INTERTRADEIRELAND:A cross-border body is helping progressive Irish companies to develop their ideas, commercialise them and take them to market
INTERTRADEIRELAND’S INNOVA programme is the only all-island research and development (RD) initiative that actively encourages and facilitates cross-border collaboration through funding and other supports. It is aimed at stimulating, promoting and supporting co-operation between firms in all corners of the island.
Projects supported have included an IT solution for wastewater treatment compliance monitoring and management; the development of an innovative heart monitoring device; and the development of a hygiene management system to help healthcare institutions reduce the spread of infection.
“The Innova programme is unique in that it aims to encourage the development of the open model of innovation,” explains Margaret Hearty, director of programmes and business services with InterTradeIreland. “In the past, the process of commercial innovation was considered to take place only within the business. However the new understanding of innovation in the knowledge-based economy is that it also emerges when companies interact and cooperate with the external environment.
“This open model involves companies accessing external knowledge and drawing on alternative pathways to bring ideas to market and provides greater access to innovation capabilities, cost-effectiveness and increases speed to market.”
Through Innova, a company forms a strategic innovation partnership with others offering complementary expertise in the opposite jurisdiction, Hearty adds. “Companies benefit by developing new or improved innovative products, processes or services, through an increased rate of commercialisation, sharing otherwise inaccessible knowledge, technology and expertise, as well as access to complementary expertise, networks and channels to market from their innovation business partner,” she says.
Among the latest projects to benefit from the Innova programme is a collaboration between Northern Ireland companies Cleanfields and Williams Industrial Services, and SCFI from Cork.
“What we see at the supercritical phase are some weird properties,” Kinney notes. “You get some of the classical properties of water being inverted. For example, oil becomes soluble and salt becomes insoluble. And if you take something organic, made with carbon, this will also dissolve.”
The aim of the project is to develop new processes and technology using super critical water oxidation, which will provide local authorities and water utilities with a more efficient means of treating its sewage sludge, including conversion into a renewable energy resource.
The project uses SCFI’s AquaCritox technology, which is based on super critical water oxidation. The process allows matter to be destroyed underwater, explains John Kinney of Cleanfields.
The Innova funding has allowed the group to scale up the technology to demonstrate its capabilities in large-scale water treatment settings. “At the start of the project last June, we decided on 14 different work studies and we are about half way through that now,” says SCFI chief operating officer David Kerr.
“The process is well proven commercially and what we are doing now is proving it for sewage sludges and drinking water treatment sludges. It will work in any area where there is organic waste.”
Kinney adds: “The Innova project is allowing us to demonstrate the technology and show that we say happens does happen”, says Kinney. “At present we have a test plant operating in Cork and that is helping us prove that the process will work at a larger scale. Innova is assisting us to bring the process through commercial trials and enable sales and it is allowing us to do this locally us to do this locally. This is allowing us to compete with international brands. If all goes well the technology could be fully commercial for the treatment of sludges by 2012.”
Such products can help to turn around the fortunes of the Irish economy, says Hearty. “This is the type of innovation we need for economic recovery: innovation that involves a significant change in either a company’s technology or business model is required.
“There is naturally more risk attached to this type of innovation, but it also results in the creation and commercialisation of new business opportunities that provide a competitive advantage to the companies developing them. This is potentially game changing for the companies involved.”
The benefits to the companies that have participated in Innova so far were highlighted by recent InterTradeIreland research which showed that more than €45.5 million worth of business development value has been generated from just 10 of the 24 Innova projects that have taken place to date; the other 14 of projects are still ongoing. It is also excellent value for money with funding of just €6.5 million being advanced to companies so far.
Innova fundingis geared towards product, service or process developments that demonstrate identifiable benefits to the firms involved; represent a fundamental part of their strategic business plans; strengthen existing North/South RD collaborations or form new collaborations; and are innovative and technology-based with plans that have the prospect of significant commercial success.
Companies can apply for Innova funding, up to a maximum of €175,000, through the registration of an “expression of interest”. The proposals are then reviewed and short-listed partnerships are invited to complete an application and submit their business plan.
Applications are assessed by independent commercial and technical advisers who assist InterTradeIreland in the decision making process.
For information on the Innova programme, see intertradeireland.com/innova
