluates countries on a wider basis than merely looking at R&D spend and our positioning for 2008 is 15th (well behind both Denmark and Finland).
We need a joined up innovation system as Frank Devitt suggests. The colleges and what they bring to the table is only part of what Ireland needs to do. We need some balance in our thinking and we must change the mindset that suggests every time we need improved innovation performance, we look to the colleges.
However, changing mindsets is only the beginning. A lot of work must be done to ensure that companies are able to manage innovation, from the early stages of selecting the best opportunities to developing products or services quickly, cost effectively and right first time.
This is easier said than done and SMEs in particular find it very difficult to manage the thinking, practices and tools to do this well. The reality is though that SMEs all over the world realise that they have to put in the effort to get this right.
In many ways it is a bit like ISO qualitysystems when they were first introduced. Small companies said they could not do it, saying the work involved was too complicated. When it became obvious they had to apply a quality system in order to stay in business, it soon became the norm
August 10th, 2009 at 10:28 am
Interesting article, lots to agree with.
But I would offer one criticism, that of misdirection.
Paraphrasing James Madison, it is governments ability to govern itself that entitles it to govern its country.
Innovation needs to start within government.
Rather than aiming at setting goals or policies that demand/fund others, the Irish government should first aim to innovate within, wait….., memory working….. ! PPars!!!.
Ok, rephrase that.
The goverment needs to become sucessful at innovation within its own workings. Instead, it seems to be pointing at the horizon and medicating us with platitudes about being World leaders in…., etc etc.
As regards innovation in the economy, the government should simply get out of the way. While the funding is welcome of course, consider the unproductive results of having to interact with government for this funding: joining in the chorus aiming at the unachievable, administration costs, accomodating political and policy whims.
Consider that if we had a government which could do its job (different debate) effectively, effieciently while pursuing innovation in terms of technology and work practise, then, what would be the trickle down effect of that?
Is this achievable?
Maybe if we saw a little more ass on the line from the pol’s and c/p servants..
Al
August 10th, 2009 at 11:09 am
I always cringe when I read words like “innovation” and “policy” placed in juxtoposition.
August 10th, 2009 at 3:00 pm
Irish Universities have two main tasks: teaching and research, which are in many respects complementary. The focus of universities should be on research rather than on innovation in the commercial sense. While universities should of course be able to spin-off campus companies and benefit from their success, the main reason why the state needs to support university research is that is in many respects a pure public good. This has to distinguished from more applied, commercially-oriented research, often with patentable results.
At present SFI dominates research funding and influences the attitudes of University research bureaucrats: thus Economists (and I daresay Arts and Humanities people) are liable to be asked to tick boxes about patents applied for and granted. All very well for Engineering and Bio-medical sciences up to a point, but perfectly idiotic in other areas.
We also have to recognise that not every university in Ireland can be even remotely world-class in everything it does: this is especially the case in Science and Technology where research can be very expensive. For the Social Sciences and humanities, good research costs very little (Colm Mc Carthy can supply an anecdote about the late Harry Johnson to that effect), and there is more room for some real competition.
August 10th, 2009 at 4:20 pm
It was a really good, insightful and to-the-point article.
Of course, after sorting out the banks, the next most important objective of Government must be to stimulate innovation. It is only through innovation that industry of all types and our future economy will develop and thrive.
In the first instance, innovation is about people.
What do people want? What are the unmet needs? What will they pay for?
People (markets) want and need a lot of things that are not dependent on special technology or science, and to an even greater extent not dependent on new technology or science (research). Unfortunately, our policy-makers have demonstrated a blinkered approach over the past decade; they keep looking for the golden bullet of innovation success through S&T research. This is doomed to continued failure, sustained in the interim only by naïve optimism and hope that it, surely, will come in the future.
Of course, some S&T research is necessary, mainly to keep our human capital up to scratch as absorptive capacity – to absorb technology from anywhere in the world as it becomes available. Richard rightly identifies the danger of trying to target the future from an indigenous fundamental research starting point.
An equally important element of absorptive capacity is the capacity to manage the process of converting innovation inputs into economic outputs. This is not a straightforward process, but it can be done with specific and well developed Innovation Management methods and training. This is to disagree slightly with the tone of Richard’s last paragraph. Innovation can’t be mandated, but it certainly is amenable to good process and method.
