Competence Centres just the business for third-level research

A new initiative bridges the gap between the lab and commercial markets, writes IAN CAMPBELL

THE LAUNCH this week of Competence Centres by Minister for Enterprise Mary Coughlan was a formality for an industry-led research initiative that is already under way. Five of the proposed nine centres have received €1 million in start-up funding. The centres are the latest in a long line of Government research and development (R&D) initiatives, but they are a step that all involved say is significantly different.

A joint venture between Enterprise Ireland and IDA Ireland, the Competence Centres address the biggest challenge for third-level research: turning ideas into marketable applications with commercial value. In the past, blue-sky projects have been criticised for soaking up funding with little chance of commercial payback.

The programme was kickstarted by a call for private consortiums to come forward with ideas, prompting multinationals and indigenous start-ups to join forces with academia in pursuit of common goals. The endgame is intellectual property with commercial applications owned by the university, but licensed first to participating companies.

Martin Lyes, divisional manager for research and innovation at Enterprise Ireland, says the initiative tackles real problems in applied research. “In the past, we have seen colleges and companies come together, define research and then go off in different directions. Despite doing the right things, you end up with research that has no relevance to the market.”

Intel, which is involved with two of the centres, welcomes the initiative. “Ireland has done a very good job in the last 10 years of investing in good science, but what we don’t have is a good system for converting good science into useful applications,” says Intel Ireland head of research Leonard Hobbs. “The centres are a brick in that bridge and the biggest step Ireland has taken in commercialising research.”

Conchur Ó Brádaigh, managing director of ÉireComposites, one of the Irish firms involved in the initiative, says shifting the balance of power towards industry is what will make the difference. “Back in the 1990s the government ran the Programmes for Advanced Technology, but they weren’t very successful because the control of the research agenda was left to the academics. Now the boards of the Competency Centres make the decisions and they are mostly made up of industrial people.”

This is significant, he says, because it keeps everybody focused on commercial outcomes. “We won’t be funding PhD students; it will all be postdoctoral. So if we need to stop a project because it’s no longer of any use to us, we can, because we have that flexibility to take people off one project and put them on another.”

A former academic and researcher at NUI Galway, Ó Brádaigh started ÉireComposites as a spin-out company, something most of his former colleagues are reluctant to do. “Running start-ups is a risky business for academics. Once they go, they are waving goodbye to an academic career.”

If Ireland wants to encourage more entrepreneurship, he says academics need to be incentivised to take risks. “The universities need to put in place leave-of-absence schemes to allow them back into an academic role when they have brought a company to a certain stage.”

Hobbs believes there is a cultural problem. “Ireland has nothing like the volume of spin-offs found in the US, because the culture is different. Irish academics are more interested in publishing and research.”

He hopes the centres will help fill the gap and encourage clusters of spin-off companies, but he regrets that part of the initial plan fell victim to spending cuts. “When the idea first came about, the centres were to be stand-alone companies, run on a non-profit basis, with their own board and chairman,” he says.

“But when the initial budget of €2 million was cut in half they had to be located in the universities.”

Ó Brádaigh says the programme could level the playing field for homegrown tech firms, allowing them to compete in areas where they previously struggled. “We wouldn’t have the access to the international R&D institutions that some of the multinationals have . . . The centres can help us overcome this. It is vital for us to have access to the best that the third-level sector can offer in industrially led R&D.”

Competence Centres

The €56 million investment in Competence Centres is a joint venture between Enterprise Ireland and IDA Ireland. The industry-led research will be based in Irish universities, working to an agenda set out by consortiums of multinational and indigenous companies.

Five centres are under way, serving bioenergy and biorefining; IT innovation; applied nanotechnology; composite materials; and microelectronics. Others are planned for manufacturing productivity; energy efficiency; financial services; and e-learning.