LABNOTES
Weighed down with a torrent of information?
Here's where we offer a sideways look at some of the recent stories that caught the eye of Michael Kenward, our Editor at Large.
Reading list – New ways of running R&D
It must have been early in the 1990s when the then top honcho – can't remember his official title – in Kobe Steel waxed lyrical about his company's use of global R&D. What he meant was the company's decision to scatter R&D labs around the planet so that there was always someone working on current challenges. This concept has now matured into what they now call the "global innovation network" model.
IDA Ireland has sponsored the Economist Intelligence Unit to look a bit deeper into the notion and to talk to 300 senior executives in a range of industries. The results appear in Sharing the idea: The emergence of global innovation networks.
There are lots of interesting things in this survey, not least the fact that 80 per cent or so of the people they talked to said that investment in R&D has gone up in the past three years with even more expecting this to continue over the next three years.
Maybe it is a coincidence that the numbers are almost exactly the same for a question on "the levels of cost and complexity associated with conducting successful research and development". Eighty per cent or more reckon that these costs have increased.
On the globalisation issue, the report says that "The past three years have seen a marked increase in the offshoring of R&D units." And that organisation of innovation is "increasingly 'open'". As the report puts it "Companies are not only offshoring R&D functions, but outsourcing them, too."
Look out for this trend to accelerate. "Over the next three years, respondents predict a marked increase in the proportion of R&D being carried out by external partners."
These moves don't come without "management challenges". As the EIU puts it "Intellectual property theft and a 'loss of control' over R&D are the biggest concerns for respondents as they consider embracing the global innovation network model."
It isn't quite clear why IDA Ireland paid for the study. Perhaps it is because the country has become a part of the global innovation networks of quite number of major technology businesses.
One consequence of this trend to scatter R&D around the planet, and to enlist the support of others, including academics, is that a country that wants to act as an R&D magnet has to do more than offer cheap real estate and lower taxes, the route that Ireland originally took to attracting businesses. As Sean Dorgan, CEO, IDA Ireland, puts it in the press release on the study "As companies collaborate more closely with external and international partners, including universities and research centres, there is much to be gained for countries around the world that can offer strong innovation skills and capabilities to leading global organisations."
22 May 2007
Reading list – Is your company any good at technology intelligence?
Technology Intelligence is all about developing systems "to capture information about emerging technologies and trends and to deliver it in a usable form to decision makers". It is something else to keep innovators on their toes.
This new management toy comes from the Institute for Manufacturing (IfM) at University of Cambridge. A team there went and looked at the approaches companies used "to gather information, exploring their strengths and weaknesses and identifying practical ways to address common problems".
The IfM has come up with a short note on its findings. This describes the ways in which companies seek out Technology Intelligence:
- Trawling: making in-house information explicit, particularly information that is not known to be there.
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Mining: extracting explicit intelligence information from internal resources such as libraries and databases.
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Targeting: focusing on new technologies outside the company and monitoring their development.
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Scanning: keeping abreast of any unforeseen developments beyond the firm that could have an impact on the business.
An important point they make is that "Simply collecting information is not enough. Companies must ensure it reaches the right people."
As the world's secret services will tell you, it also helps if your spies compare notes. As the note puts it:
"Often technology, market and competitor information is collected separately. It is important to encourage communication between the three areas as both market and competitor intelligence can contribute valuable information about new technologies."
As you'd expect, the IfM is keen to market its expertise in Technology Intelligence. They will even sell you a workbook "that summarises the research into company intelligence systems and gives practical tools and advice". First, though, start with the academic papers that have come out of the research.
11 April 2007
So, how does innovation work?
Like many countries, the UK has been screaming about the need for innovation. It is the only way to make the economy grow, says the official line. So Gordon Brown and Tony Blair have vied with one another to make the right noises about innovation and the science that, they believe, will make it happen.
Spending more on science may not have quite the same appeal as Daily Mail bait as throwing cash at health and education, but the area has come out at least as well as those other sinks of taxpayers' money. And yet we don't really know how innovation works.
If we did there would be no reason for the Economic and Social Research Council to launch a new initiative: £2 million for Targeted Initiative on Innovation. The money will go to "eight different research projects focusing on innovation". Among the things they will investigate are, says the announcement:
- How can the rate of innovation be increased to enhance economic growth and competitiveness, while the direction of innovation simultaneously steered to achieve social and environmental sustainability?
- What are the options for public policy at different levels to increase innovation and steer towards such policy objectives?
