ANALYSIS:TRINITY COLLEGE Dublin and University College Dublin have taken institutional collaboration to a whole new level with their joint decision to form an Innovation Alliance. In time it will bind together much of their scientific research activity, but more importantly will create a new kind of science and engineering graduate, one as well versed in business and finance as in technology, writes DICK AHLSTROM
In effect, the deal is all about building an international reputation for Ireland as a place where scientific creativity flourishes and where the resulting innovative ideas are turned into commercial opportunities and high tech jobs.
The universities hope to accomplish this by deepening a range of shared research activities to increase the level of discovery. They will then push these good ideas towards commercialisation by merging their existing technology transfer and enterprise development facilities.
They will also jointly train science and engineering PhD candidates, the so called 4th level students, in a new Innovation Academy. This will provide complementary business skills such as finance, team building, personnel and project management.
The level of collaboration is profound and reaches even to jointly awarding a PhD student with degrees from both institutions.
Meetings to hammer out the radical agreement announced last Wednesday got under way last December and took place at the highest levels between the two universities.
The shape of their resultant plan was informed to a significant level by the Government’s own “smart economy” approach to rebuilding the economy announced last December. It promised a sustained State investment in research, but also put a new emphasis on improving our ability to commercialise discoveries to create jobs.
The partners recognised however that the plan needed Government support and legislative changes if it were to be successful. With this in mind the universities made a pitch to Government on March 3rd to win support for their ideas. The TCD/UCD plan was so strongly aligned with the Government’s own economic renewal formula that it took just eight days for the Department of the Taoiseach not only to back the plan but to add impetus to it by announcing the establishment of a complementary Innovation Taskforce.
Taoiseach Brian Cowen made the taskforce announcement as well as launching the TCD/UCD plan. Chaired by the secretary general of the Department of the Taoiseach, Dermot McCarthy, the taskforce has six months to deliver a package of legislative changes and the infrastructural plans needed to support the “innovation ecosystem” envisaged by the two universities.
The university document argues for a four-mile long “innovation corridor” linking the two campuses, with available office space being used to establish the Innovation Academy and also the joint technology transfer hub, complete with incubation units to support start-up companies. The universities also believe that Government support akin to that won by the International Financial Services Centre in the Liffey docklands could help attract high technology companies into this corridor and deliver 30,000 jobs over 10 years.
One way or the other, the package of recommendations delivered by the new taskforce will probably become central to the success of the universities’ joint venture. It needs to deliver clever thinking such as the decision to offer Section 23 tax breaks to investors, something that greatly boosted the construction sector. It will also have to come up with an answer for the lack of a strong – and not risk averse – venture capital sector, something which we currently lack.
Dick Ahlstrom is Science Editor