INNOVATION TALK:MOST PEOPLE have smoke alarms mounted in their homes, a prudent investment in case of life-threatening fires. But would you buy a similar alarm that warned not about smoke but about a rise in radioactivity?

People living near Sellafield or any of the 450 or so nuclear power stations around the world might buy one. Certainly people in Japan living near the stricken Fukushima nuclear plant or within 100km of any of that country’s nuclear reactors – despite being shut down – might buy a simple alarm that could warn them if radiation levels rose.

I got an interesting email from an inventor who has designed and built just such a radiation alarm. I haven’t the technical competence to say whether it works or could be made cheaply enough to find a market, but given public concern over nuclear accidents it certainly seems to be a good idea.

The inventor, George Reynolds, is finding it difficult to develop the idea however, and is struggling to find a way to have it manufactured in Ireland. He believes it could mean jobs and export sales, a tight fit with current Government policy on the commercialisation of research ideas.

It is not that he is some kind of nutty professor inventor. He has an MSc in geophysical sciences and an MBA from the Smurfit Business School so he has technical and commercial competence to pursue his radiation alarm project. He actually won the 1968 Young Scientist award at the RDS.

He believes however that inventors like himself don’t quite fit into the enterprise system as it now exists. He has found it particularly challenging to advance his idea and find the supports he needs to achieve his goal of seeing the alarm built here – not abroad – and creating jobs at home.

But where would you go if you invented a viable product and wanted to see it manufactured here? Most of our innovation/enterprise system is geared to pick up and develop potential ideas coming either from academic research or from within existing companies. Third level researchers are constantly encouraged to commercialise their discoveries and both money and support are available to help them along.

Enterprise Ireland supports high potential start-ups coming out of third level labs and also products arising from within companies. There are tax breaks for companies that invest in research and then a range of supports if the company plans to boost exports with the new product.

EI says it is a point of contact for inventors with good ideas. The agency has business supports, intellectual property advisers and other services needed by an individual to help them get a company up and running.

Reynolds believes, however, that there is a gap in the support system given his own experiences. EI is more applicable to academics and small companies. The County Enterprise Boards on the other hand are ideal for those setting up small firms to manufacture jams, produce craft products or set up a small studio. Yet they lack the expertise to support projects like Reynolds’s development of electronic radiation detectors.

Most state-backed systems also require the person to cover costs and then only afterwards apply for financial supports. And patents are pushed, even though patent protection is not hugely relevant for a product like his where you win by speed to market not by protecting a design that will quickly be cloned. He went to a few companies involved in smoke detector development who he thought might be interested in his idea. The general view was it was a different market unfamiliar to them.

It is not that Reynolds’s detector lacks commercial potential. He believes that his could be sold for about €38 or so, about the cost of a good carbon monoxide detector or a fancy smoke detector. No one can currently match his price in radiation detection, he believes. The detectors would have a substantial potential market in Japan, traumatised by the events at Fukushima. Yet much closer to home tens of thousands of families in the UK live within sight of working nuclear plants, people who might like a bit of early warning should an incident occur.

For now Reynolds awaits a business angel or investor, conscious that others might come up with a similar technical approach and claim the market. And if the product does eventually come to market he is determined to try and keep any manufacturing at home.

Inventors can contact the EI start-up team at startup@enterprise-ireland.com or phone 01-727 2130.