- What economic, social and managerial factors enable an economy such as the UK to best capture high value from increasingly global innovation processes?
- How is it best to model and measure emergent innovation activities and systems?
All this is happening under the banner of the Advanced Institute of Management Research. As a part of the same package, AIM, as it calls itself, has also awarded seven Innovation Fellowships. One area that these people will delve into is that of innovation in the service sector, something that recently cropped up on the agenda when the UK's R&D Scoreboard suddenly added the sector to its number crunching.
As the ESRC's announcement puts it "with over 75% of employment in the UK now being located in services, we need to enhance our understanding of service innovation". Another topic for discussion is "green innovation". It isn't enough, it seems for innovative stuff to be "sustainable". We also need to look at how it happens. Or, as the announcement puts it "can the rate of innovation be balanced with the need to achieve environmentally and socially sustainable levels of innovation?"
4 April 2007
Event - biotech for sale
It is another sign of the times when a bunch of universities get together to run an exhibition and conference with the goal of getting bioscience and pharmaceutical companies to license their ideas. The gig is on 20 June at Central Hall Westminsister, coincidentally just over the road from the Department of Trade and Industry, which is always looking for evidence that academics are doing their bit to launch their science into the wider commercial world.
We first read about the show, horribly named Bioversity 2007, on the SET Squared web site. They are among the events "partners". Their announcement describes the bash as "the first exhibition of its kind dedicated to showcasing university technologies available for licensing, either directly or through early-stage spin-outs".
The show clearly hopes it will run and run. The event's own web site invites visitors to register their interest for Bioversity 2008.
Should anyone be interested, the pub next door does a good pint. Central Hall is, after all, where the Methodists hang out.
31 March 2007
Media tarts up regional event
The Regional Development Agencies (RDAs) in the UK play an increasing role in delivering science policy. They are supposed to be in touch with what is happening locally, and get to hand out taxpayers' money to support local businesses and universities in the innovation game.
The RDAs are gradually overcoming scepticism of the "what do they know about science?" variety, but then they go and put on events with people like "Dr Edward De Bono, creator of the Six Thinking Hats concept and regarded by many as the world’s leading authority on constructive and creative thinking". To compound the disquiet, they recruit "BBC Newsnight’s Kirsty Wark" to host the bash.
Both have their place – somewhere – but it seems unlikely that can they really add much to the launch of the Northwest Science Strategy on 17 April at AstraZeneca, Alderley Park, Cheshire.
The Northwest Regional Development Agency (NWDA), one of the more visibly active RDAs, boasts "Our region is a £100 billion, science-based economy which is home to a number of world-class industrial laboratories, with total business R&D investment in excess of all other regions outside of the South East. We have strong, ambitious and vibrant universities and Research Institutes."
Dr De Bono may be a nice chap whose utterings are, contrary to their labels, nothing like the guff regurgitated by the dreadful Martin Lukes in his columns in the Financial Times. But he hardly has a reputation as a serial entrepreneur who could be a role model for aspiring innovators. Maybe Sir Alan Sugar is too busy torturing people on TV, but there must be someone they could line up as a keynote speaker someone who has actually done something to turn science into innovation.
Actually, looking at the list of the other speakers, you wonder why they need to ship in a management guru. We'll stick to reading the document which, if the last one is anything to go by, will bring together the views of some real heavyweights.
28 March 2007
UK budget lobs £100 million at business R&D
The DTI's Technology Programme has been lumbering along for a few years now, but it still isn't all that clear what the Technology Strategy Board is for. Allegedly set up to think great thoughts on how the DTI should promote innovation in the UK through technology, it actually turned out to be a "mini Research Council" with control over its own budget for projects.
The latest evidence piles on support for the latter. It comes in the shape of "A further £100 million for UK business to research and develop new technologies from environmentally friendly low carbon projects to leading edge manufacturing". That's the words from the post-budget press release from the DTI.
The fine print in the press release tells us where the money will go:
- £40 million for advanced manufacturing projects - including design engineering technology to boost competitiveness and sustainability in sectors such as aerospace, vehicles and energy.
The allocation of this cash, along with the rest of the DTI's money for R&D in the Technology Programme, starts next month.
There is a sting in the tail in the announcement for the academic research community. The release adds that "Research Councils will provide a further £10 million for projects with a high quality academic component."
Some might see this as further evidence that the DTI is meddling in how the Research Councils spend the money they receive from the government. One organisation is certainly getting worried.
