Boot camp can help young scientists kick on to market

The RDS is a scary place during the early days of January. There are kids about, lots of kids, more than 1,200 this year, most of whom seem way smarter than ordinary folk like you or me.

Half of them seem to want to become doctors while the other half have inventions of one kind or another that they plan to commercialise to make their first million. At 13 or 14. Scary.

For those unaware of it, the BT Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition takes place every year at the RDS in January and 2016 marked the 52nd young scientist event.

It is a remarkable show that features the creativity and hard work of students aged from 12 to 18 who every year come up with the most amazing projects.

And the students describe their findings to the panel of judges with a breathtaking enthusiasm that has the RDS crackling with energy and excitement.

Students can do research projects in four categories covering maths the sciences and social sciences and also technology. The RDS Main Hall has space for 550 research projects, but demand is such that main organisers BT could provide four times as many projects if space allowed.

The notion that students at the exhibition might make a million or at least bring a research discovery to market is very real in the minds of some, but very few will see their inventions reach the market.

There are exceptions, however, with the most notable being example Patrick Collison, who won the 2005 exhibition after developing his own high-level computer language. He and his brother John set up a business and sold it for €5 million. They used this to start another, Stripe, that is now worth about €3 billion. Not bad going at all given it started at a student science fair.

Attempts at project commercialisation did not start with Collison and his great success, however. A proportion of students coming to the event have always considered bringing their discoveries to market. The numbers wishing to do so has grown steadily, however, with students perhaps emboldened by the Government's policies on deriving economic return on the State investment in research.

Academics are constantly encouraged to turn lab findings into products, and the Young Scientist participants may have picked up on this message.

The main sponsors acted on this demand from the students, deciding to set up the BT Business Boot Camp following the 2010 Young Scientist. Students who had business ambitions were encouraged to sign up, with BT able to handle an intake of about 40 participants.

Effectively the programme is about developing entrepreneurship, helping the student to understand the excitement and potential of driving innovation in the commercial world.

The boot camp provides a great deal of practical help too, real-world training in things such as how to develop a business plan, how to set up a company, how to raise money, how to market and sell and other skills valuable to a young start-up.

The hothouse nature of the training has the potential to deliver results.

Daniel Hobbs and James Eggers, separate entrants in the 2012 Young Scientist, met after the exhibition in a BT Business Boot Camp and formed a business, betterexaminations.ie It allows those studying for the Leaving Cert to access online all past State examination papers.

I have not seen statistics on how many leave the boot camp and set up companies, but exposure to the business world is no bad thing for anyone no matter what career path is later followed.

It might be perfect training or may convince a person that business and enterprise were not for them, but it will have left some valuable impression.

This is akin to what the universities are now doing, offering entrepreneurship training programmes for undergrads but also for senior academics in an effort to press home the message that the person most likely to start a business in your neighbourhood is you.

Meanwhile the BT Young Scientist will continue to do what it does, encouraging students to be and do their best. It will also continue to reveal exceptional talent with a product or idea that could go straight to market.

This year's best individual project award was won by Shane Curren of Terenure College, Dublin, who undertook a complex software development project. The 15-year-old spent 18 months developing a large software suite that can automate a courier and delivery service from start to finish. He believes it is a turnkey product, ready to plug into any company and change the way it does business.

Time will tell if he can find customers, but he is certain he will pursue information technology once at third level. It is difficult to realise that this student won’t even get out of secondary school for another 2½ years. Scary.