Innovation's business benefits were analysed and showcased at Science Foundation Ireland's annual summit, writes CLAIRE O'CONNELL

WHAT IS innovation? We might talk it up for the smart economy, but what is it, really? It could be as simple as a rubber duck sitting on a hotel towel, according to Peter Day, business correspondent with the BBC, who gave a keynote speech at Science Foundation Ireland’s annual summit in Athlone last week.

The sight of a yellow bath toy nestling on top of a fluffy towel in a Scottish hotel last year prompted an epiphany in Day about the crux of innovation: it’s about giving that bit extra to the customer, an unexpected but welcome twist.

“Innovation happens in all sorts of ways and has something to do with what the customer wants,” Day told the gathering of about 350 scientists on Monday.

“Innovation doesn’t happen just because an official thinks it ought to. Innovation is perverse, it’s from the friction developed by the real world rubbing up against a clever brain that can see the goods and services people need.”

And it doesn’t have to swell from a large capital investment, according to Day, who relishes the story of successful Irish entrepreneur Liam Casey – the Corkman’s supply-chain management business PCH International works with about 800 companies in Shenzhen, China, to pack and ship products in a fine-tuned operation.

This kind of individual cleverness, an eye for services, can be what it really takes in order to take off, says Day, who has been covering global business for over three decades.

“It seems to me not much innovation is going to come out of large established corporations in the 21st century,” he says, pondering the intangible nature of innovation, where the key to harnessing it is to be ready for surprises.

“Innovation itself remains a potent mystery – we probably have to reinvent it ... and sure as eggs in 20 years we will be sitting talking about something we know nothing about now.”

But what we do know now is that we are in financial trouble, and the pressure is on to grow new business and attract investment into Ireland through innovation.

Hardly surprising then that SFI, the State agency for funding basic, oriented research in the life sciences, ICT and energy, was keen to showcase some of the success stories it has helped nurture so far.

Those include Treemetrics, a laser-based system to measure the shape of trees and work out how best to manage felling in forests. When foresters use calipers to measure trees and work out timber output the results can be inaccurate, resulting in the loss of about €10 billion per year around the world, according to Cork-based chief executive Enda Keane.

But now the company has developed an approach to measure trees more accurately and feed the data into optimisation software, so foresters can manage the resources more cost-effectively.

Meanwhile HeyStaks is a social web search tool that lets you work with friends to gather information effectively online. The plug-in allows you to create search “staks” that can be shared with others as you research a common theme, like planning a holiday together.

“People have talked about social searching for a while but they haven’t figured out how to partition friend experiences,” said Prof Barry Smyth, director of the SFI-funded Clarity Centre for Sensor Web Technologies.

“In HeyStaks you decide how you want to partition it, that’s the twist. We have taken the blinkers off and looked at web searches in a new way.”

Then there’s Opsona Therapeutics – a spin-out from Trinity College Dublin that is developing antibody-based drugs to switch off inappropriate inflammation in the body and target auto-immune conditions like rheumatoid arthritis and Crohn’s disease.

Company co-founder Dr Mark Heffernan described how he had spotted the potential for a spin-out about five years ago after he came to Ireland from Australia. The names of three Trinity researchers kept coming up when he asked around, so he approached them and they built the company from the ground up, gaining support from major multinationals including Wyeth (now Pfizer) and raising almost €30 million, mostly through venture capital funding.

There is now a general need to keep investing in research here to continue to attract talent and ensure the quality of the output, according to Heffernan: “Ireland should focus on building the quality not quantity of companies – not every discovery is the basis of a good company.”

And sometimes innovation lies in filling an obvious gap – such as new technology being developed to measure brainwaves in high-risk babies in intensive care and alert medical staff when a problem is brewing. The approach will allow doctors quickly to diagnose and treat problems that could otherwise lead to long-term disability, explained Dr Geraldine Boylan from University College Cork, who heads the multi-disciplinary project.

We’re not short of good ideas then. But how do you translate such ideas and innovation into something economically viable? Enter Saeed Amidi, chief executive and president of the California-based Plug and Play Tech Center, a crucible for forming new companies.

In his keynote address at the summit, Amidi reeled off figures in a different league: the centre is catalysing the formation of hundreds of companies by bringing together startups with VCs and mentors. “We want to go from great research to the next step,” he says.

Based in Silicon Valley, a hotbed of startups and giants, Amidi has built up a “community” of investors and potential companies and helps them find their perfect match.

But he also sees failure as in a positive light, arguing that it provides an entrepreneur with valuable experience. His centre’s tally sees about two companies fail per month, and he has grown philosophical about the losses.

“It used to be painful but now I’m like a doctor, some of them die.”

In his view, Ireland benefits from being English-speaking and having a limited market, making the country an ideal launching pad for companies into Europe.

“I would love to bridge Ireland with Silicon Valley and have a closer working relationship with universities and VCs,” he says.

Closer to home, though, scientists and funders alike await next month’s budget, which was an undercurrent throughout the conference.

“The Government has been extremely good and consistent in its funding of research,” said SFI’s director-general Prof Frank Gannon in his address.

“It’s a hard situation and we need to accept the realities of the situation, but we don’t know the outcome yet. It’s still in play.”

He stressed the need to recognise the paybacks we have seen from investment in research, like Ireland’s increased world ranking in publications, and to focus on the quality of researchers rather than looking at the number of companies that have been spun out.

“Asking about spin-outs is the wrong question at this time. Much more relevant in the shorter term is the quality of the people,” said Gannon, who argued that cutting research funding would save little now and could cost us dearly later. “Cuts in science could damage the economy long term.”

Claire O’Connell was invited by SFI to take part in a communications workshop at the summit. For more see http://bit.ly/claire_sfisummit