The usually controversy free Council for Science and Technology has already written to the DTI (Word file here), with copies to even more important people, "to express their concern following the announcement that the science budget had been reduced by £98 millions".
The CST has a number of beefs. The cuts mess around with something called "the ring-fence which protects the science budget". As the money was to plug holes in the DTI's own budget, the CST is miffed that the cuts "penalise Research Councils for good budgetary management, something which Government rightly recognises as being of very great importance".
23 March 2007
Brown piles on the tax credits
The responses to the UK budget are piling in. Deloittes has put out a press release UK business to welcome R&D extension in 2007 Budget announcement. Not a lot of detail beyond the quote that:
"This has gone further than we expected and along with the establishment of the specialist R&D units reflects the Government’s enthusiasm for encouraging innovative activities in the UK. Even after taking into account the various changes in the corporation tax rates in the coming years, the net benefit of the relief should be greater for SMEs and Large companies."
The Royal Society has also chipped in with one of its content free statements from the President on the general support for science. There's a nice sideswipe in the comment that:
"The Royal Society will be closely monitoring the flow of money to ensure that increases in investment result in more research being done and do not disappear amidst changing accounting practices."
Would Gordon Brown really be that sneaky?
Not to be outdone, The Royal Academy of Engineering has thrown out its own response, welcoming the green tinge to the budget. The academy also chips in with some advice on where to aim the cash that Gordon Brown plans to put into research:
New money to support science and education is vitally important but really needs to be focussed on those areas where industry is crying out for high level skills.
22 March 2007
Reading list - What makes MIT tick?
Route 128 may have become a run-of-the-mill strip of expensive Boston real estate, but the myth still looms large. It is where the technology boom of the last half of the 20th century got going. It is the strip that launched a thousand articles. Silicon Valley is an upstart in comparison.
How did this Boston, or Cambridge Massachusetts if you want to be picky, drag come about? Was it really all down to MIT and its bright scientists? If so, is there anything we can all learn from the place? Like bribing a load of future Nobel laureates to move in and lift the neighbourhood?
MIT is, after all, the institution that Gordon Brown, chancellor of the exchequer and Prime Minister “in waiting,” turned to for lessons in how to turn research into innovation into profits, resulting in the controversial Cambridge MIT Institute.
Rory P. O’Shea and a bunch of too many colleagues to name have written a paper on the subject in the journal R&D Management (vol. 37, issue 1, 2007). Their assessment, “Delineating the anatomy of an entrepreneurial university: the Massachusetts Institute of Technology experience,” is that MIT’s success is a multifaceted phenomenon.
They focus on MIT’s role as a spinner out of companies. While earlier studies looked at different bits of the process, O’Shea et al. reckon to have put the package together.
The abstract says it all really. “The highly complex mechanism of spinoff generation is typically considered the result of either the characteristics of individuals, organizational policies and structures, organizational culture, or the external environment. Explanations of spinoff activity have in the main focused on only one of these dimensions at a time.”
Heed MIT, they say, but don’t go overboard. (They don’t talk of the wisdom of putting £60 million of taxpayers' money into an attempt to clone MIT in the UK.) “We argue that university administrators and academics can learn from the case of MIT, but that efforts at transposing or replicating single elements of MIT’s model may only have limited success, given the inter-related nature of the drivers of spinoff activity.”
Juicy quotes:
“… the MIT story is about a formal, deliberate approach to commercialization, which is supported by a university mission advocated by university leaders who view MIT operating with industry”
“… four attributes of a university are important in supporting spinoff activity. These are the science and engineering base of the university; the quality of research by university staff; the commitment to spinoff activity within management in the university … ; and the culture within the university”.
“… the regional context influences the level of spinoff from a university.”
“… a simplistic attempt by an institution to replicate and transpose current policies and practices without a deeper and more holistic understanding of both their own history and MIT’s history will probably be unsuccessful as they ignore the inter-related nature of the drivers of spinoff activity.”
20 March 2007
The vultures descend on the UK's science budget
Exit stage left Lord Sainsbury, Minister for Science, enter stage right mandarins bearing hatchets. They then wield these to take lumps out of the budget of the Research Councils (RCs).
In all, in what Research Councils UK euphemistically calls "Revisions to Research Council budgets," they have helped themselves to around £60 million from the budgets of the science RCs. Why the hand in the till? As the EPSRC press release puts it "the DTI has agreed with Treasury that some funds will need to be found from within the Science Budget in order to meet financial pressure elsewhere within the DTI".
