Century of Endeavour
'In Search of Techne'
Chapter 3.3: The Innovation Process
(c) Roy Johnston 1999
(comments to
rjtechne@iol.ie)
May 13 1970
The Irish Management Institute until recently has confined its
attention to questions relating to industrial productive systems where
all the elements are known. The management of research, development
and innovation is an altogether more difficult field.....
They are to be commended therefore for producing a course by
Raymond I Reul, of the FMC Corporation, USA, on the evaluation and
control of R and D projects.
Mr Reul speaks with authority and experience, and the Corporation
in which he works has a record of expansion from a backyard workshop
making agricultural sprayers in the twenties up to a complex,
vertically integrated industrial system producing a multitude of
chemical and engineering products, with an annual turnover comparable
to the GNP of the Irish economy. If profitability, expansion and
diversification are measures of success, then Mr Reul should be
listened to with respectful attention.
The techniques developed in FMC not only give yardsticks for
evaluating alternative projects, but also show how and when to stop a
project that has gone sour. Some projects are such that even if they
'succeed' they are failures; although they work and produce a profit
if the early false starts are written off, they never recover their
development costs if the latter are counted in full. Mr Reul's
technique involves a measure which enables this situation to be
detected in advance, and an overall strategy developed. The
probability of at least breaking even is 99% with the whole portfolio
of projects, although the probability of success of any individual
project may be much lower.
The key to this measurement technique is a mathematical
expression called the Measured Survival Function (MSF). It relates
the cost of the project to date, an estimate of the proceeds if
successful, and the probability of individual success as currently
seen. There are a whole set of such functions, depending on what the
overall research strategy is: one could be ultra-conservative and
demand 99.9% probability of at least breaking even over all projects,
or be a gambler and accept 90% or 85%.
A project can start with a low probability of individual success
and yet have a high MSF rating because the cost is low. As money is
spent, the probability of success comes up, but it must come up at a
rate fast enough to offset the cumulative cost. The life of a project
can be followed in this way with some precision, and ultimate failure,
despite apparent promise, detected by the down-turning of the MSF
curve before large sums have been committed.
This is an impressive analytical technique and deserves serious
study by those concerned with science policy at national level(1). It
is a pity that the people so concerned were not present. This must be
because the National Science Council has not yet fully understood that
the management of resources is iself in the process of becoming a
scientific discipline, that people like Ray Reul have something
important to say, and that the IMI is fulfilling an important role in
giving them a platform.
It might be said that the application of scientific research to
the survival of the FMC Corporation is irrelevant to the type of
research in the Universities with which the NSC is primarily
concerned, and that the latter is justified for cultural, aesthetic,
educational and various reasons other than profitability. I do not
agree.
Let me pose the question in this way.... basic scientific
research, which is not project-orientated, appears at first sight not
to be adaptable to Reul techniques. Can it perhaps be looked at from
a different angle, so that Reul techniques can after all be applied?
I suggest that it can, provided that the system is regarded as a
producer of people trained in the methods of science, rather than as a
producer of new discoveries. The latter are by-products of the
former.
Thus the 'projects' of the university science system are the
research departments of the various scientific disciplines. Only a
fraction of those who pass through the system remain as basic research
people, with contacts and acceptance on the world network.. These
form a creative focus keeping research alive. They are the catalysts
of the process that transform the raw material into the finished
product, which is, or ought to be, people who know what to do if there
is no answer in the book.
The success of such a project is measured on the market: do the
people who come out get jobs in Ireland? The 'project' therefore
needs a market research element, and a sales department; a demand
must sometimes be created for a product if the public does not know
about it..
It is here that the question of social responsibility comes in.
National science policy, and indeed university research programmes,
ought to be able to distinguish between .....market whims and
fashions, on the one hand, and objective national needs on the other.
But I submit that the Reul techniques are valid for basic research if
the goal of the system is as I defined it...... The only constraint
is that the 'product' should be able to adapt and generalise 'its'
research experience in such a way as to be a creative asset in our
national economic life.
July 9 1970
People who have been directly concerned with the innovation
process know that between the demonstration of a principle and the
economic operation of a productive unit lies a veritable Pilgrim's
Progress of obstacles. The main weakness in Ireland is that obstacles
tend to be overcome by the methods of craft technology (basically
common-sense and experience); the discipline of the scientific method
tends ot remain in the world of 'principle-demonstration' within the
cosy, well-controlled laboratory environment.
Inhabiting creditably this twilight-region of craft-technology
are the Kilkenny Design Workshops (KDW), in the stables of the
castle....
Under the direction of WH Walsh KDW has developed a service
whereby prototypes are developed suitable for existing productive
processes; these they licence out to industry in return for a royalty
on production..
Technologies in which KDW is at present interested include
textiles, ceramics, furniture and woodwork, metalwork, fibreglass and
plastics.
Of these to date the greatest acceptance in industry has been
achieved by the Textile Workshop, under Mortimer O'Shea. At the
November 1969 exhibition of Kilkenny work there were 62 designs of
which 42 had been bought by named firms. Sone of the designs have had
a dramatic effect in rescuing small firms from bankruptcy, by enabling
them to switch from products forr which the market is declining (eg
low-grade blankets) to others for which an increasingly educated and
sophisticated market is developing (eg woollen bedspreads in dramatic
colours).
I have previously mentioned(2) the development of an interest in flax-growing by Bunclody Co-op, arising out of the work of Dr Michael Neenan in the Crop Research Centre of the Agricultural Institute at Oakpark, Carlow. The Kilkenny Textile Workshop played a significant
part in the development of this as an acceptable input to the
Kirkpatrick linen mill in Antrim.
Scientific technology, as represented by the Institute of
Industrial Research and Standards at Ballymun, seems to have
concentrated its efforts on large-scale production-processes, leaving
the small firm as the market for the type of approach practiced by
KDW. There is a temptation to regard KDW as a sort of 'poor man's
IIRS'; this is reinforced in Kilkenny by a sort of craftsman's
disdain for scientific technology: 'no wonder its expensive, they
have PhDs doing the dying!....' The picture however is more
complicated; the IIRS tends to produce scientific technology for
large firms producing low-cost goods for the mass-market, while KDW
provides art-based design with craft technology, plus enough science
to get by, for small firms producing quality goods. The shade of
William Morris would be at home in KDW, whereas in the IIRS he would
not be recognised.
There is, however, a trend for KDW designs to become increasingly
accepted for quantity production. It is inevitable that they will run
into problems for the solution of which a scientific approach to
technology will be necessary. In other words, IIRS and KDW will need
each other increasingly, and means will need to be found to enable
them to draw on each other's experience.
This could happen by the expedient of arranging for the IIRS and
KDW people to.....work out jointly a process that would give a product
both aesthetically pleasing and technologically satisfactory......
There is to be found in KDW a healthy understanding at craft
level of certain problems which in applied science are usually brushed
on one side. Scientists who look down on craftsmen's lore with a
sense of superiority do so at their peril.......
August 12 1970
The Minister for Industry and Commerce has launched a scheme for
an annual award for scientific and technological innovation. This
consists of a symbol and the right to display it on stationary,
products, packaging, publicity material etc; there is also a trophy
for display on the premises.
The award is restricted in the case of state-sponsored bodies to
one only per annum in the entire sector, while for the private sector
there are several.. The intention of this, presumably, is to suggest
to the latter that 'innovation is a good thing'. Thus there is a bias
against the recognition of innovation in the public sector where this
occurs. (I am thinking of the Bord na Mona milled and sod peat
systems, which in their way are world-leaders and were innovatory in
their time...)
There is a further restriction, in that it only applies to firms
which have been in commercial operation for at least five years. Thus
the entrepreneur who starts a firm to exploit an innovation (there are
such people, even in Ireland) will be discriminated against.
It is a pity that these schemes are not the subject of wider
consultation before their introduction....
November 4 1970
.....Bord na Mona has an inportant long-term interest
in....cutaway bog.....the amount available......may start to increase
rapidly....if the various novel uses for peat start to demand large
volumes.