Regarding the Innovation Task Force, I’ve done a quick profile analysis of the 28 members a couple of weeks ago. (This looks good on a radar diagram, but I can’t get it in here.) Note: these are not rigorously researched data, but it gives some support to Richard’s comments - it’s heavy on the public and academic backgrounds and too light on the industry practitioner background.
Employment Background ITF (current)(%) My Ideal(%)
Academic 25 10
Public 28 10
Investment 8 10
MNC 14 25
SME 17 35
Other 8 10
Also, it’s interesting to look at the “innovation type” experience profile (again, estimates only).
Innovation Type ITF (current)(%) My Ideal(%)
Tech 100 50
Non-tech 0 50
Goods 70 40
Process 10 20
Service 20 40
August 10th, 2009 at 4:25 pm
(That last table didn’t work too well. Perhaps this might be clearer.)
Employment Background >>> ITF (current)(%) — My Ideal(%)
Academic >>> 25 — 10
Public >>> 28 — 10
Investment >>> 8 — 10
MNC >>> 14 — 25
SME >>> 17 — 35
Other >>> 8 — 10
Also, it’s interesting to look at the “innovation type” experience profile (again, estimates only).
Innovation Type >>> ITF (current)(%) — My Ideal(%)
Tech >>> 100 — 50
Non-tech >>> 0 — 50
Goods >>> 70 — 40
Process >>> 10 — 20
Service >>> 20 — 40
August 10th, 2009 at 4:35 pm
I’m sick of this talk about how we are too small to have 7 great universities or to excel in everything. We have the entire European Union to draw from and believe me, there is plenty of frustration among scholars plodding through the French and German systems for us to exploit, not mention the huddled masses of China and India. Do you think everyone at Princeton is from New Jersey? Everyone in Irish academics should be encouraged to do their best work, collaborate with the best possible colleagues and funded with every penny they deserve based on quality and not a penny more. Let the specialization emerge organically (i.e. competitively), don’t manage it based on how things used to be.
Fund excellence.
Excellence attracts intellects.
Intellects innovate.
Stay out of their way.
Anything further is meddling.
August 10th, 2009 at 5:17 pm
@John Sheehan
There is a fixed cost in running a department. People in small departments, regardless of the discipline, therefore spend a disproportionate amount of time on management. Besides our conference and email network, we also benefit from casual contact over coffee and in the loos. It helps to be in a large and excellent department.
August 10th, 2009 at 5:25 pm
@John D
I agree. If the 7 universities were allowed to compete, and if unsuccessful departments and even universities would close, I would be the last to set a target for the number of universities in the Republic. That’s not how it works, however. Universities are instruments of regional policy, and Paddy Jr must be able to study anything within an hour’s drive from Mummy and Daddy.
August 10th, 2009 at 5:30 pm
@Frank Devitt
I do not disagree. There must be a method to innovation as that is the only explanation of the repeat success of some large companies.
August 10th, 2009 at 5:38 pm
@John D
We’re good with the blue sky aspirations but we wont become like Denmark, for example by wishing it.
Just read some of the Dept of Enterprise and Employment’s agency reports and press releases and you will find lots of jargon, superlatives and propaganda but little of critical assessment.
Enterprise Ireland claims a survival rate of 90% for its start-ups in the past decade - which is not believable - while, Iona, the biggest spinout from an Irish university in the past two decades, is acquired by a US firm of more recent vintage and it merits not even a comment from a policy maker.
Any implications from the shambolic rollout of broadband?
It’s not clear what the goal of the science policy is - support multinationals or develop local firms but the usual pattern with the latter is that they are acquired by a bigger overseas firm and have a limited impact on the Irish economy.
There is a lot of money currently available and detail on spending but the ambitions beyond ministerial dreams of a Stanford University developing in Ireland, are modest.
SFI has a target of 30 start-ups in the next 5 years, which may see about six surviving.
As regards China, this is a comment from Prof. Seamus Grimes of NUI Galway:
http://www.finfacts.ie/irishfinancenews/article_1016075.shtml
Irish Software Association (ISA) chairman Seán Baker, recently told a meeting of researchers and software executives, that research needs to involve commercial input from a much earlier point in the process. He also warned academic researchers that overvaluing intellectual property inhibited commercialisation.