It may not be a lot out of a total budget for all of the RCs, including those on the edges of science, of over £2.8 billion a year. But it is the first bit of bad news for a decade or so on the budget front. And scientists being what they are, you can expect the scientific community to see this as the beginning of the end.
Not being an expert in bean counting, we can't be sure that we've divined the entrails accurately, but following a link from the Treasury web site we reach a PDF file of Spring Supplementary Estimates 2006-2007 Section 2, Department for Trade and Industry. Within this we see that £27 million went from the science budget for the "Waste Electronic and Electrical Equipment Directive". Nice irony there. The number is just £2 million shy of the amount taken from the EPSRC, the research council that supports research into electronics and electrical equipment.
Another £6 million from the RCs went to National Measurement System. Yet another case of shuffling money between scientific activities.
22 February 2007
Oxford and Cambridge fight new battles
It is a sign of the times when young entrepreneurs from two of England's oldest seats of learning fight it out for the honour of their university without indulging in some pointless physical pursuit. The Varsity Pitch competition, sponsored by NESTA, 3i and Microsoft among others, was a face off between three teams from Oxford and three from Cambridge.
Judged by someone famous on the telly, a survivor (just) of the dot-com boom and bunch of other experts, the competition handed out £5000 to the winner and two £2500 prizes to a runner up from each uni.
The top prize went to TouchSight from Cambridge, who have, it says in the press release, "developed a unique mobility aid for the blind and visually impaired. The glove-based system, called the TouchSight Vision Mitt, enables the user to 'sense' their surroundings using ultrasonic sensors and vibration feedback actuators, providing a low cost alternative or supplement to guide dogs or white sticks".
20 February 2007
Tax relief strains belief
It is a fair bet that the few members of Science|Business community don't know if their company does any R&D. But a third of the people surveyed by Deloitte gave this as one reason for not claiming R&D tax relief.
The next largest response was for the reason "Intend to make a claim but haven’t got around to it
yet". More than 20 per cent said that they weren't aware of R&D tax relief. Strangely, the least "popular" excuse was that the "claim process was too difficult".
yet". More than 20 per cent said that they weren't aware of R&D tax relief. Strangely, the least "popular" excuse was that the "claim process was too difficult".
Deloitte surveyed 560 Small and Medium Enterprises. Of the 160 manufacturers in the survey, "71% of eligible businesses were not claiming the relief".
The regional spread of the results may, or may not, reinforce stereotypes about the local attitudes to money. Northerners, usually reckoned to be canny with their cash, are more likely to claim, with 50 per cent of eligible manufacturers putting in a claim. In the Midlands, reckoned to be the heart of British manufacturing, the number is a startling zero. As Deloitte puts it "all manufacturers surveyed in the Midlands eligible to claim R&D tax relief are failing to do so".
Midlanders even manage to do worse than those effete southerners, who are reckoned by those living in other regions to have more money than is good for them. "In the South-East, 63% of manufacturers are not claiming R&D tax relief...".
Deloitte offers a simple checklist of three questions that manufacturers should ask themselves to see if they carry out eligible activities:
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Have you reviewed your activities since the revised guidelines regarding the definition of eligible R&D were published?
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How many technical specialists do you employ?
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Do you make experimental prototypes or run iterative manufacturing trials?
There's even a free guide from Deloitte "outlining the most common misconceptions".
15 February 2007
Reading list – Governments should be innovative in their spending
The National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts continues its series of papers on aspects of innovation. (Last year they gave us The Innovation Gap.) The latest contribution is Driving innovation through public procurement.
The"intro" to the four-page paper says it all really "Innovation has a role to play in efficient procurement – and efficient procurement has a role to play in stimulating innovation". With £125bn a year leaving the public wallet, government procurement is the biggest single chunk of cash floating around.
The idea that this money can support innovation is hardly new. The US government has been playing this game for years, while criticising the rest of the world for subsidising things it wants to sell. But still not much happens in the UK.
As NESTA points out, small companies often face an uphill struggle to get new ideas taken up. "Because of the scale of public procurement, the government is frequently well-positioned to serve as this ‘early user’, demonstrating the value of innovative products and services to the wider market while providing revenue to the supplier and meeting public needs."
Trouble is, the government is probably the least imaginative customer around, with all sorts of mad requirements. No wonder, then that, "Only one fifth of central government contracts are awarded to small businesses,7 with 14% of SMEs citing the 'effort involved in bidding or prequalifying' as a barrier to selling to the public sector."