One such use....is the production of activated charcoal, for use
in various purification systems. The battle against pollution now
being fashionable (at least verbally), we may expect the demand for
activated charcoal to increase. There are other sources for this
product, some of them by-products of the food-industry. Professor D C
Pepper, in his inaugural address to the Institute of Chemistry on
October 21, mentioned an enterprising gentleman in the USA who
collected old sump oil from garages and chicken guts from poultry
producers; with these ingredients he apparently succeeded in making
marketable activated charcoal.....
Peat is a more promising raw material for many proceses than is
usually realised.. The Tula metallurgists in the USSR have
successfully replaced coke by peat for steel smelting, claiming a
higher standard of purity.
The idea of using peat for smelting goes back to the 20s, when
the USSR was under seige conditions. It failed due to the inability
to get a robust enough briquette. In the new process they obtain a
strong briquette by blending in some iron ore concentrate.
The use of peat for smelting iron-ore has also lurked in the
Irish technological lore for some time; it may go back to Sir Robert
Kane, and certainly can be connected with the pioneer work of Robert
Tweedy who visited the USSR in the 20s as part of an official
technical group sent by the first Free State Government.
The history and pre-history of the technology of peat has not to
my knowledge been collected into a monograph; one sees occasional
tantalising glimpses in articles and personal reminiscences.....
February 24 1971
The death of Dr Thomas McLaughlin, whose obituary was published
last week, cannot be let pass without some reflections on the question
of the relationship between science, technology and society. I am not
going to write another obituary, but I would like to use the career of
that remarkable man as an illustration of some of the arguments I have
been trying to develop in this column..
Those who read his obituary will know that he started his career
as a physicist, and did fundamental research in UCD on the breakdown
of oil under electrical stress. He then went to Galway and studied
electrical engineering, retaining his connection with physics by
acting as assistant to the physics Professor. Later he went to work
for Siemens in Germany, and was involved in the then novel development
of the 'national grid'. While working on this in Pomerania he
developed the idea of harnessing the Shannon for a national electrical
network in Ireland. He pamphleteered and fought successfully against
entrenched political opposition, and ended up as a Director of the
ESB, from which he retired in 1957.
Those who have been reading this column consistently will
recognise this as the type of career-profile that I have been
advocating: one that starts 'fundamental', evolves towards
applications and then takes up a socially responsible implementation
with a sense of vision.
The weakness of the Irish 'science/technology/society' linkage
system is that there are institutional obstacles towards the
development of careers of this type. When they do occur (all too
rarely), they involve in most cases personal sacrifice such as to
deter all but the most intrepid. The institutional bias in Ireland is
towards the development of a mandarinate.
To understand the full meaning of this word, it is desirable to
have read, or at least to be acquainted with, via the lengthy reviews
and evaluations which appeared some 10 years ago, Dr Joseph Needham's
monumental study of the history of science and technology in China.
Dr Needham attempted in this to discover why it was that the
Chinese, despite discovering most if not all of the principles
underlying the technology of the industrial revolution Europe in the
18th century, failed to follow the developmental path of European
capitalism.....
The reason is bound up with the social system and the philosophy
of life. The ruling administrative class, or mandarins, were educated
to regard practical work as ignoble. Technology remained the preserve
of illiterate craftsmen. The same philosophy existed among the
Greeks, who regarded geometry as a subject fit for gentlemen, but
applied mechanics only fit for slaves. The theme has been developed
by Professor Benjamin Farrington, in a book 'Greek Science' published
inthe 40s. Its influence on the development of the 'binary system' in
education, as exemplified in Britain and inherited in Ireland, is a
matter for analysis elsewhere(3). It constitutes a major obstacle to the effective use of scientific technology in most contemporary developing countries.
I once had occasion to work in a physics research team which
included a Brazilian, of Spanish aristocratic pedigree. The
experiment involved an optical system, and it was essential that the
surfaces be kept free from the least speck of dust. We spent much of
our time 'cleaning windows', that is, all of us except the Brazilian,
who opted out, because he said this wasn't physicists' work.
So this 'mandarin syndrome' is still with us. In Ireland, the
core of the mandarinate is the Civil Service, who are mostly educated
from Leaving Certificate level within the system by an apprenticeship
procedure; when they want to get additional insights they turn to the
academic economists. The language and philosophy which has evolved in
this alliance is to be viewed with suspicion. One indicator of the
influence of the 'economic mandarin' is the use of the word 'residual'
(ie those things left over after the world has been conveniently
abstracted into the categories 'land, labour and capital'). Academic
economists have discovered that hidden among the 'residuals' is the
most important factor of all, technology, which includes the human
factors of skill, knowhow, accumulated experience, scientific method
etc.
Full of this 'discovery', which for scientists and technologists
is 'old hat' which they imbibed with their mothers' milk, the academic
economic mandarins have persuaded the administrative mandarins that
'residual analysis' is important....
Scientists should not stand idly by and allow the economic
mandarins to patronise them with the results of residual analysis.
All macro-economic techniques are blunt instruments. Scientists would
do better to lean on the experience of specific contributors to
technological and social advance, such as the late Dr McLaughlin. The
history of the socio-economic impact of science and technology
onsociety is well documented in the works of authors such as J G
Crowther and J D Bernal; there has recently been published a new
edition of 'Science in History' by the latter.....
May 19 1971
I attended this year's Irish Management Institute conference
(Killarney, April 22-24) and listened conscientiously to most of the
papers, but I found myself wondering how many Irish firms will employ
an extra scientist as a result? The title 'Agent of Change-
Technology's Impact on Management' promised well. Perhaps here we
would get behind the economists' grudging 'residuals' to a display of
technological innovation as a prime mover.
I found the conference interesting, but not for the reasons
intended by the organisers.
I find it surprising that it could be imagined that anyone
practically concerned with the problems of Irish industrial survival
might learn anything significant or useful from the type of
international star-performer who flies in for a one-night stand. It
is a sort of ritual; a cross between show-business and going to
church, with a dash of real business thrown in, over coffee or lunch.
Let me deal first with the foreign stars: Ferranti, Hertzberg,
Bell, Servan-Schreiber.
Sir Basil de Ferranti has had a distinguished career in
technology, management and politics. In this he was helped, as he put
it himself, by not having to work for a living. He took the
conference on a tour of the current technological frontiers, ranging
from wired-up monkey brains to video-cassettes enabling the managing
director personally to pep up the field salesmen at 20 centres
simultaneously. He added that the area mamager had to be present, to
give the personal touch.
He didn't seem to be aware of the need for two-way communication.
Chaplin, in 'Modern Times' had, perhaps, a more relevant message.
'There is now no limit to human achievement. The barriers are
human.... By co-operation, the ultimate in living standards can be
achieved.'
True, but pious. The main barrier to co-operation is the
essential autocracy of the position and structure occupied by Sir
Basil himself.
The same kind of basic ambiguity underlay Jean-Jaques
Servan-Schreiber's performance. He is basically a multinational
corporation man. He rails against bureaucracy and antiquated
national-state civil services. He believes that the multinational
corporation, with power exceeding that of many of the States in which
it operates, is an influence for cross-fertilising cultures. He
advises us, in effect, to join one, as a nation. (A small voice
asking 'how' was not noticeably answered in the ensuing torrent of
fluent English. How do you join an octopus?).
He fringed on technology when he hammered the British for again
selling out to the USA over the Rolls-Royce/Lockheed deal, and
ignoring the claims of the European airbus. He believes in the
European corporation as a means of retaining independence of the USA.
Yet by the operation of his Euro-corporation he throws the European
populations into a US-style melting-pot, which will ultimately wipe
out the ethnic diversity to which he allegedly aspires. At the same
time he mixes with the American elite.
He did us a service by exposing to us the mind of
Euro-imperialism. We should be warned; we should study their
divisions, and profit by them.
He idealises the businessman who interferes in politics:
Beaverbrook's role in ensuring that Churchill rather than Halifax
succeeded Chamberlain was his example. (In this case, the result
happened to be in the British interest.) Servan-Schreiber would have
this procedure generalised, and used in the interests of the
multinational corporation.
He would sweep away those bureaucracies which react (however
imperfectly and slowly) to the wishes of the people, however haltingly
expressed by the electoral process, and replace them with....what? He
and Kenneth Galbraith have the answer. They will call the boys
together, let them discuss a memorandum, and then Galbraith will write
the book. In other words, government by philosopher-kings; democracy
out the window; back to Plato's Republic.
