How can we create the right conditions for the better commercialisation of British technology? By involving our design sector, says David Kester.
The other day I was at an unusual dinner. It was for university technology transfer professionals, venture capitalists and designers. They’d gathered to discuss the results of an experiment to see if designers could help science and technology make the leap from the lab bench to the market place more effectively.
It’s a long-standing conundrum: the UK has a world beating science base and we’re a global centre of finance, yet hundreds – perhaps thousands – of ground-breaking technologies lie in our universities waiting for venture capital to develop them into jobs-generating products, applications and processes. Somehow we seem to struggle with commercialisation.
So can design help? Turns out that the answer is yes.
One example came from Isis, Oxford University’s technology commercialisation operation. A couple of years ago, a brilliant maths researcher had developed a very clever algorithm which could decipher the complex magnetic signals coming from electricity supply cables and could work out which appliances were using what energy from that supply. The application seemed obvious; a smart energy meter. But funding eluded them, until a designer got involved. They helped Isis to interrogate the proposition from a user perspective, developing smart new applications which were attractive to consumers, such as monitoring remotely via an iPhone app. The turning point came after their design mentor helped them get on board a designer who could visualise the products so compellingly that investors realised its potential, and their interest led to the technology being licensed to a start-up company, Navetas. They are about to launch their first products onto an eager market, and have already had approaches from major electricity companies interested in supplying them to customers.
And there was more. I heard stories of designers helping to decide what wasn’t going to make it to market – amazing ideas which were nevertheless better suited to a life in the lab, where they may well lead to other discoveries. Sometimes, they said, it takes an outsider with a new perspective to help make those tough decisions. Then there were the venture capitalists, who had far too often seen unpolished, uninspiring and sometimes even malfunctioning presentations of candidate technologies looking for funding. Their enthusiasm for a well-designed pitch was palpable.
There is, I believe, a new role here for designers as midwives of technological innovation. Think about it. Designers are trained in the ‘user centred thinking’ and forensically applying that knowledge to stress-test business models.
This could be relevant at the moment, as Vince Cable, Secretary of State for Business Innovation and Skills, considers how we can leverage our science base to help Britain’s economic recovery. He will give a speech this week on the government’s strategy for science & technology.
So how can he help us better exploit all that science and technology tucked away in labs up and down the country? If my dinner is more than food for thought, the answer lies in mixing our VCs, scientists and designers. How about partnering university research teams with design colleges for a start? Perhaps it’s also time to re-visit the school curriculum. Some of us have long been calling for design to be included within the STEM subjects of science, technology, engineering and maths.
Perhaps by doing more to bring together three of our world-beating assets – our science base, our financial services and our design sector - we can finally create the right conditions for the better commercialisation of our science base and help secure our economic, social and environmental future.
David Kester is chief executive of the Design Council. This article was first published on the Times science blog.