Professor Danny Breznitz of the Georgia Tech, an innovation expert, who has advised the Irish government and State enterprise agencies, said in 2007 that Irish businesses lack the confidence to become world business leaders. He said Ireland was not creating enough new businesses, and when new businesses are set up, the financial supports are not there to keep them innovating. Professor Breznitz said he feared that Irish research is too narrowly focussed on biotech and the ICT (information and communications technology) sector. If a country wants sustained economic growth it has to focus on innovation, not only on the research side but on the commercialisation and the growth of productivity, he said.
Professor Bhidé of Columbia said in his book The Venturesome Economy, that the US venture capital-backed businesses he studied, use different people and procedures than the typical lab doing high-level research: they employ a much smaller proportion of PhDs in their technical staff, and their overall workforces contain a larger proportion of managers and sales and marketing staff - - people who are close to users.
http://www.finfacts.ie/irishfinancenews/article_1016844.shtml
August 10th, 2009 at 7:05 pm
@Michael
“Enterprise Ireland claims a survival rate of 90% for its start-ups in the past decade - which is not believable ”
Actually if this is true it may be where the problem lies. What we should be seeing is up to 80-90% failure rate but the remaining 10-20% are the ones that become the new big players of the future. Perhaps they’re playing too safe.
We need a Dragons Den approach to new startups, a readiness to take risks in new ideas and not beat people up when some of them fail.
August 10th, 2009 at 7:37 pm
@Richard Tol
I understand and share your frustration with parish pump politics distorting resource allocation but perhaps you are too defeatist. There are those who are making a stand for quality over regionalism. From day one, SFI funded Trinity and UCC far more than anyone else because their grants were far better and the home team heroes just had to deal with it. This courageous approach has delivered rapid results and deserves recognition and support. We still have a lot to learn but we are improving very quickly. The idea that we would go from virtually no research to silicon valley in 5 years was always absurd. We are getting there though.
August 10th, 2009 at 7:45 pm
@John D
SFI is better than average. I would take it a step further. If 2 of the 7 Departments of Astrology are excellent, 2 are okay, and 3 are struggling, then the subvention of the 3 should be reallocated to the 2 excellent ones.
August 10th, 2009 at 7:48 pm
John Sheehan above mentions a Harry Johnson anecdote. Dismissing grumblers in the UK economics profession who complained of ‘inadequate funding’, Harry remarked: “All you need to do economic research is cigarettes and coffee”.
August 10th, 2009 at 7:55 pm
Does Ryanair count as innovation, because it copied a US airline- after Michael O’Leary failed to sell the then-loss making airline to Aer Lingus, as instructed to do by the late Tony Ryan? IMO, it does - as it brought something new and different to the European travelling public - a certain kind of closeness to customers.
Fostering innovation in business requires more than investment technology, science or engineering. Sometimes, it does not require any such investment at all!
TCD’s William Kingston has been writing about this for years. For his publications, see http://people.tcd.ie/wkngston
But given his criticism of civil service practices and culture, he is unlikely to be invited to even present some ideas to the Government Task Force. These ideas focus on clever legislation, more than on funding activities.
It was this kind of smart legislation, in the original form of Tax Relief on profits from export sales, that supported the drive attract FDI. As response to the 1950s economic crisis here, it had merit.
We need simlar casts of mind in the public and private sectors.
August 10th, 2009 at 8:16 pm
Watching C4 news tonight, Britian seems to be focusing on the opposite end of the spectrum at the moment, (probably a gross simplification), namely apprenticeships.
The report said that despite a concerted effort aided by Alan Sugar, they have not been successful at stimulating recruitment within the trades thru sponsor subsidies, facilitation, etc.
Considering our shrinking work force, tax base, etc; perhaps the nation should be focusing on innovation at this level too.
August 11th, 2009 at 5:32 am
Germany and Sweden have been world leaders in metals. That is old tech but it provides wealth for playing with nano-tech within a large effective business organization. It took centuries.
The fascination with garages and what goes on there is a reflection of a desire for easy money. The easiest is opm. Banking is an exact model of what is wrong with this country. Money is only lent to ….. get this … short term winners!
So it is just as well that it does not require capital to innovate.
Some of you are mathematicians. You know Hamilton, an Irishman, invented quaternions. No one had a use for this branch of maths until Clerk-Maxwell used them to make electrical and magnetic forces intelligible. A century later and quaternions are now used for 3D graphics, as they use four dimensions.