If this type of thinking is to supercede bourgeois democracy, God
help us.....
Dr Hertzberg is an industrial psychologist, a consultant of
international standing. His principal contribution was an appeal to
humanise work, to enrich jobs, to allow work to become creative. He
is rediscovering, from within the bitter experience of contemporary US
capitalism, the alienattion process defined by Marx over 100 years
ago, and echoed by Veblen(4) at the turn of the century. His message, or exhortation, to the capitalists is that if they are to survive they will have to reverse this process. Some, perhaps, will listen. But
they will run into the problem that the workers with the enriched jobs
might become political and realise that they don't really need the
capitalist. There is a dilemma here; people will buy Hertzberg's
book and try to resolve it, probably without success.
Dr Bell is Chairman of the Commission on the Year 2000, in
Harvard. This is an attempt to predict various possible technological
futures, so as to be able, possibly, to choose between them.
For someone with such pretensions he appears to have a remarkable
lack of historical understanding. I quote: 'Where.....did any
contemporary writer notice the decline of feudalism and the rise of a
capitalist economy? A process so long and complicated has no single
'birthyear' to mark its emergence. There are no single
'turning-points', such as a political revolution, to signal the
transformation of a society.' This, coming from a citizen of the
nation founded in arms by Paine and Washington, is a very revealing
statement.
The central modern problem, how to establish social control over
the technological Frankenstein monster, is insoluble without political
revolution. Because this is distasteful, Dr Bell refuses to see it.
He consequently refuses to see earlier analogous and simpler events in
the history of his own nation.
This curious blindness to the nature of the power-structure leads
him to the further illusion that the leadership will rest with 'the
research corporations, industrial laboratories...and the
universitties..', in other words with Dr Bell and his like.
The directors of the multinational corporations, knowing the
truth, can sit back contentedly watching Dr Bell and his like indulge
his illusions and perpetrate his deceptions. They will be needed, to
undo the dangerous effects of the 'job-enrichment' subversion preached
by Dr Hertzberg.
Dr Bell lists five main areas of technological development for
the coming decades:
1. Energy production: fast breeder reactors, controlled
thermonuclear reactions, magnetohydrodynamics;
2. International communications via satellites: by 1980 he predicts
that the cost of a phone-call to anywhere in the world will be as
little as a dollar;
3. Marine resources, in the sense of oil, gas, metal;
4. Mapping of the Earth's resources from satellites;
5. Weather control.
This type of technological crystal-gazing is not difficult to do.
The real problems are: what do we do with the energy, what do we say
to each other across the globe, what do we use the resources for when
we find them, how do we conserve them so that future generations can
enjoy them, in whose interests do we control the weather?
It will take more than Dr Bell to answer these questions. They
are in fact already being answered by the ordinary people of the
United States who by political pressure have stopped the supersonic
transport programme and are currently preventing Consolidated Edison
from siting a nuclear power station in New York city.
The problem is how to guide the peoples' healthy reaction against
being pushed around by technological factors under the control of
remote business interests into a constructive and organised movement
to make technology serve the people, rather than a Luddite movement to
smash it.
Against this background of the big outside world, the lectures by
Tadhg Twomey and Jock Harbison on the Irish mini-technological scene
may seem small beer. Yet they were more significant and more
relevant.
Jock Harbison's paper showed a sense of history; it also gave
some indication of the politics behind the O'Malley 'Education
Revolution'(5), if the moderate, necessary, overdue and still largely paper reforms initiated by the late Minister can be so euphemistically described. In this, perhaps the most significant element will prove to be the Regional Colleges of Technology.....
Harbison's central question was again basically political: 'have
we the wisdom to choose from the cornucopia of technology?'.... In
question time someone asked why the ESB didn't vertically integrate
and start producing its own hardware, going into the export market.
This wasn't answered, possibly because the production of electrical
hardware is firmly under the control of the multinational giants. It
was further suggested from the floor that native firms were being
plucked of their key talent by foreign firms enjoying the 'tax
holiday'; criticism of the latter principle appears to be mounting.
Tadhg Twomey gave a straightforward account of the achievements
of the State sector in the application of science ant technology in
the food industry.
The problem here is how to get technology out of the State sector
and generalised throughout the economy. If the private firms are
foreign-owned, they do their research abroad, or else poach the
talent. Irish firms are too small to afford specialist staff, and are
only marginally aware of the services available through the IIRS.
I quote: 'How many Irish directors realise that, for years,
foreign firms have canvassed the science and technology faculties in
our universities, months before the students do their final exams, in
order to offer jobs overseas to our graduates? This is a resource
which we have and must use, if we want to survive and grow as a
trading nation. I believe we have now reached a stage of know-how in
Irish industry, partly through foreign investment here, and partly
through our own Irish company growth, in which ideas are becoming
self-generating.
Maintenance engineers are producing interesting modifications to
foreign machinery, production engineers see ways of combining two
foreign machines into an integrated processing system, chemists are
finding new blends of chemicals to give a better product at less cost,
food processing technologists are finding improved convenience
products and packaging technologists are designing product packs which
make a stronger appeal.
But are our directors, boards and managers conscious of the
possibilities of technology? Are our companies doing enough to
encourage creativity? This is our job, ladies and gentlemen, and time
is not on our side'.
April 19 1972
....A publication called 'Research Disclosure'......has a
worldwide circulation and fulfills a real need, namely, if you take
out a patent in one country, it enables you to pre-empt the taking out
of a patent by anyone else in any other country, by providing an
'instant disclosure' service.
Normally, the filing of a patent application is no safeguard
against applications elsewhere, until the patent is published in the
country of origianl filing. In the British case this may be three or
four years.
The best strategy, therefore, is to file an application in one
country (that deemed most advantageous) and then instantly disclose.
This procedure in fact renders redundant all but a small number
of major world patent centres, and speeds the flow of information to
potential licence-holders......
***
...the Gaeltarra Eireann(6) factory at Cuil Aodha.......has arisen from (what appears to be) an IIRS success story: they have produced a machine for inspecting bottles after washing and before filling, rejecting those which are dirty or contain foreign bodies.
The IIRS was responsible for the mechanical handling system, while the
two engineers whose idea it was (Deaglan O Taluin and Bart O'Connor)
concentrated on the electronic scanning system.
The Cuil Aodha factory has cost 40,000 pounds and is expected by
September of this year to be employing 40 people. Thus a relatively
high-technology industry need not have a high cost per job.......
There are, however, problems: what happens if the trend into
plastic milk-bottles develops at a greater rate?.....a one-product
company is on shaky ground. There is also the problem of specialist
technical services in remote places.
If there are spin-off developments, resulting in the devlopment
of a small industrial complex, how does one ensure that the language
and culture is reinforced rather than undermined?......if we are
embarking on the road of serious Gaeltacht industrialisation, we need
a serious, well-thought-out and creatively administered
socio-linguistic policy......
September 6 1972
I had the opportunity of visiting the Talcoma factory at Cuil
Aodha;their bottle-inspecting machine seems to be capable of
breaking into the world market creditably, as a demonstration of the
ability of Irish based development technologists.
The basic idea is to use a narrow beam of light in 'flying spot'
scanning mode, and to pick up the scattered light using an integrator
and photomultiplier. The bottle itself is spun. This is a
substantial improvement on traditional bottle-inspection, which does a
very imperfect job, usually looking only at the bottom.
There is a queue of potential purchasers, many of them anxious
for their plant to be used for the final de-bugging work. There is a
revival of interest in the returnable bottle, thanks to the
environmental conservation lobby, to that the existence of a long-term
world market is assured, and the 'plastic bottle' menace has receded.
The development costs have been substantial, and many of those
concerned have had to make personal sacrifices. The Talcoma
experience supports the arguments made recently on the Financial
page.....in favour of having a National Development Corporation, to
help finance the exploitation of IIRS inventions (among other things),
and casts doubt on Dr Nichol's suggestion(7) that this function is adequately carried out by the IIRS itself.
There is a very wide gap between a working prototype and a
production model. This gap must be financed; otherwise there is no
pay-off on the IIRS investment into development projects of this type.
