Science

OPINION:The Applied Research Forum made it clear the ingredients for success are in place - so what is holding Ireland back?

HAVING COME through a number of months where the glass has definitely been half-empty, is it now safe to think that maybe, just maybe, it might start looking half-full?

Anyone who attended Enterprise Ireland's recent Applied Research Forum 2009 in the Guinness Storehouse would probably tend towards the half-full view. The place on the day was coming down with would-be academic entrepreneurs, technology transfer officers and investors, all discussing how to get more Irish research discoveries turned into products and moved onto the market.

The forum's purpose, the whole idea of turning research into revenue, is part of a continuously repeated theme favoured by Government at the moment. Political observers believe the object is to convince the Department of Finance - in near lock-down when it comes to expenditure - that the country is getting a solid return on our research investment.

Are we getting a return? Government policy makers in Forfás and in Enterprise, Trade and Employment argue strongly and convincingly that the researchers and their good ideas will help pull us out of the current recession. Or if that is a step too far, the companies and jobs they might deliver will at least shift us a bit faster out of the economic doldrums.

The Applied Research Forum was an attempt to show that there is a considerable level of commercial activity going on, but more importantly, the possibility of a great deal more.

The day was split in two, with researchers taking centre stage in the morning and investors in the afternoon. Dr Paul Whyte from Oxford's tech transfer company talked about spin-outs, licensing and collaborative research. And later it was the turn of the venture capitalists, banks with money to invest and companies looking for opportunities. The wannabe entrepreneurs caught in the middle must have been out of their minds with enthusiasm for the business world by the time it was over.

Ten academics got a chance to pitch their tech transfer ideas to the venture capitalists. The variety was astounding, from surface coatings that could protect against hospital super bugs to new kinds of bone grafts - proof that Irish researchers can deliver world-class products that arise directly from research.

Researchers at the University of Limerick had unmanned undersea rovers that could dive to the ocean floor and a team from Trinity had a lantern that provided light at night from heat stored during the day.

Then there was the winner of the event's One to Watch award. This was claimed by Dr Bruce Murphy who, when studying at NUI Galway, developed a device that clears blocked arteries, in the process helping to prevent heart attacks.

Now at Trinity, he and a business partner, with the help of Enterprise Ireland, are setting up a company in Galway to build and sell the device. It has huge potential in a "niche" market worth an estimated €100 million.

The billions invested in scientific research by the State and private sector over the past eight or nine years have delivered any number of good ideas with commercial possibilities. Yet we continue to form high-tech indigenous companies at a sluggish rate.

Third-level institutions had spun out more than 100 "high-value companies" in the past three to five years, Conor Lenihan, Minister of State for Science, Technology and Innovation, said at the forum. The chairwoman of the Advisory Council for Science Technology and Innovation, Mary Cryan, is more conservative, putting the figure at about 15 spin-outs from research a year.

Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) is also conservative, setting a goal in its strategy for 2009 to 2013 to foster 30 "high-potential start-ups" and confirming 40 revenue-generating licenses. This is separate to delivering 1,000 invention disclosures and 500 patents arising from SFI-funded research.

Meanwhile, NovaUCD, University College Dublin's tech transfer centre, last month highlighted that its researchers were delivering "an invention a week" during 2008, a year which also saw 38 patent applications made by UCD researchers.

The forum made it patently clear the ingredients for success are already in place - so what is holding us back?

Enterprise Ireland's Eddie Hughes - known as "Mr Spin-out", given his role in promoting the commercialisation of academic discoveries - identified a number of the blockages in the system that would thwart even Bruce Murphy's wonderful invention.

Success depends on three things, he says. The most obvious is a technology that works, something with commercial potential and that someone actually wants to buy.

If you have managed to produce a better mouse trap, the second ingredient is money. We need to have investors, banks and entrepreneurs who have the vision to spot a product that will sell and the determination to make it pay.

The third ingredient - perhaps the least obvious - is a good manager who knows what he or she is doing. Experienced management is "essential" if a fledgling business is to survive in these difficult days, he says.

Unfortunately it isn't a buffet, says Hughes: you need all three ingredients to have any chance of success.