But in fact, few people understand electricity at all. Heaviside simplified the math and reduced the number of equations by dropping things out of them. Thus modern theorists are deprived of the full picture. Tesla, who was far more innovative than Edison, was making use of the originals. But he may have had access to other influences as well. Innovation only recommenced lately beaming a small amount of power a metre or so to recharge a mobile phone or whatever. Tesla was blowing things up with his transmitted power. But at that time there was no way of metering consumption, so his backers ceased funding.
An attempt to understand these equations would reap enormous benefits. But there woukld be very few fit to teach this. This is a neglected area.
Abiotic oil is now becoming more accepted. Speculative oil well drilling on land may be useful to find what is below and to reap what oil seeps up as the recompense for the cost of drilling into the rocks below our feet. The primary purpose is to find out what is there. If the temperature gradient is large enough then we have geo thermal power. This is amost a mature technology in Iceland and is beyond dwvwlopment stage in England USA and Australia.
Richard Tol’s paper was useful. But solutions are always top down. The one good thing aboiut the depression is that many assets will drop in value and allow solutions to come to the top. Inflationary bubbles prevent long term answers as there is too much competition with short term gains for long term projects to come to fruition. There is also going to be more leisure time for many …. once they have sent of this weeks batch of CVs …. We couild do worse than fund some hedge row lecturers to set up ad hoc schools on their topic.
If the government has decided that secondary education is poor value then it should proceed to reduce teachers by more than the reputed 5 teachers per school. It could then institute classes over the net for those who wish to learn. Apprenticeships beckon for the rest. The secondary schools can teach those who still cannot read or write. The money saved can be invested in better on line courses for those who can use this medium. And then we can tackle third level ….
August 11th, 2009 at 7:18 am
@Colm McC
Harry Johnson spend a career travelling in search for mental sparring partners and avoiding administrative drudgery.
August 11th, 2009 at 9:02 am
@Richard Tol
You wrote: “There is a fixed cost in running a department. People in small departments, regardless of the discipline, therefore spend a disproportionate amount of time on management”. True, but I have two reservations: (i) the management element has been needlessly increased in recent years: more administrators means heads of Department have to spend more and more time meeting and communicating with them (ii) the really big fixed costs on the research side are in Science, Engineering, etc. I would maintain that minimum efficient scale is to some extent endogenous and varies a lot across disciplines.
Also, the minimum size to sustain good academic programmes is higher if Universities insist on PhD programmes. In the Social Sciences, this insistence has lead to the neglect of good Masters programmes, and it has been a struggle in some institutions to correct this bias. Often the effects of small or medium scale can be countered by co-operation: UCD, TCD and Maynooth now co-operate in a joint PhD programme: the initiative came from below, and was not thought up in some grandiose strategic plan.
Interesting that you remark about Harry Johnson spending “a career travelling in search for mental sparring partners and avoiding administrative drudgery”. I wonder how he would have reacted to the brave new world of Programme Managers, Vice Presidents by the dozen, Strategic Research Plans, Teaching and Learning Committees, and so on….
August 11th, 2009 at 9:12 am
@John S
Methinks that your point that Ireland’s departments cannot simultaneously run a decent master’s and PhD programme underlines my point that they are too small.
In Johnson’s days, universities were attended by the select few. Nowadays, we have mass education at 3rd level. I would not want to turn back that clock.
August 11th, 2009 at 9:58 am
Richard,
There is indeed “mass education at 3rd level” now. Watch out for those diminishing returns though.
August 11th, 2009 at 10:08 am
Along with “regional” and “industrial”, “innovation” is yet another costly pronoun in search of a “policy”.
I would completely disagree with the common perception that Ireland experienced an “education based boom” in the 1990s, prior to the bubble that ensued subsequently.
Pro-cyclical fiscal, monetary and incomes policies (alongside rapidly expanding global activity) that were prevelant from the 1990s are all that are required to explain the first part of the “Celtic Tiger”.
Therein lies the trap. To falsely ascribe an inital return to dull employment on “innovation” or “knowledge” or other ill defined and poorly proven concepts opens up the way to years of more pork barrelling and tax funded waste.
Quality, not quantity in 3rd level education, with renewed focus on research. No directive or prescriptive role for government in such funding. Marry that with a reduction in the subsidies, tax fiddles and regulation that feed crowding out (the “green” industry is now a genuine threat to genuine innovation in this regard).
The only innovation policy is hands off.