October 25 1972
The recent IDA report underlines a point of view which I have
developed in relation to the research strategy of the IIRS. In
commenting recently on the annual report of that body(8), I drew attention to the high value that they put on their 'offensive strategy' compared with the traditional 'defensive strategy' (ie innovation with new products and processes, rather than improvements to existing ones). I suggested that the value of the former, as estimated by IIRS, included jobs gained, while the value of the latter
did not allow for the disutility of jobs lost in its absence.
The IDA report admits that the net 'gain' in jobs, despite its
best efforts, is -2000. This suggests to me that 'defensive'
strategy, in firms which are only marginally viable, is weak. The
problem is whether to spend scarce R and D funds on strengthening it,
or to spend them on 'innovation': whether to make better cheese, or
to make aerosol control valves(9), electronic one-armed bandits and the like.
The current IIRS policy comes down aggressively in favour of the
latter. Dr Nichol, in his inaugural address to the Institute of
Chemistry at Belfield last Wednesday, gave some of the principles
underlying this policy. I summarise his remarks, with my own comments
interspersed parenthetically.
There are various definitions of 'innovation' extant: any
cost-reducing technological improvement; new processes or systems;
novelty without necessarily invention. R and D does not necessarily
involve innovation, but the converse holds. A successful innovation
adds more to the value of a product than its cost, or take more from
its cost than from its value.
(A cost-reducing innovation can have qualitiative implications:
the removable tyre-cover made the bicycle available to the mass-market
by reducing the cost of mending a puncture.)
A study of 58 pairs of innovations by the Science Policy Research
Unit in Sussex may perhaps enable a recipe for success to be
determined.. Firstly, the innovator must grasp the users real needs;
then he must know how to market; he must do good technical
development, leaving no 'bugs' at production-time; he must know how
to use outside advice and must be well linked with the scientific
community. Finally, the key manager involved must have high rank in
the hierarchy. Of the above factors, the first is the most important.
The biggest obstacle to innovation is lack of technological
awareness within the firm; in this case the firm is said to be
'production-orientated'.
(Here, I think, Dr Nichol and I part company. I hold that there
is no contradiction between being concerned to produce what you are
producing as well and as cheaply as possible, and the concept of
'innovation'. This false antithesis is at the root of much of the
trouble. The idea that 'innovation' means 'rip out all the old
equipment and start producing something new' will, of course, frighten
any manager out of his wits. You have to learn to walk before
running, and gently introduce management to innovation via
cost-cutting on the existing processes, preferably by better
utilisation, less waste etc, rather than by saving labour or forced
obsolescence.)
Dr Nichol goes on to give (what to my mind is a very restrictive)
recipe for success in innovation in the context of Irish industry as
influenced by IIRS:
1. There must be a 'technologically aware' person high up in the
firm;
2. The innovation should be a new product, with large volume sales,
patentable, with good royalty potential;
3. It should not depend on any factor outside our control;
4. It should be in a field where innovation is expected.
The above is mostly (apart from parentheses) Dr Nichol.
I regard this definition as being of some validity in the rather
narrow field of hardware designed by mechanical engineers for
mass-production. I question the relevance of this approach for the
problems facing the Irish economy. Can it be that we are the victims
of our academic- orientated educational system, which has left a gap
in our human resources labelled 'practically competent people', which
has had to be filled (in the case of the IIRS) by British engineers
used to an British manufacturing environment?
I am not making a chauvinist case against all things British. I
have a high regard for British engineers; I myself have enjoyed
working with them. But there are gaps in the thinking of the British
engineering fraternity which result from their strong
hardware-producing tradition. They tend to think of the machine
itself rather than the total system using it.
There is a danger that, if the resources of the IIRS are
concentrated behind the 'offensive strategy', based on new physical
products, we will land ourselves at the tail-end of the great-nation
rat-race of which the conservationists are becoming increasingly
critical. If in the meantime we neglect the traditional things that
we do well, the latter could fall on evil days. How much R and D has
been done in wool, flax, cotton and natural fibres, compared to that
in artificial fibres? People tend to forget that the latter are
based, almost without exception, on fossil fuels, of which the end is
in sight. We should be conserving them carefully.
If we follow blindly the current IIRS 'offensive' strategy, I
suggest that for every 'offensive' job we create, we will lose two in
some undefended sector, where 'defensive' strategy would be relevant.
This, indeed, is to date the experience of the IDA. It has also been
the experience of the Northern Ireland economy for the last
quarter-century; it was originally pin-pointed by Isles and
Cuthbert(10) as early as 1957....
April 4 1973
I witnessed an example of a successful transition from research
and development to production for the marketplace at Kells last
Thursday which reflects credit on all concerned: the launching of a
water-treatment system suitable for small-scale application in rural
areas.
Before describing it, let me go into the background. I am
convinced that the belated appreciation of the importance of water in
rural Ireland is one of the prime causes of the low marriage and high
emigration rates in recent years. In most cases, electricity preceded
water, a curious inversion of the natural evolution of domestic
technology.
In the pre-electric days of the last century, the Ascendancy
big-house had its hydraulic ram, which reliably pumped water up to a
tank in the attic, often against a head of 100 feet or more, from a
river flowing through the demesne. These were simple devices; they
were serviced by a farm labourer with elementary tools. Occasionally
an eel would get caught in the valve.
There is no reason why this highly appropriate technology could
not have been adapted to supply group water schemes in the 20s and
30s, at least where there was a river with a few feet of fall. Even
without this resource, the diesel pumping engine was available in a
cheap and reliable form.
The obstacle to this type of development was the application of
urban standards of water hygiene in rural areas, by unimaginative
County Councils and an equally unimaginative Department of Local
Government. I remember enquiring in Connemara in the early 60s why
wasn't a local water-supply available from the lakes; I was told that
the lake water had been tested and found unfit for a piped water
supply.
The Ascendancy big-house solution to this problem was so
childishly simple and practical that it never seemed to occur to the
Local Authorities. There was a house-rule which said: 'don't drink
the water from the tap; if you want water for your whiskey, there is
well-water in a pail in the kitchen', or something similar.
The failure to develop simple mildly-polluted piped-water
schemes, suitable for animals, washing and general domestic purposes,
based on the available technology of the time, has contributed to the
mass rejection of Irish rural life by two generations of post-Treaty
Irish, with the result that such last vestiges of Celtic civilisation
as remain are on the verge of extinction.
Then in the fifties came rural electrification, and in its wake
the Aquadare system. This consists of a pump, a tank and a
pressure-switch. It is an ingenious device, because it obviates the
need to install a tank with a gravity feed. The water is pumped into
a pressure-vessel, compressing the residual air, which stores the
energy necessary to push the water out into the domestic piping
system. The pump is cut out by the pressure-switch; it cuts in again
when the pressure drops.
Unlike river-water, which is usually soft, the well-water from
which the average isolated farm-house Aquadare draws its supply is
usually loaded with iron, calcium, magnesium etc, in a form such that
they deposit on the insides of the hot-water system. Nowadays the
well-water is usually polluted, into the bargain, with bacteria from
farmyard runoff, septic tank overflows, pig-slurry and the Lord knows
what.
Let me return now to the Kells event. The gap has finally been
closed between urban and rural water quality, thanks to a treatment
system invented in the Agricultural Institute, consisting of a chemist
(Tom Spillane), a biochemist (Joe O'Shea) and an engineer (John
Sugrue). The system is being marketed by Unidare as an accesory to
their Aquadare pump, at a modest price.
The principle, which is novel, simple, cheap and ingenious,
consists in the conversion of the pressure-switch of the Aquadare into
a metering-pump by means of a couple of lengths of plastic tube. This
is combined with a storage-tank for three months' stock of treatment
chemicals, a few brackets and fittings. The whole can be fitted to an
existing Aquadare pump in seven minutes unskilled working time.
Each time the pressure-switch operates, a calculated dose of
mixture is automatically added in. The composition of the mix is
tailored to suit the chemistry and bacteriology of your water. You
chlorinate to get rid of the bacteria, and you sequester the calcium
and magnesium in the form of hexametaphosphates, which are stable to
heat. Iron it will handle up to 5 ppm; above this level, if you want
to get rid of iron you have to have a supplementary precipitation
unit. You can add fluoride if you like.