The NHS is one of the biggest holes into which the UK throws public money. Small companies tear their hair out trying to find a way in. At least the new National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) is on to the case.
There's a lot more in this brief report from the anonymous people in the NESTA Policy & Research Unit. Maybe Gordon Brown can fit it into bis busy reading schedule.
11 February 2007
Small things scare Cambridge
"Cambridge considers nanotech curbs" it said in a story that was scary enough to be reported on Small Times. Then the news got really worrying. "The Cambridge City Council is considering a law to regulate the use of super-small nanoparticles in research and manufacturing."
What a let down. The next sentence reveals that flatlanders have not come out in sympathy with the nearby turkeys with a nasty dose of nanoflu. "If the council decides to act, it will make Cambridge the second city in the United States, after Berkeley, Calif., to regulate nanotechnology." So it was the other Cambridge and the original repot was in the Boston Globe.
You understand that sort of thing from the West Coast weirdos but you don't expect it of the Boston region. It is most unlikely that the real Cambridge will travel down the same road. They are more likely to worry about parking and all those bikes.
7 February 2007
Reading list - Swiss rolled by OECD
"Most researchers enjoy a comfortable professional position with little pressure to compete for funding, limiting opportunities for new researchers and incentives for innovative research. Moreover, compared to other OECD countries reviewed, the overall level of investment in educational R&D in Switzerland is low, the review notes. More quantitative empirical studies, a harmonisation of indicators and datasets, better funding mechanisms, and a sharing of expertise with international specialists would help to improve the quality of research, the review suggests."
Not what you would call a glowing endorsement. It comes in the announcement of an OECD report National Review of Educational R&D – Switzerland.
Fortunately, the country's performance in science and engineering comes in for a general endorsement. "The country is well known for its outstanding position in knowledge-intensive industries, attracting many foreign people trained in science and engineering," says the report. It goes on to say that "the role played by the higher education sector in R&D is outstanding".
Hang on, though, there are problems here too. Swiss academics seem to achieve this despite the fact that "The level of the government’s direct involvement in R&D funding is extremely low compared with other countries with an equivalent performance, since private firms directly finance much of the R&D activity. More than two thirds of the R&D spending are provided by the private sector."
The problem here is that "most of the private funds flow abroad. Only about 7% of these funds are directed to Swiss universities."
2 February 2007
IBM whips up patent lather
"With 3,621, IBM surpassed its own record and earned more U.S. patents than any other company for the fourteenth consecutive year, exceeding the next closest patentee by 1,170." But that does not mean that the IT giant is happy with the patent system. It used the opportunity of the annual numbers fest from the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) to announce its own initiative to "share and debate ideas on how smaller enterprises view patent systems and can contribute to reform efforts such as improved patent quality".
There's the key to the debate here, quality. (For evidence of further problems with the patents system in the USA, check out "Bluetooth and the vampire?" on the Science|Business IPDigest.) There's a whole load of junk filed. and the people with the biggest stake in the process, small companies, don't have a way to make their views heard.
So IBM is setting up an on-line community, the Inventors’ Forum. Beyond fine statements about intentions, it isn't clear what the thing will do.
The announcement of the plan says:
"The prevalence of patent applications that are of low quality or poorly written have led to backlogs of historic proportions, and the granting of patents protecting ideas that are not new, are overly broad, or obvious. IBM believes raising patent quality will encourage continued investment in innovation by individuals, academic institutions and companies of all sizes, while preventing the over-protection that works against the public interest."
Small companies have a particular concern, they "earn nearly 15 times the number of patents per employee as large enterprises":
"With individuals and smaller companies comprising a significant percentage of the invention that occurs around the world, it is important that we provide a forum to understand their concerns and issues if we want to improve the overall health of our patent systems," said John E. Kelly III, IBM senior vice president of Technology and Intellectual Property. "The goal of this initiative is to enable representatives of a broad segment of the invention community to voice new ideas for improving how they participate in the system and become part of the solution to the challenges our patent systems face."
IBM has also invited venture capitalists "and others who play a role in the evolution of smaller businesses, to join the forum in the second quarter of the year and share their views on the issues affecting their participation in the intellectual property marketplace".
People have been complaining for years that the patent system USA is broken. With its fondness for rushing to the law, companies there run the risk of being help do ransom by fly-by-nights whose dodgy relatives just happen to have a piece of paper that purports to patent the meaning of life. IBM isn't gunning for that lot, but they clearly don't do much for the reputation of a system that even one of the "winners" deems broken.
12 January 2007
