SPIN ACTIVE APPLIED STI
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nnovation is an essential part of Science Spin, and to extend our coverage on the applied side of science and technology a new supplement, Spin ACTIVE, has been launched. In Spin ACTIVE the main focus is on how business and industry can benefit by applying the results of research. Like Science Spin, Spin ACTIVE is being distributed in print and as a free-for-all digital pager turner. It also has a controlled circulation to those involved in the business side of innovation, new product development, and professionals working in industrial R&D. For more than five years, Science Spin has been giving Irish research unrivalled coverage, and now Spin ACTIVE is here to present news and information of practical use to people in business and industry. By presenting information in a way that readers can understand, Spin ACTIVE is addressing the gap between generation of knowledge and application of results. That gap is bad for science, bad for industry, and it is undoubtedly bad for the economy. As the recent State commissioned ‘value for money’ studies have shown the vast majority of Irish SMEs either feel excluded from technology transfer opportunities, or they have serious difficulties in matching up their everyday needs to the available third and fourth level expertise. A low level of spin-off to small and medium sized Irish firms raises serious questions on how the economy is supposed to benefit from continued investment in science and technology. This is not, as it might first appear, to be an issue of dividing science into two camps, ‘blue skies’, or ‘applied’. Ultimately pure science, which gave us lasers, induction, and monoclonals, may be far more valuable in every sense of the word than tightly focused applied research, but this is not the point. A failure to profit from results, no matter where they come from, is not the smartest way to to go about developing a ‘knowledge economy.” In spite of the very welcome support and uptake of research by multinationals, the transfer of results to Irish firms remains unacceptably low, and without question this is a problem that has to be solved. In the longer term, solving that problem could well be more important to the Irish economy than using public money to prop up a seriously defective banking system. If you find it hard to accept that, just look at how the global economy works, and see that the SMEs, not the banks, are the real drivers of growth and innovation. Without the SMEs the world’s economy would simply grind to a halt, so is it really too much to think that Ireland should be any different? Alas, for far too many people in the agencies and in adademia home grown firms are just a bunch of losers. Hands-on entrepreneurs, on the other hand, typically regard academics as hopeless dreamers. The truth of it is that both have a point, but these are just two extremes, and in a perfect world, both sides could be of great benefit to each other. Not that the match is easily made, mainly because one side often does not really understand the other, so while busy entrepreneurs skip the lecture but expect to get a quick fix for their latest problem, academics, who have no talent at all for marketing, aspire to become whiz-kids in business. Of course there are the exceptions, people who feel at home in both camps, but even so, a common, if not the dominant view among those who are actually in business, is that publicly funded research has nothing at all to do with them. By making our content relevant to both sides of that divide Spin ACTIVE aims to bridge that gap.
Your news, views and comments are always welcome. If you are involved in applied science and have something to say or wish to profile your research, this is your platform. Send in an email with the words ‘Register Spin Active’ and we will keep you up to date with our live links to the digital page turner edition. Spin ACTIVE is published with Science Spin, Ireland’s science, nature and discovery magazine. Editor: Tom Kennedy. Email: tom@sciencespin.com Business Development Manager: Alan Doherty. Email: alan@sciencespin.com Tel: 01 2842909 www.sciencespin.com
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