The old ion-exchange resin system, which you used to have to
remember to revive with brine every so often, never caught on as a
domestic device. Anyway, why take the calcium out when it is good for
you? The new system not only diverts the calcium from the inside of
the boiler (where it used deleteriously to deposit) into your
childrens' bones (where it is needed), but gives you a beneficial dose
of phosphates as well.
I understand that the Institute has taken an enlightened view of
the patent rights, and some benefits are likely to accrue to the
inventors.. These could be considerable, if the world market is
exploited, as seems possible.....
September 12 1973
I attended a seminar aimed at familiarising Irish businessmen
with the patent system on September 4.....
There are 60,000 patent applications annually in the UK and only
2000 in Ireland. According to Mr P Slavin of the Patent Office, this
represents the cream of what the world thinks is worth while
protecting, given the small size of the Irish market.
Very few of the articles so patented end up by being manufactured
in Ireland. One way in which an Irish entrepreneur could use the
patent system is to scan the list and apply for a compulsory licence
to manufacture in Ireland; this is available four or five years after
the patent is filed. A flaw in the 1964 Act, according to Mr Slavin,
is that this licence need not be exclusive. If it were, it would be a
greater incentive for people to apply for compulsory licences.
Patents which have lapsed (after 16 years) also make good source
material for entrepreneurial reading.
The procedure for getting a patent (according to Mr D O'Connor,
who is a patent agent) is to keep your mouth shut, disclosing only to
people under your control, and then file a 'provisional', with the aid
of a patent agent (cost: about £35). Then you can disclose,
filing in other countries subsequently.....
The IIRS contract research capability was outlined by Mr B
Herriott: one procedure is for technology developed within IIRS to be
licenced out to firms judged by the IIRS likely to make a success of
the invention..... (...the later stages of the development process
must be close to the ultimate site of production. This link is weak
at present.....the missing link is someone in the firm, a
development-orientated group, which has won the confidence of the
production people by a creative record of cost-cutting. Without the
existence of such a group in the acceptor-firm, the licencing-out
procedure will be a non-starter; the graft won't take (RJ)).
Mr A D Suttle, of Coras Tractala, spoke of licencing in products
with export potential. Most licences are know-how agreements rather
than actual patents.
Mr J Butler of the IDA outlined how firms can qualify for 50% of
the cost of development work, equipment, consultancy fees etc. This
figure was queried very sharply from the floor by an industrial
chemist with a successful innovation record, who stated that he had
never heard of more than 20% of the cost actually being covered.
Obstacles to the issue of the full amount were always found, or there
were delays and indecisions, resulting in losses.
Patents as a source of technical information were extolled by Mr
W Burns of the IIRS; they are to the industrial technologist what the
paper is to the scientist. The UK abridgement service is useful. The
Austrian patent office is making a bid to become a world centre for
patents in this sense; they also operate a small-firm orientated
consultancy service.
Mr MJ Quinn of the Patent Office outlined the status of the
world, European and EEC patent laws. There is a European Convention,
as distinct from the EEC. This looks like becoming established in
Munich, despite UK opposition. It will be policy to farm out 40% of
the applications to the national offices. The Europatent contains
'Byzantine conundrums'; it is a 'lawyers' paradise' and contains
'many traps for the unwary'.
Mr H J P Murdoch outlined the Irish patent statistics: only 10%
of applications in the Irish office originate in Ireland, half of
these are granted, half of those granted run the full term.
Some £11M are spent on imported drugs; many of these could
be manufactured in Ireland on compulsory licence.
By and large, this seminar showed up the weakness of the Irish
innovative tradition, and confirmed the critiques made in Mr Murdoch's
book, published last year by the TCD Administrative Research Bureau.
August 21 1974
Dr Stephen Bragg, Vice-chancellor of Brunel University, in the
'New Scientist' of August 1 has attempted to quantify the hypothesis
that a change in job acts as a stimulus to creativity. He challenges
the presumption that 'research is a young man's game' and that no
scientist over 30 is creative.
Dr Bragg makes two hypotheses: that the rate of learning new
facts about a field of work is proportional to the amount that one
does not know, and that the chance of making a novel contribution is
also proportional to what one does not know. By combining these two
inverse exponential functions, one can produce a 'creativity curve'
with a maximum which occurs at a time related to the rate of
absorbtion of knowledge.
If you know too much, your thinking will be in grooves. If you
know too little, you will have plenty of wild ideas. Somewhere in
between, you will be genuinely innovative. By normalising his curves
to the lore, Dr Bragg comes up with a recommendation of a 3-4 year
stint as being optimal for someone aged 20-30, and 8-10 years for the
final period before retirement.
This suggests very strongly that someone of 30-35 who was been
following the same line since graduation badly needs a change, and
that the failure of many to do so, due to constraints imposed by
establishments, pension-rights etc, is the source of the 'too old at
30' myth(11).
Dr Bragg adds in a useful piece of lore relating to J J Thompson
(the discoverer of the electron), who when Professor of Physics at
Campridge used to advise his students never to read the literature on
the subject until they had spent six months thinking how they
themselves would tackle the problem.
I can cap this with a similar piece of lore, related to Professor
Peter Fowler (who incidentally is the grandson of Rutherford,
Thompson's successor) of Bristol, who in an argument with Harry Messel
(now in Australia, but then in the Dublin Institute of Advanced
Studies, where he was for long a legendary figure) was accused by the
latter of not reading his recent paper on some germane topic. Peter
Fowler is reported to have replied testily 'I don't read papers, I
write them!'. This takes J J Thompsons principle, as outlined by Dr
Bragg, a stage further.
There is scope for the study of the interaction between learning,
creativity, innovation and communications.....
October 9 1974
....The September 26 issue of the Western Mail, which I had
occasion to buy when in Bangor, North Wales, recently, carried a
photograph of an electric motor-cycle, driven by a Swansea journalist,
manufactured in Dublin and recently introduced to Britain. The top
speed was stated to be 30 mph, range 35-40 miles, overnight charging
from the mains, price 257 pounds in Britain. The accumulators give it
a nice low centre of gravity, and it is clearly a useful machine.
Running costs are claimed to be 25p per week.
It is alleged to be an 'American idea'. Well, now, I remember an
exhibition in the Mansion House in Dublin in or about 1945, when all
the Irish war-time inventions were on display. This, or its elder
brother, was on display, as large as life, the Dubliners' response to
the petrol shortage. It never caught on then, because electricity and
lead accumulators were also short.
There is very little to the idea, it is obvious; the weight
penalties associated with the metal shell, which have dominated the
electric car problem for so long, just don't exist in the case of the
bicycle. I wonder is its designers have risen to things like
regenerative braking and speed control by thyristor-chopper. It would
be criminal to spoil a good idea by using a dissipative control
system....
(A subsequent visit revealed a small firm, working from a garage,
producing entirely for export, a product of the export tax-relief
system. A test-ride on the product revealed no speed control
whatever; one had full power or nothing. Little has been heard of it
since. No doubt there were maintenance problems; people do not
recommend to their friends a product if the manufacturers are not
available to stand over and maintain it.)
February 11 1975
...A grant of £100,000 has been awarded to the UCC
Electrical Engineering Department, in order to enable Dr G T Wrixon to
set up a Millimetre Diode Laboratory. This arises under a
quadripartite agreement signed jointly by UCC, the Science Research
Council of the UK, the Centre National de Recherche Scientifique of
France and the German Max Planck Institute.
The work of the Millimeter Diode Laboratory relates to
communications. Observers of the Irish telephone system will remember
the building of the microwave links: those large dishes on top of
towers, so disliked by environmentalists.....
Line-of-sight transmissions of very short wavelengths carry a
large number of channels for telephonic signals, so that they are much
cheaper than digging up the road and laying cables.
These microwave links were built in the early 60s, with the
civilian technology of the 50s, derived from the military technology
of the 40s. The wavelength of the transmitted signal is of the order
of centimetres, whence the ease of focussing with mirror systems,
obeying the laws of geometrical optics.
The trend is into shorter wavelengths, as thereby more
communications channels can be fitted into a single carrier signal.
