TII Innovation Journal

Technology transfer professionals without borders

"Isn't there a risk that the reckless drivers just use this device as a wake-up call and then go on driving ?"  The question was asked by the Swedish television reporter when Volvo introduced a system that videotapes the position of the car in respect to road markings and from them recognizes when the driver is about to fall asleep ("Driver Alert System"). Indeed, whenever some major innovation is presented, the discussion about the misuse will nearly inevitably start. This debate makes especially strong waves on innovations that have to do with human health or ethics (such as gene modification, stem cell research) but also with national or personal security (e.g. identification technologies) but also, due to the future orientation of technologies, tends to resemble witch hunt more than a search for the real benefits. In this light, the debate seems also to concentrate on the wrong kind of innovations - the technologies that we already know, and how they could be used for greater benefit, should be at least as interesting. A powerful example of this was  shown to the participants of the TII Annual Conference by Tony Marjoram, of UNESCO.

In the words of Nobel Prize winner Amartya Sen, the actual level of development is often restricted by lack of freedom, rather than any other issue. People cannot develop to their full capabilities because they are not free to do so, restricted by some combionation of matters out of their individual control. While this lack of freedom sometimes is due to reasons such as despotism and terror, it can also be due to everyday issues that could relatively easily be solved by input from outsiders. A case in point: acquiring household water in some poor areas of Africa. While the men of the families typically must work in farming or construction and children attend school, women could be a great resource for many possible ideas and activities, as well as participate in education, had it not been for the water problem. According to Marjoram, fetching water from the rivers or wells can often take the whole time of daylight for the women of these families. Again, says Marjoram, there are practically millions of different types of simple water pumps that could ease - or erase - this problem. It is just that technology trasnfer does not work in this way - we technology professionals (as well as most laymen) are too preoccupied with future technologies and their problems to see existing technologies and their use for common good.

One step to the direction of doing something to change the situations of many - creating freedom, to enable development - can eventually be the 100-dollar laptop, or "one laptop per child" (OLPC) initiative ideated by Nicholas Negroponte at MIT (see http://laptop.org). The product exists, and there are volunteer developers to continue the work, maybe to make 10-dollar laptop or something. But computer industry still attracts attention. What does not exist, surprisingly, is 10-dollar water purification systems, 1-dollar water pumps, and such applications of simple technologies that would really help the developing nations in a big way, to free their minds and bodies from everyday chores to develop. Maybe somebody in related business or research areas would be the visionary to start this initiative? Technology transfer professionals in the service of humanity...

Nanotechnology Market to Reach $29 Billion by 2008 (24-7pressrelease)

Nanotechnology Market to Reach $29 Billion by 2008 (24-7pressrelease): "Forum: Nanotechnology News Posted By: Benj Post Time: 2006-09-15 at 10:18 PM"

(Via Nanovip.com - Nanotechnology News.)

EU Research Programme Design

In early October 2006, I was invited to a meeting in Brussels as an "expert" to participate in a workshop on how to improve the design, the monitoring and support and the follow-up of programmes and projects in one of the domains of the upcoming FPVII programme. A group of consultants had drafted a report, which a group of some 20 experts were to comment upon.

The word "improve" is important as it concerns how projects from this DGs  can better lead to innovation and technology transfer. Should a subset of projects be reserved so more SMEs can be involved? Does it help projects to have end users onboard? How about industry associations or the many "clusters" (publicly induced)- will a research result better reach the market place if they are research partners? Can diligent review of socio-economic aspects or use of non-technical experts increase the "business-readiness" of a project?

These are concerns, then, which a group of researchers must consider to successfully bid for funds in this programme if it is up to this experienced group of international consultants.

I think the Commission may have gotten it wrong. My basic position is that the first and foremost criterion for market-oriented research is high quality of results. In other words, that genuinely new knowledge is created (patent language: it is "novel"). I don't see how an SME, an industrial association or a non-technical expert can contribute anything to the resolution of this question.

But politicians and the Commission as well, then, want to see more research results reach the market. What should they do?

Let me first say that I find the initiatives in many DGs outside the Research DGs have many good innovation support measures, especially the Technology Platforms and similar Foresight instruments to give overall guidance to research in a given area.

Secondly, I can see that many funded "R&D" projects do not deserve that title. Too often researchers state that a certain problem is unsolved or interesting, but most often there already exists a body of knowledge and research, which has answered the key questions of the "R&D project. The provocative statement probably is based on a criticism of the peer review process. Too many funding agencies and directors of research centres grant money to projects, which are not based on diligent studies of "prior art". OK, so we can solve that. And DG research should help do that by granting pre-proposal funds for  literature studies, which also could contain an element of studies of the perceived needs of relevant industries.

Then my second position is that we should leave the researchers alone to do their research, but demand -and fund- that they spend some time on structured dialogue with industry representatives, associations, non-technical experts. The outcome of this dialogue should be used to feed back to the researchers what the "outside" world believes, but still we should leave the researchers at what they are best at (they may adapt and include the feedback into their work or not). But the outside experts could/should be organised as what is called an "accompanying measure" in Brussels: the outside dialogue partners could get funds to think creatively about what they learnt through the dialogues and then try to find potential industrial partners to the research project and on its behalf. The accompanying measure partners could easily be a consortium of experts who were retained for the length of the programme to support all projects during the project cycle from application to commercialisation. Such consortia would gain a lot from adapting the lessons of good practice in commercialisation reported elsewhere and on this site.

Why not let a whole sub programme's commercialisation, for instance in fuel cells, be managed by an outside consortium in the same way as eg. the IP Group for UK universities or how Cambridge University Enterprise manages IP coming out of its university? These IP management groups have continuity, commitment , expertise and - funding to follow up on promising research results. And do so with a commercial perspective. Give the group funding to help do the initial peer review both technically and with regard to nmon-technical aspects. Give full funding of the support to projects as they are ongoing -and give some funding for the final phases (in order to ensure that the best prospects get selected for future funding).