August 11th, 2009 at 10:54 am
@Richard Tol
I did not say (and certainly did not intend to give the impression) that Irish University departments were too small to run good Masters and Doctoral programmes. This may be true of some of them, but not all. Those which run well-designed Doctoral programmes can almost certainly run good Masters programmes as well. My point was rather directed at University administrators, who in some cases saw little value in Masters programmes (because they are following a Natural Sciences/ Medical model, where you tended to go straight from first degree to PhD, and Masters were not seen as research degrees and therefore not a priority).
Clearly some departments ought to be focused on undergraduate and perhaps undergraduate + masters programmes only.
We have had mass higher education in Ireland for several years now: it is not an excuse for the imposition of so much administrative drudgery on academics. The experience of being administered by people who know very little about the disciplines they purport to administer is not to be recommended.
While we may have drifted away from the original topic of innovation policy, I would maintain that no such policy has any real hope unless we produce well-educated Bachelors and Masters graduates as a first step. Some universities need to reminded of this.
August 11th, 2009 at 11:50 am
@John S
We agree that choices need to be made, and good choices at that.
Still, a large department can mount several solid teaching programmes at the same time. A small department cannot. A large department can more easily accomodate the whims of policy makers than a small department can.
August 11th, 2009 at 12:16 pm
One small set of changes which may facilitate bottom up innovation is to adjust bankruptcy laws to remove the fear of failure. We should also consider continuing to pay social welfare payments to those who start business (and perhaps to their employees?) while the business is yiedling low profits - though obviously we would need to have some form of monitorring to ensure the businesses will become viable and perhaps restrictions regarding the allowable industries.
At present unless an entrepeneur has enough savings to live on for the forseeable future (and to pay wage until cashflow is secured) to live on or can convince somebody of the merits of their idea, the business will not be started - this cannot be optimal.
Given the high unemployment rate and low prospects of an immediate return to work for many people this is unlikely to lead to excessive costs which we are not already facing.
August 18th, 2009 at 3:58 pm
Richard’s article certainly raised an important point in relation to the Irish innovation system and its need for overhaul.
What intriqued me about the repsonses to the article was the significant bias towards colleges and the concomitant indication that the respondents see innovation as predominantly science based.
Frank Devitt’s contribution was different. He contexualised innovation in the way it is being done more and more in modern wealthy economies. And of course there is the trend where modern western economies rely on services to return about 70% of GDP.
If Ireland is to have a well functioning innovation system we should pay more attention to the fact that customers are the users of products and services and it is they who decide whether the products or services will be successful or remain largely unused.
A mindset that sees innovation as predominantly a college or college -related activity misses this fundamental point. While it is instinctively plausible to agree that we should be always seeking new knowledge, an obsession with this approach leads to ignoring the fact that about 98% of all innovation are brought about by working and re-working the existing stock of knowledge. While much is made of patents ,only about 2% of all patents relate to pioneering solutions and 97% never recover the cost of filing.
I believe a very diferent approach is needed where we put the role of business at the centre of our innovation system. There will be problems that innovative businesses will need to solve if they are to respond to significant customer needs and in some cases they will need access to the expertise of the colleges. As well as this,, the colleges also have a role in the production of graduates who themselves are able to carry on creativity and problem solving roles in industry.
If the complementary roles a of business and the colleges are brought into balance in our innovation system, we could expect far more useful innovative activity than we see now.
In this context, the annual innovation survey carried out by the German Institute for Economic Research evaluates countries on a wider basis than merely looking at R&D spend and our positioning for 2008 is 15th (well behind both Denmark and Finland).
We need a joined up innovation system as Frank Devitt suggests. The colleges and what they bring to the table is only part of what Ireland needs to do. We need some balance in our thinking and we must change the mindset that suggests every time we need improved innovation performance, we look to the colleges.
However, changing mindsets is only the beginning. A lot of work must be done to ensure that companies are able to manage innovation, from the early stages of selecting the best opportunities to developing products or services quickly, cost effectively and right first time.
This is easier said than done and SMEs in particular find it very difficult to manage the thinking, practices and tools to do this well. The reality is though that SMEs all over the world realise that they have to put in the effort to get this right.
In many ways it is a bit like ISO qualitysystems when they were first introduced. Small companies said they could not do it, saying the work involved was too complicated. When it became obvious they had to apply a quality system in order to stay in business, it soon became the norm
August 24th, 2009 at 12:41 pm
I agree with Edward’s points. Perhaps the following might be a useful contribution: http://www.iveybusinessjournal.com/article.asp?intArticle_ID=840