The technology of the 70s is therefore developing the means of
producing, directing, receiving and decoding millimetre-wave signals.
This region of the spectrum is the same as the spectroscopists'
'far infra-red'. It would be no use, however, using
thermally-generated infra-red radiation as the carrier-wave, because
it is not coherent. The phase of the wave-trains is random; imagine
trying to convey information using the waves of the sea. Whence the
importance of developing devices capable of generating and detecting
millimetre waves electronically rather than thermally.
The technology of millimetre-wave semiconductor devices is highly
exacting. It involves making integrated circuits.....using gallium
arsenide....with the individual diodes of the order of 2 microns in
diameter, spaced 5 microns apart.....and arranging for electrical
contact with the outside world...
It is a credit to UCC that they are able to establish some
European standing in this field......electronic component
manufacturers in Ireland will have an advanced laboratory available to
them for prototyping work....
..It is, regrettably, considerably easier for an Irish University
to get European or American funds for basic or applied research than
to establish any significant rapport with firms operating in Ireland.
This situation is changing, but painfully slowly.....foreign firms in
Ireland have sometimes found that they can get quick results by
drawing in local expertise on contract applied research, but the more
usual pattern is for them to refer their prototype development work
and their production problems to a centralised R and D unit somewhere
abroad.
If Irish university researchers are to break into this market,
they will need to organise themselves to look businesslike and to
deliver to a deadline. They will find that the academic management
structure does not lent itself to this process easily.
***
It has been the policy of this feature....to attempt to make
people aware of scientific technology as a resource, embodied in
trained manpower. There is lacking, however, in Ireland a means of
matching this resource with a need. It has become well established
that 50% or more of the holders of science degrees emigrated, at least
in the period up to 1971, when first there was a head-count in the
Census. Of those who remain, only a minority work at their
specialities.
This tradition of export of potential technological entrepreneurs
is not new. Anyone with half an hour to spare when in Belfast could
do worse than drop in to the Queens University Science Library, where
they will find.....an exhibition devoted to John Boyd Dunlop, Harry
Ferguson and Sir John MacNeill. This is part of a series organised by
the Librarian, Shiela Landy, in honour of historic Irish figures in
science and technology(12).
Of the three mentioned, only MacNeill managed to carve himself a
career in Ireland. He served his time as a civil engineer with
Telford, helping to build the Holyhead Road. He initially espoused
the cause of steam road vehicles, but soon saw that rail technology
was the coming thing and he proceeded to become the leading railway
engineer in Ireland. Perhaps his most spectacular achievement was the
Boyne viaduct, which completed the rail link between Dublin and
Belfast in 1850.
MacNeill was the first person in Ireland to be appointed to a
university Chair in Engineering; the TCD Engineering School annually
commemorates him with a prestige lecture.....
Thus MacNeill was an entrepreneur, competent in a relevant
technology, who understood the importance of the higher education
system, contributing to it and to the development of the Irish
economy.
Dunlop and Ferguson were also innovators with highly relevant
technologies. Both began with Irish roots, but both had to go abroad
to develop. Mechanical imagination alone is not enough; it has to be
linked to a market...
To find this linkage in the 1880s in the case of Dunlop it was
necessary to go to the English market, via the firm of du Cros, a
pioneer in the motor business. Dunlop lost control.
Likewise Ferguson went to Ford in Detroit with his 3-point
hydraulic implement mount for a tractor, revolutionising agricultural
technology. At this time (the 1920s) there was no IDA to steer such
developments into the Ford Cork factory, and a national enterprise was
lost.
Looking at the present scene, I see some signs of
entrepreneurship stirring on the various college campuses.....the
close relationship between the NIHE in Limerick, and the various
Limerick and Shannon firms associated with SFADCO, promises to become
creative.
In the case of the Dublin Colleges, I get the impression that the
principal linkage is at the level of individual consultancies:
remunerative personal arrangements between College staff members and
firms requiring to buy expertise. This is gradually coming out into
the open and ceasing to be regarded by the academic Establishment as
reprehensible.
However, there are snags: sometimes, by marginal costing,
academics can get themselves into the bad books of the professional
consultancy firms, including the IIRS. They can also get into the bad
books of firms who come to depend on them, and then find that they are
not in a position to be on call continually.
These problems would be soluble if college consultancy were to
get itself organised....
June 3 1975
I have previously referred to the existence of opportunities for
small firms with knowhow to carry out an R and D business, developing
prototypes and producing trial batches, licencing out the production
if the scale gets too big. One such firm is Research and Production
ltd, a member of the Slazenger Group, which has a laboratory in Dun
Laoire. I met the Managing Director, Mitchell Elliot, who showed me
around.
Their current success is a device which has developed as a result
of interaction with Norman Butler, who is Professor of Conservative
Dentistry in TCD. It consists of a surgeon's knife, for which the
cutting energy is supplied by the heating effect of concentrated
radio-frequency current.
The actual 'knife' is a tiny flexible wire, mounted on a
hand-held probe. (Old-timers can perhaps helpfully visualise a
primus-stove pricker.) signal-generator feeds 70 watts of RF at 3MHz
to this probe. The return path for the current is via a relatively
large earthing-plate placed in contact with the victim.
The lines of flow of the current are such that nearly all the
heating effect takes place in the immediate neighborhood of the
'knife', giving rise to a clean, cauterised cut. The same effect can
be obtained with power lasers, but much more expensively......
Up to now there have been problems with RF surgical systems, such
as to make lasers worth looking at. The 'R and P' system claims to
have overcome these by designing the signal-generator to give a pure,
unmodulated sine-wave. Any modulation (eg by 'mains hum') gives a
corrugated or stitched effect to the cut, with carbonised areas where
the current is momentarily too high. If the current is too low, the
probe picks up debris.
R and P are also producing a small gas laser, adapted to the
educational market. They have, in addition, taken up at the
suggestion of the IIRS the production of a digital width controller
system, developed to meet the needs of the plastic film industry.
Plastic film is produced in long strips by a hot blowing process.
Control of strip width calls for a feedback loop which can tolerate
the strip wandering laterally within fairly wide limits, while
remaining at constant width. A digital logic system takes care of
this.
R and P have some projects up their sleeve......one such involves
energy-concentration with large capacitors (of the order of
15Kjoules). An electrical analogue of explosive welding? High
magnetic field pulsed devices?
In Dun Laoire they have a staff of seven: two management, two
engineers, two electrical technicians and one mechanical . I was
reminded of the Bangor University High Voltage Laboratory, which has a
similar staff and is turning over about 100,000 pounds annually in
high-voltage test equipment. Sales projections for the coming year
for R and P are of this order.
July 8 1975
I referred on June 17 (13) to a study by Chase Econometrics in the US in which it was suggested that investment in R and D was counter-inflationary. I now follow up with some additional
transatlantic experience which shows how best a firm can benefit from
R and D. There is more to it than employing 'boffins'; this indeed
on its own can be merely ornimental, or even harmful.
Jules Schwartz of the Wharton School (University of Pennsylvania)
and Joel Goldhar (National Science Foundation), in a sociological
study of factors governing innovation, have established the crucial
role of middle management in interpreting between senior management
and specialists. In the US environment, the conclusion drawn is
'encourage middle management and you encourage innovation'. The
conclusion drawn in Ireland should perhaps be different: lets inject
first into middle management some people with a first-hand
understanding of scientific technology. You could 'encourage' the
average Irish B Comm until you were blue in the face, and you would be
no nearer bridging the cultural gap which yawns between management and
scientific technology.
***
Another model for the 'research into profits' transformation is
the 'research park' near the campus, leased by the University by to
selected firms, as a location for such work as might benefit by
proximity.. This concept goes back, in its modern form, to 1970, when
it was initiated by the University of Utah. (Embryonically it can
perhaps be said to have originated in Cambridge in the 20s, with the
establishment of Pye on the fringe of the University as a scientific
instrument manufacturer; there probably are earlier examples...)
Dr Mark L Money, the Executive Director of the Research Park
project, in an article in the May 'Industrial Research', distils the
experience of the first five years into three hypotheses which, for
his future decision-making purposes, he now regards as proven to his
satisfaction. The three 'Money Laws' (if I may coin a pun) are:
1. Most research-park tenants are there because of a logical
tie-in with graduate-school activity.
