INNOVATION IN ACTION:From a paint that can help fight hospital superbugs to a high-end coffee boiler, two Irish companies are proving the value of innovation
FEW SMEs have the either the skills or the money to invest heavily in RD. By collaborating with third-level colleges they can get access to technical expertise while Enterprise Ireland can help with funding. Celbridge-based paint producer, Colortrend, is a minnow in the world of international paint production. This has not stopped it thinking big.
The company is at the forefront in the development of a paint that may help in the fight against superbugs such as MRSA. Colortrend linked up up with the Centre for Research in Engineering and Surface Technology (Crest) at the Dublin Institute of Technology to help it develop its bright idea for an anti-bug coating into a finished product.
“I worked in RD in a multinational so I know the money that’s involved and there’s no way an SME could match it,” says operations director Pat Layde. “By tapping into Crest we can level the playing field to some extent because it gives us access to their knowledge, research and testing equipment. We saw the opportunity for the product but didn’t have the in-depth knowledge or the resources to go it alone. Crest were already looking at future coating technologies and we were able to bring the two together.”
There are different ways of funding this type of collaboration. In this case Colortrend paid some of the costs while Enterprise Ireland also chipped in. The project took about three years to bring to fruition and the product has now moved out of the lab and into pilot tests. “The first 12 months or so were the real slog and we just had to stick with it. Three years is actually very quick in new product development terms,” Layde says.
“Part of our work at DIT is to have a vision for the future in terms of what technologies are going to emerge within the next three to five years and what we should be doing with them,” says Crest’s director, Dr John Colreavy. “We are the ones looking into the crystal ball and are in a position to share that knowledge with companies to help them use it to innovative advantage. Basically we can be the bridge between companies and leading-edge RD.”
However, Layde sounds a note of warning to those who might see somewhere like DIT as the quick answer to all their prayers. “Developing the product is only one half of the story,” he says. “What’s equally challenging is developing a route to market. In my experience this can be even harder to crack and even very good initiatives can still fall at this last hurdle. That said I can’t stress enough how valuable a third-level collaboration can be for an SME. We see the people in DIT very much as colleagues. We’re a team combining academic and commercial skills to come up with the best ideas.”
ON MAY 22nd the Penny University coffee shop opened in Shoreditch in London. It only seats six and it’s not the place to go for a quick caffeine fix. Put politely it’s aimed at the coffee cognoscenti, those who relish coffee as a culinary experience. Put less politely it’s a place for dyed-in-the-wool coffee geeks for whom the whole brewing process is a fine art. This is the sharp edge of coffee consumption and right at its tip is Irish beverage company Marco, which has custom-made the Uber Boiler that’s essential to the whole process.
According to the company’s operations director, Paul Stack, “it allows the barista the control to deliver Michelin-star coffee. It’s an approach to coffee drinking not dissimilar to how people treat fine wines.” Marco usually designs and makes delivery systems for the mainstream beverages market. This somewhat eccentric deviation is the result of the company’s so-called Uber Project. It was set up to encourage innovative ideas that might not necessarily make commercial sense but from which the team could learn and pluck elements for inclusion in other processes and products.
“We engage a lot with social media in order to keep in touch with what the world’s committed coffee-drinking community is up to,” says Stack. “It may sound a little odd but what the world’s coffee geeks are doing right now in the privacy of their own kitchens is what will eventually emerge as new trends. We want to know exactly what people want from coffee drinking and from their coffee-making equipment.” Marco runs its Uber Project in parallel with its normal strategic and R&D programmes.
“We’re already working on ideas for what we need to be doing in three to five years time in relation to our existing range but we also need to generate ideas to take us into completely new places. The Uber Project is the vehicle with which we do this,” Stack says. “The boiler is the first product to come out of it and had it been subjected to normal financial scrutiny or R&D screening tools, it would never have seen the light of day. We were doing it to create a different mindset and for the learning value. As it happens it was precisely right for the guy behind the Penny University. We think the Penny University is going to be a watershed in coffee house history.”
