Incubating the entrepreneurs

"There is no doubt that, in the medium to long-term, Ireland has to develop a high-technology indigenous base, and these types of spin-off companies are crucial to those developments. More and more, some of the most successful companies are coming from the universities," explains Dr Pat Frain, director of UCD's University Industry Programme and of the new £10 million (#12.7 million) NOVA Innovation Centre.

"One of the interesting things is the really successful ones are the ones spinning off from the really successful research on the campus. There is a great buzz about them but that is because they have such huge potential.

"$60 million (#66 million) has been invested in the companies here already. It will be over $100 million very quickly. We're aiming to generate at least one multi-million pound company every three years and to spin off 10 companies a year once the centre is up.

"We create the environment and create support services but the real people who make it work are the entrepreneurs who even put their houses and their cars on the line," he says.

Dr Frain has been director of the University Industry Programme since 1988, but his enthusiasm for the work is undiminished, as business people and industrialists at the introduction of the NOVA innovation centre recently can attest. A "lapsed physicist", he quickly became one of the State's experts on university/industry co-operation when he worked with the now-defunct National Board for Science and Technology, where he specialised in this field.

And while UCD has a fine record in incubating successful campus companies - Nanomat from the chemistry department, Massana from electronic engineering, WBT Systems and Changing Worlds both from computer science, for example - the NOVA project is unique in the Republic's college experience.

For a start, it's a major public- private partnership and the first large project of its kind in the State, with six leading companies - AIB, solicitors Arthur Cox, accountants Deloitte & Touche, Goodbody Stockbrokers, telecommunications giant Ericsson and computer software company Xilinx Ireland - investing £1 million in the centre, which will give them a 6 per cent equity in the new companies. The share out of that equity will be decided by an independent board. Enterprise Ireland is also investing £1 million. UCD is investing under £1 million, but is providing a two- to three-acre site on the Belfield campus. It is 10 times the size of the current innovation centre.

And while the initial investors only will have equity in the companies, other potential sponsors are being contacted and NOVA welcomes interested sponsors. These companies would have a much smaller exposure in terms of investment - just £100,000 initially - which would allow an incubation unit to be branded with the sponsor's name or allow use of some facilities, access to training or other facilities in the centre, participation in regular information reviews and some contact with tenant companies. "The beauty of this project is that most of the investors have an interest in seeing the project succeed and, in some cases, on the return to their own business. In developing links with the university, they would have access to graduates and new technologies also. It's not like a renting-a-room facility. We're trying to generate a community of entrepreneurs so we have put in place a range of supports for the companies," he says emphatically.

NOVA is different because of two strategic objectives, he says. One is the promotion of entrepreneurship and new enterprise development through the provision of 40 incubation units for promoters of knowledge-intensive start-up companies, and the provision of a structured business support programme. The second is the provision of support for university/industrial co-operation, and assisting in the transfer of technology and the promotion of innovation based on the research on the campus.

"I suppose it has a number of unique features," says the man who dreamed it all up - although he gives much of the credit to others, including the chairman of the board of the centre, Mr Ian Cahill, managing director of Ericsson. "The range of businesses supporting it - they are companies that have an appropriate range of expertise to support the campus companies - [include] one of the big five accountants, a law firm, bank, finance houses, high-technology companies. How we arrive at that, well, obviously there are areas that are appropriate and areas where help is needed by campus companies. "One of the elements in order to attract investors is we wanted investors in different areas so we wouldn't have direct competition. We intended to have a strategic partnership with those organisations in supporting the campus companies.

"The second thing is the actual range of services we intend to provide for the companies. A little over half the space of the centre is incubation units. The University Industry Centre can provide the support programme in terms of the campus company development programme. It consists of workshops held monthly, with mentoring and consultant support, and each workshop deals with a different aspect of setting up a business. "Also, there's the new venture lab and it's interesting that there will be sparring partners, who are leaders in industry, to advise the promoters. Another aspect I find interesting, and this is something we've tried to build up over the years, is that we would see the centre as being part of an international network of centres."

This network effectively would be an exchange programme of assistance and access to their own markets between the NOVA centre and other innovation centres in the US, Australia and Asia, notably Japan - a network Mr Frain has built up assiduously over the years. But he says NOVA has to guard against becoming a property development company, maximising rents but not turning over as many companies as it should; that's why NOVA will limit the stay of any start-up company to two years and nine months, although many will not need to stay that long.

Mr Frain says that his work currently allows little time for any outside interests - which is why his family recently bought him a set of oil paints, and he booked himself in to an art class. Such is his workload, chess and bridge are interests of the past, but he does manage regular holidays in France.

A Dubliner - he was born in Ranelagh - he went to school at Westland Row CBS and studied physics at UCD, where he also did his Master's and got his PhD. During his post-doctoral research in atmospheric physics, he met his wife Caoimhe, a physicist who now lectures in Trinity College. Then, rather surprisingly given his discipline, he went to work for the Central Statistics Office. "It was the mid-1970s depression. I was going to get married and couldn't live on the postdoctoral research salary. I was playing football for UCD and didn't want to leave Dublin," he explains.