2. Entry to research-parks must be restricted; you must not let
in a light industry or a law-firm just to sell the space.
3. A park should be located within easy reach of an urban centre
and an airport, as well as a university campus.
Thus there is beginning to accumulate some useful experience,
suggesting that viable sites for Research Parks would include Limerick
(near NIHE and Shannon), north Dublin (in the wake of the Ballymun
College of Technology(14) when this materialises, and near the IIRS), and Cork.
Limerick is already moving in this direction with an IIRS centre
on the NIHE campus. University College Cork, however, is slow to
move, having opted out of taking up the experimental 'Industrial
Liaison Officer' scheme initiated by the National Science Council in
1971. This scheme has been taken up by UCG and TCD; both appear to
be moving in the direction of on-campus applied-research units with
industrial linkages, and are experimenting with various ad-hoc
management structures. This can perhaps be regarded as an embryonic
'research park' concept.
The one site in Ireland labelled 'research park' is owned by the
IDA and is at Naas, some 20 miles from Dublin. To date its only
tenant is Standard Pressed Steel (SPS International) which houses one
of its R and D centres there. It is close enough to Dublin to have
developed a university linkage (with the TCD Graduate School of
Engineering Studies)(15) and constitutes an approximation to the Money model, though the site is, in my opinion, too remote.
Small on-campus applied-research units are more likely to suit
the scale of Irish-based industry. The TCD Industrial Liaison Office
is initiating a scheme whereby a group of firms, sharing common
problems, can buy co-operatively into the control of an
applied-research unit on the campus(16). The problem is to ensure that industrial research is not subsidised out of educational funds; instead industrial research should help to strengthen College
finances. Prospective clients should therefore not expect to be able
to buy academic expertise at marginal cost, as sometimes heretofore
they have done.
One embryonic applications unit has a creditable track-record for
developing on-line mini-computer systems in an industrial
environment.....with National Science Council Support(17).....
***
Up to now the emphasis in applied bacteriology has been in the
medical field......the industrial field has stuck to fermentation
processes tailored to produce specific substances, the best known
being alcohol; others such as citric acid or gluconic acid are
produced in bulk by Pfizer in Cork, using the organism 'aspergillus
niger'.
The use of micro-organisms to get rid of waste products is by no
means novel; the practice of burying the dead is perhaps the oldest
deliberate practice established for the purpose.
Now that our increasingly complicated civilisation is producing
polluting effluents of ever-increasing variety, there has come about a
need to adapt organisms to get rid of them effectively. This is the
role of Badgett Cooke Biochemicals ltd, who will shortly be moving to
near Dublin, employing some 20-25 people, mostly graduates, in the
production of freeze-dried bacteria in bulk....
This is a typical university spin-off industry. One of the
principals, Jeremy Cooke, is a TCD graduate. Both have contributed
their own know-how to their firm, which is associated with a parent
firm in the US from which they have taken up 15 years of development
and applications experience.
There is a treatment system for each problem, with its
appropriate blend of selected bacteria. For example, they have a
system labelled 'Petrobac' which was developed by cultivating strains
of bacteria which live in refinery effluent pools. This makes short
work of oily beaches, without destroying marine life, as do
detergents. The oil is metabolised by the organisms and oxidised to
CO2 and water. You add about 50lbs of Petrobac to 50 gallons of
sea-water and spray over an acre of beach. In warm weather the job
will be done in a week.
They have other bacteria specialising in greases (eg for blocked
drains); there is even one which will handle toxic industrial
effluents such as phenols......(18).
July 22 1975
...(The opening of the) Cambridge Science Park, which is a
£650,000 investment by Trinity College, Cambridge, was reported
in the Times of July 4.... Spin-off firms started by
entrepreneurial-minded academics are envisaged, as well as branches or
R and D departments of existing high-technology firms.
Older-generation spin-offs are the Pye group, Cambridge
Scientific Instruments, Aero Research (now Ciba-Geigy), Metals
Research and Torvac (a vacuum-technology firm). It is expected that
the existence of a 'science park' on the fringe of Cambridge will
facilitate this process.
The idea has been pioneered in its present form in the UK by
Herriott-Watt (Edinburgh), although the process of spin-off of
academic expertise from Cambridge into applied technology goes back to
Isaac Newton, who became Master of the Mint.
The use of academic staff as consultants to industry in an
organised way is developing through the Industrial Liaison Offices, of
which there are 30 in the UK, seven of them being registered as
consultancy companies.
This netweok extends into Ireland, with John Potts in Belfast..
Michael Moroney in Galway, and the writer in Trinity College
Dublin.....
In order to illustrate the need for Industrial Liaison Offices in
the Colleges of Technology, consider the annual exhibition of
final-year student projects by the Bolton St engineering students....
There were 16 projects, each with working hardware and
documentation. Some of them showed considerable promise from the
point of view of potential for development into marketable devices or
systems, fulfilling real needs.
I noted particularly the Mannion work on the use of native Irish
sand in making moulds for casting.. Moulding sand currently is
imported... measurement of the relevant physical properties (have
shown that) some Irish beach sands are as good as the imported sands
sanctified by tradition....a heat pump system developed by Joe
Murtagh, adapted to heat a glasshouse, using a local lake as
heat-source.....an electromagnetic clutch with fluid shock-absorbing
cushion (F P Dempsey).
John F Williams had developed an invalid car seat, which docked
to a wheelchair....
How can these projects be brought forward? Many of the students
have not yet got jobs. In their present form the hardware is too
crude to be called prototype; it is at the level of 'demonstration of
principle'. Liaison between the College and industry ought to be
developing along lines such as to make it easy for any of these
students to spend a further year....polishing up the system into an
engineered prototype, with an eye to production, as an employee of an
interested firm. He could spend some of his post-graduate time with
the firm, mastering the relevant production techniques, and liaising
with the marketing people. Subsequently he would join the firm and
develop with the product.
This seems to me to be a workable model for the College-industry
interface, as seen by the student, which ought to be developed by
State aid. There is a wealth of experience abroad, and some in
Ireland, mostly positive.
August 26 1975
.....The old methylene blue test for milk quality is being
superseded by a technique known as 'plate-counting'....An instrument
for doing this is in process of development between Waterford Co-op
and the Agricultural Institute at Moorepark.
...The instrument consists of two parts:
1. a device for 'plating out' samples automatically (ie flushing a small determined quantity onto a Petri-dish containing a prepared growth-medium in sterile gel form),
2. a device for counting automatically the ensuing colonies of bacteria.
There are a number of devices on the market which perform the
second task......the first however remains a major labour-intensive
bottleneck. This was tackled by an Irish engineer, Seamus O'Reilly,
as a back-yard operation, at the suggestion of Ciaran Quigley, the
Waterford Co-op quality control manager. A system was devised, which
was sent to Moorepark for a period of testing...... It is currently
working in the Q C laboratory of the Waterford Co-op at Dungarvan. It
is now on the market, under the name 'Aplin', and is produced by Orme
Engineering ltd, under which banner Seamus O'Reilly is now trading,
having left his previous employers.
Unfortunately there is some evidence that while the system was on
trial at Moorepark, it was seen by technicians of one of the major
firms which make the instrumentation to do the second of the two tasks
listed above. A remarkably similar prototype was produced and no
doubt soon will be on the market.
This illustrates the need for security....there is a need to
'keep it dark', and employ a good patent agent....
Septtember 2 1975
Although the traditional internal combustion engine, with 100
years of development behind it, is difficult to beat with mobile
power-source technology, Ford is moving ahead with Sterling engine
research in collaboration with Philips (Holland). The rights to the
Sterling engine are owned by Philips. Ford has taken up half-million
dollar grant from the US Energy R and D Administration to design
Sterling engines in the 80-100 HP range. Already a 170 HP engine has
been run in a Ford Torino.
Philips are interested in the potential of the Sterling to work
in conjunction with a high energy-density source of stored heat:
latent heat of fusion of eutectic mixtures of salts. Ten times he
storage capacity of lead accumulators is claimed to be possible.
Such a system would of course produce no pollutant exhaust gases.
An extra-large radiator is required, and very efficient piston seals.
