On scaling for innovation

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Photo owned by Joost J. Bakker IJmuiden (cc)
A few weeks ago, Andy Groove wrote an opinion piece for Bloomberg entitled ‘How to Make an American Job Before It’s Too Late’. It’s an important piece not just for the America, but also for Ireland.

Grove, ever the engineer, takes a deep breath and a pragmatic approach to exploring why having a manufacturing base in America is important to scaling the economy and fostering innovation. Learning how to build things better comes from knowing how to build.

There’s more at stake than exported jobs. With some technologies, both scaling and innovation take place overseas. Such is the case with advanced batteries. It has taken years and many false starts, but finally we are about to witness mass- produced electric cars and trucks. They all rely on lithium-ion batteries. What microprocessors are to computing, batteries are to electric vehicles. Unlike with microprocessors, the U.S. share of lithium-ion battery production is tiny.

That’s a problem. A new industry needs an effective ecosystem in which technology knowhow accumulates, experience builds on experience, and close relationships develop between supplier and customer. The U.S. lost its lead in batteries 30 years ago when it stopped making consumer-electronics devices. Whoever made batteries then gained the exposure and relationships needed to learn to supply batteries for the more demanding laptop PC market, and after that, for the even more demanding automobile market. U.S. companies didn’t participate in the first phase and consequently weren’t in the running for all that followed. I doubt they will ever catch up.

In Ireland, we’re even further behind the US. As a net beneficiary of the off-shored manufacturing for a window up until the late Nineties and early Naughties, we learned how to build. The things we built may not have been sexy, but skills nonetheless.

We don’t have the powerful entrepreneural engine that the US has. We have lost and are continuing to lose technical jobs of all descriptions – from R&D to high-end manufacturing. Riffing off Grove’s assertions that sometimes economies need focus applied by their governments, we have a little more market infrastructure on tap to plan our economy more. But is the Irish Government applying its stimulus salve to the right place?

The Taoiseach was in New York last week launching the country’s new shiny solution to the dearth of  VC investment in Irish firms. The Innovation Fund is a halfsy match of public-private monies to the tune of half a billion Euro. The fund will be managed by a board and expression of interest can be lodged through Enterprise Ireland from the September.

It’s up to that board then to decide how to dole out the money. Is it crazy to believe that a conceit still exists around manufacturing in this country, especially when giving out grants for innovation? I’d love to hear what the board of the fund think innovation is.

July 18th, 2010 at 5:08 pm • Filed in Geekery



Comments

One Comment to “On scaling for innovation”

  1. Digest – 18 July 2010 – The Story Says:
    July 18th, 2010 at 11:36 pm

    [...] Alexia Golez on innovation, or lack thereof, in Ireland. [...]



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