Prophet of change

THE FRIDAY INTERVIEWwith Paul Saffo, professor, writer and futurist.

PAUL SAFFO, the futurist who loves thinking about tomorrow's technologies, can't wait to get to Ireland next week. "It's Silicon Valley with worse weather and more culture," he quips.

He'll be here to give a talk on embracing uncertainty to turn science into enterprise at Ibec's Meeting of Minds: Convergent Technologies conference in Dublin.

The Stanford professor with a list of other job titles too long to fit on a business card is a prolific writer and speaker who takes his job as a futurist so seriously that he not only thinks about the next decade or two, but the next 10 millennia, as a board member of the Long Now Foundation.

But in his talk in Dublin, he'll be looking at more recent history and the possibilities for Ireland's high-technology future. He predicts the next big wave of innovation and wealth will come from biotechnology and nanotechnology, an area that is just beginning as we exit the reign of information technology.

"We're crossing over. We're beginning to see the first take-off of biotechnology and the first fruits, such as stem cell procedures for eye conditions."

The new era will be built on the innovations of this one, he notes: "Computers were the personal bulldozers for geneticists, in the same way as chemists gave the experimental data on which modern physics began and started people rethinking the atom."

But biotech will demand a higher skill set than information technology, he says. "With software, anyone with logic could go be a programmer. But dropping into genetics cold is like trying to learn Chinese at 20."

So how does a State encourage hard sciences and that level of expertise? "You need research institutions. Singapore is a really interesting model. It has built a whole genomics institute, and they're very aggressive about hiring the very best people." A nation must also not try to preserve in aspic what succeeded in the past. "Well-intentioned government people who say 'we've got to protect our industry' - that's death."

Government also needs to understand when not to demand a return on investment or short-term intellectual property rights. He cites as an example the US development of the internet.

"Probably the single best investment of US government money was the money given to Darpa [Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which created the internet]. But after 2001, this [Bush] administration destroyed Darpa. It's now Vulcan's workshop. Darpa has become short term."

So what should the Irish government do? "The government has to look for the gaps, where it doesn't make sense for industry to invest," he says. The challenge for Ireland is not to mimic what is done elsewhere, but figure out "how do you borrow the best ideas from everywhere, and keep it local." Or as he says more bluntly: "Don't copy - steal!" Why? "If you copy, you'll always be behind. So steal and reinvent, and you'll always be ahead."

The same goes for companies. "Silicon Valley is built on the rubble of failure, not on the spires of success. Substitute velocity for management. Good management can kill innovation. You have to have a certain amount of wastage."

What are some companies he admires? Google, for one: "A fascinating company because management has the structure of a crowd scene from a Monty Python film. It's why Microsoft can't keep up. It's chaotic enough that if one thing doesn't work, something else comes along that does. The secret is to have informed intuition."

And then there's Apple: "Apple is an extraordinary company because Steve Jobs is an extraordinary person. He is as driven as Ahab in Moby Dick, but with a much happier result. The guy's invented three industries."

Saffo thinks Ireland has many advantages as a global competitor. First off: "Innovation is about telling stories, and the Irish are the best storytellers." He sees the country's small size as a plus, too: "A key factor that Ireland has - its small size is an advantage. Everyone can see their contribution."

He notes that smallness is why the Valley succeeded. Los Angeles had more programmers than the Valley at the start of the rise of the transistor, but they were all spread out across the hundreds of square miles of the LA basin, he says. "But the Valley is very tightly packed. Nothing 'propinqs' like propinquity."

He also notes with approval: "The Irish have a disregard for authority and a healthy scepticism. You also have the Celtic Tiger economic rollercoaster - up, down, up, down - and therefore have embedded in your recent cultural memory what Silicon Valley is like."

But there are plenty of challenges threatening to derail the Irish economy, not least that everyone, everywhere wants a slice of the economic action. "The world has fundamentally changed. The arms race has been replaced by a brain race. There is cut-throat competition, and every region on the planet is desperately trying to stay in this race.

"Silicon Valley is always in danger of drowning in its own waste products, and it seems the same is happening in Ireland." He cites a familiar litany of woes: traffic problems, skyrocketing house prices, long work commutes, a high local cost of living.

Does he have an investment tip? "Most good ideas take 20 years to become mature. Look for something that's been failing for 20 years." Most people forget this, and also fail to see that the future is not going to be an obvious extension of today's success stories.

"I depend on that factor, otherwise, I'd be unemployed," he laughs. "You have to keep thinking." And that keeps him on his toes, just as it does every Valley entrepreneur. "In Silicon Valley, you'd better have a second act, or you have no street cred."