Despite these apparent snags, the fact that Ford is taking an interest
suggests that the Sterling engine may have a future.
June 15 1976
Three documents have come to hand in recent weeks, all of which
bear on the question of innovation in industry in Ireland, with
particular reference to the role of the State and semi-State bodies.
There are two from the Science Policy Research Unit of the UCD
Economics Department: 'Innovation in Ireland - Case Studies' (Dermot
O'Doherty) and 'Technology Transfer' (John Kieran). The third is from
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, by Thomas J Allen.
All three combine to suggest an undue dependence on foreign
competitors for imported innovatory ideas. The MIT paper, in
particular, goes further and suggests that Irish firms make little or
no use of the science-technology infrastructure which is available to
them.
Professor Allen took a sample of 300 firms in 26 industries,
selected in such a way as to concentrate on small firms where the
technology transfer problem is at its most acute.
Data were obtained on 65 innovations which had taken place within
the previous five years. These were associated with 140 'messages',
ie component elements of the innovatory process having an identifiable
origin. Of these 27% originated within the firm...
Of the messages coming from outside the firm, only 8% came via
documentation, the remainder by personal contact....the classical
Allen thesis...
No ideas whatever originated in universities....the State
Research Institutes.....account for 2% of the messages.
The most frequent type of direct contact is with a firm in the
same industry on the Continent (rather than in Britain); a typical
scenario is a plant visit following a trade exhibition. This ease of
access to continental firms Professor Allen sees as being due to the
latter not seeing Ireland as a serious competitor. In proportion as
Irish firms achieve successful penetration of the EEC market, this
source of innovative 'signals' is likely to dry up.
No foreign subsidiaries were found to obtain any information from
universities, research institutes, Government agencies or industry
associations. These sources serve only Irish firms....though
inadequately.
Innovations in Irish industry are twice as likely to relate to a
process as to a product. In Irish-owned firms the ratio is four to
one, while for foreign-owned firms it is one to one. This ratio is
characterisic of 'mature' products where innovations are related
primarily to production cost-cutting.......
Professor Allen recommends that attention be directed towards the
easing of relevant personal contacts, before spending money on
document retrieval or reprint services(19).....
Professor Allen has hard words to say about the IIRS. I quote:
'Several of the people who were interviewed.....volunteered their
opinion of the IIRS. These were unanimously negative in their
appraisal....of low quality and irrelevant to industry
needs....inaccessible...' He goes on to say that it would be better to
abandon the IIRS...
(I would regard the abandonment of the IIRS, for all its faults,
as a disastrous step. There is evidence that it is reacting to
Professor Alen's criticism and taking organised steps to get closer
to....small industry by developing a network of Regional College
bases....)
The Agricultural Institute comes out better, mainly through the
links with food-processing, but only with firms which are already
engaged in R and D. The barrier between it and the small firms he
finds just as great as in the IIRS case.
Failure to breach this barrier....has resulted in over-concern of
Institute staff with internally-generated projects of scientific
interest, with a view, insome cases, to publication. He suggests tha
this interest could be shifted by modifying the reward-system.....
Turning to the Universities, Professor Allen notes the existence
of in Industrial Liaison Office scheme.....compares the scale of the
effort with that in MIT, making allowance for relative staff sizes,
and suggests that the scope of the Irish scheme is inadequate.
This report can only have a beneficial effect...
The O'Doherty study analyses from within what Allen has seen as
an outsider, though in this case there is a creaming process, in that
the eight cases studied were those which won the Innovation Awards in
1970 and 71.... The firms were: Bord na Mona, Erin Foods, Gouldings,
Harrington and Goodlass Wall, Irish Ropes, Loctite (Ireland) and Irish
Board Mills. Loctite won two awards. All had in-house R and D; in
no case was interaction with the IIRS or the universities of major
relevance, though the IIRS was leaned upon to some extent for
technical assistance.
In all cases science had high status; in three cases this was
reflected in the composition of the Board. The 4-6 man team around an
innovating project-leader appears to be the norm.
Dermot O'Doherty concludes by pointing out the need for
evaluation in depth of the existing system of State support for
industrial R and D, confirming the conclusions of Allen by a different
route.... None of O'Doherty's firms used university people as
consulants.....the university image as seen from the standpoint of
innovating industry is bad.
John Kiernan's study takes a sample of 20 firms, self-selected
via an interest in joint ventures, and comes to conclusions similar to
those of O'Doherty and Allen.... He calls for tax concessions,
constraints on foreign firms such as to force R and D location here,
centralisation of 'technology transfer activities' (these he lists as
the IDA Joint Venture Section, IIRS Licencing, CTT New Product
Development Group, the National Manpower Service Skilled Emigrant
Unit, etc), plus a linkage into venture finance.
Is it too much to ask....that some of the people who are actually
in the front line of technology transfer activity be involved in
policy development, to an extent greater than simply answering
questionnaires? Otherwise, technologists will start to react
positively against being regarded as laboratory animals for economists
and sociologists.
NOTES
1. The primary concern of the National Science Council in these early days was deciding which university departments to fund.
2. See Chapter 4.4 (Agriculture, 1/7/70) for an account of this innovatory attempt to re-introduce a traditional product.
3. See Chapter 1.3 (The Educational System).
4. Thorstein Veblen's 'Theory of the Leisure Class' is one of the classics of American radical-democratic thinking.
5. The introduction of free secondary education, by Donogh O'Malley when Minister for Education, by the way it was managed had the effect of bolstering the power of the religious organisations of various denominations which controlled the academic-orientated private sector of second-level education, and undermining the status of the technology-orientated public sector managed by the Local Authorities. See Chapter 1.3.
6. This agency, now ne-named and partially democratised as Udaras na Gaeltachta, has the task of generating industrial employment in the Irish-speaking parts of the country.
7. I cannot trace the occasion of this intervention by the Deputy Director of the IIRS; it could have been in response to this column, or possibly Professor Allen of MIT (qv).
8. See Chapter 1.2 (Structures and Institutions).
9. The 'Aerosol Valve Saga' illustrates the dangers of allowing
'technology push' to dominate 'market pull' in allocating financial resources for the development of products.
10. One of a series of reports analysing the reasons for the disparity in employment levels between Britain and Northern Ireland. It is regrettable that no Dublin Government ever saw fit to produce any reports outlining the creative potential of an all-Ireland economy, taking advantage of complementary factors among Northern and Southern physical and human resources. This task was left, by default, to the radical activists, who lacked the resources or expertise to do the job convincingly. The neglect of Northern opportunities by successive Dublin Governments has allowed the British to continue the pretence that the Northern Ireland problem is primarily one of internal security within the UK, rather than one of emergence of a united Irish nation-state in an acceptable secular democratic form.
11. The major unrealised resource within the Irish educational system is the active 30-40 year old cohort who have decided that they are not in line for promotion within the academic system. Such people need to make the transition into applied rresearch, consultancy and active industrial innovation work, inspiring cohorts of students in this direction. This 30-40 cohort currently dominates the Regional Colleges of Technology, a decade after the first round of recruitment.
12. See Chapters 2.1 and 2.3 for some more material on this theme.
13. See Chapter 1.1.
14. It finally took shape in 1980 as the Dublin embodiment of the
National Institute of Higher Education, as previously set up in Limerick. See Chapter 1.3.
15. This link commenced with an MSc in Metallurgy tailored by TCD to suit SPS staff (world-wide). This was a bold concept; Garrett Scaife was the prime mover. It was successful as far as it went, but was not repeated, as it strained the academic resources, being under-budgeted. Subsequently Dr Paul Wallace, Director of the SPS Laboratories, spent a period in the TCD Mechanical Engineering Chair.
16. It did not quite work out this way; see the Epilogue for an
account of how the TCD Applied Research Consultancy Group did develop
with some degree of success in the period 1976-80.
17. This eventially spun off as Mentec ltd, on the initiative of Dr Michael Peirce, who resigned from the TCD academic staff to become
Managing Director.
18. See Chapter 3.5 (Bio-engineering) for more on this and related themes.
19. See Chapter 5.2 (Scientific and Technological Information) for a development of this theme.
[To Irish Times Column Index]
[1970s Overview]
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