INDUSTRIAL APPLIANCE
“Technological ideas that seem useful to inventors can leave customers bewildered, indifferent or hostile” - Jaideep Prabhu from Cambridge University
n n
fuel cell cleans dirty water by breaking down its organic compounds, and produces electricity at the same time. University of Cambridge, Velox - This small, battery-powered device uses oxygen to speed up the healing of chronic wounds (such as leg ulcers) in the patient’s home. York University, Automatic face-description software - Working f rom audio or video footage of faces, this software can work out age, ethnic background and gender instantly – ideal for market researchers.
Rogers believes that British high-tech start-ups need to start ‘bootstrapping’: using the founders’ personal money and doing everything as cheaply as possible. The Aroxo logo and brand was designed by a Croatian creative agency for £200, software development is outsourced to India and the company uses as much free, open-source software as it can. Fundraising can easily take a founder six months of full-time work. By raising funds at a later stage, a company will be more attractive to investors and get its finance on better terms. The downside to this approach is that rapidly dwindling cash and the fear of rival launches can cause start-ups to cut corners and launch too early. Jaideep Prabhu, Jawaharlal Nehru professor of Indian business and enterprise at Judge Business School, Cambridge University, says this can be fatal. When Prabhu studied the conversion rates of ideas into commercially successful products at pharmaceuticals companies, he found that firms pursuing a small number of new products over a moderate period of time commercialise more ideas than those that pursue lots of ideas in the hope some will sell. Companies, individuals and universities could save themselves time and money if they asked tough questions about their idea up front. Who will use this product? What customer need does it fulfil? How would you describe your product to someone you’d just met? “Technological ideas that seem obviously useful to inventors often leave customers bewildered, indifferent or hostile,” says Prabhu. Early over-valuation of an idea’s worth can lead university staff to fret about selling intellectual property too cheaply and leave potential partners worrying about disproportionate royalty cost. By appraising how a customer might actually use a concept, design can bring realism into this process. Britain is getting better at commercialising science and technology: in pre-credit crunch 2007, universities received £2.64bn from businesses and public services. But more could be done. “Other countries are getting better too,” cautions Belgrave. “There’s a race going on.” FROM RESEARCH TO INNOVATION The Design Council’s Innovate for Universities programme matches design teams with university research departments to speed up the development of technology ideas. Six universities are receiving 12 months of intensive design mentoring for their projects, including: n n n n
Leeds University, iPAM -Intelligent Pneumatic Arm Movement (iPAM) is a robotic system that helps stroke victims to exercise independently, allowing physiotherapiststo see more patients. University College London, Prospective Crime Mapping - ProMap software maps crime and uses the data to help police work out hotspots. Although focused on burglary, it could track any offence. Nottingham University, Food allergy test kit - This uses nanotechnology to reveal a patient’s full food-allergy profile from a single blood sample. University of Aberdeen, Clean water technology - A solar-powered
FROM RESEARCH TO RESULTS David Secher on the UK’s commercial success stories. In the past decade, sustained government funding to stimulate enterprise and external engagement in higher education has allowed UK universities to build the capability to turn research into products and create knowledgebased companies. The claim that the UK is good at inventing but poor at developing inventions into products is no longer true. The capabilities and performance of UK universities are now on a par with those in the USA. The culture among academics has changed. Most accept that universities play a key role in the competitiveness of British business and that entrepreneurship is vital to the economy. A recent Higher Education Funding consultancy services and 13% have taken out a patent. But it is still rare for scientists to move between universities and industry, and there is still a belief that sabbaticals in industry will damage academic careers. Since 2002, the Praxis programme has trained more than 2,000 technology transfer professionals in skills ranging from IP protection and commercialisation, to setting up a consultancy and design. In his 2007 review of British science and technology, Lord Sainsbury highlighted the benefits of incorporating design at an earlier stage into the process of commercialising university research and asked how design advice might be made available to universities. A joint workshop organised by Unico (now Praxis-Unico) and the Design Council has explored this question and, building on successful pilots at University College, London and Oxford, six leading universities have recently won a year’s design support for their technology transfer offices. The exciting combination of British design and universities holds great promise for the identification and delivery of the products of the future – surely a key part of our economic recovery. NanoPerspective™ 41