Bridging the gap between the academic and commercial worlds has often presented problems for scientists. Now Irish universities are seeking to make the transition smoother and more successful.

University College Dublin is seeking investment for a new £10 million (€12.7 million) fund, with the working title of "Nova", to build a new incubation centre for campus or start-up companies.

The new centre, which will be a public-private partnership, will see the university increase tenfold the space it currently has for incubation of campus or spin-off companies.

At the moment, the university has around 4,000 sq ft of space housing 15 campus companies.

The new centre will be located at a greenfield site on campus at Belfield and is expected to be completed within two years, depending on how it takes to complete the planning process.

Ms Bridgeen McCloskey, operations manager at the innovation centre at UCD, said the creation of a new incubation centre was a reaction to the demand for such facilities over the last few years.

Ms McCloskey would not be drawn on whether the centre would receive Government funding or rely on private investors because negotiations were at a sensitive stage.

UCD has had an incubation centre for start-up companies for the last 10 years, spawning such success stories as WBT systems, Massana and AV Edge.

The university takes stakes in the campus companies located in the centre but Ms McCloskey said the size of the shareholding varied from company to company.

She said 85 per cent of the start-up companies which have availed of the facilities of the innovation centre were still in existence.

Companies entering UCD's development programme sign up for two years and nine months and are given professional assistance and training in everything from putting together a proper business plan to managing their company's development properly.

Ms McCloskey said the aim of the centre was to assist in commercialising academic research and building a community of entrepreneurs at the university.

The low failure rate she believed was due to the fact that the unit smooths the way for start-ups through their early stages and also because most are high-tech and have a knowledge intensive base.

The wealth of the university's intellectual capital, which backs the companies, also makes a difference according to Ms McCloskey.

Incubation centres are not just beneficial to scientists looking to apply their research but also for the universities themselves, which often reap cash benefits from successful start-ups.

The potential return for patrons of start-ups can be seen in the IDA Ireland experience with its stakes in technology companies, like Baltimore.

With the arrival of MIT's Medialab, Irish universities have to face the threat of a large proportion of their graduates being drawn to the international reputation of the centre rather than staying and doing research in the university in which they did their primary degree.

To this end both Dublin City University (DCU) and University College Dublin are setting up large incubation centres to turn lab experiments into fully-fledged companies.

Director of innovation services and business development at DCU, Mr Tony Glynn said the development of a new £3.9 million innovation centre at the university originated a number of years ago.

The Sprint study, commissioned by the three Dublin universities, and funded by the European Union, suggested that universities here were at the right stage for the development of incubation centres.

The DCU centre, the first phase of which will be completed by around May of next year, will have 2,700 sq metres. The university will then have the option of adding on the same amount of space again, depending on the success of the centre and the demand for such facilities.

Funding for the centre has already come from Enterprise Ireland and the university is also looking for private funding.

Parameters for the operation of the centre are still in discussion as the university is in the process of setting up a board to oversee the operation of the centre.

Mr Glynn said a suite of programmes for campus companies in the centre were under consideration.

The role of the centre will be threefold: to commercialise research from the university; to facilitate the setting up of commercial entities by the university itself; and to attract in joint ventures with existing companies which would link with DCU's research.

Trinity College has been operating an innovation centre at the O'Reilly Institute since 1989 with the support of the IDA and has recently opened a new enterprise centre on Pearse Street. Director of innovation services at Trinity College, Dr Eoin O'Neill said the innovation centre aimed to empower staff in the college who were often cash poor but idea rich.

Dr O'Neill said the protected environment offered by the O'Reilly Institute meant that very few of the companies failed. He said around two-thirds of the companies survive, while, of the remaining third, many go out of existence because they are taken over or their staff recruited en masse by other companies.

Trinity College takes a 15 per cent stake in companies which operate in the institute.

The main advantage of the centre was that companies could talk to and meet other entrepreneurs in the centre, who already gone through the process of setting up a company according to Dr O'Neill.

As Government support within the higher education sector decreased in the late 1980s, the need to commercialise the research base became evident.

Since its inception, Trinity's innovation centre has spawned more than 40 campus companies, one of which was Iona Technologies, and the college's annual research revenue has risen from £2 million in 1986 to £16 million last year.

The centre aims to link academic and technological advances with practical business or industrial applications and offers incubator space for start-ups. There are six small companies at the incubation stage on campus.

Apart from selecting the projects that will be turned into companies, the centre offers a range of services to campus companies including business advice, marketing aid and assistance in drawing up business plans.

The services, also include advice on intellectual property licensing and patenting, access to financing and assistance with grant applications.

If the Republic is going to stay at the leading edge of new technology, university innovation centres will play a key role.

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