Brain drain
06 July 2008Ireland's once-proud history of inventing new products has ground to a halt in modern times, with today's brightest young intellects seemingly more interested in working for banks and mobile phone companies. How can the trend be reversed? Adrian Weckler reports.
It seems hard to believe now, but we used to invent things in Ireland. John Holland invented the submarine, Harry Ferguson created the modern tractor, and Ernest Walton won the Nobel Prize for physics after splitting the atom, among other achievements.
And today? Today, IT engineers are more interested in creating widgets for social networking sites, security software for banks or multi-polyphonic ringtones for pre-paid mobiles.
Right-thinking people may ask: What happened?
At what point along the line did the desire to change the world through invention become a quest to get Big Brother on our 3G devices? And why does nobody, from the IDA to Enterprise Ireland to successive ministers of Enterprise seem to care?
One of the best known inventors of our time, James Dyson, reckons he has the answer: we have ditched manufacturing as an ambition. Instead, we've turned to a fluffier "service economy'‘ full of PR, marketing and financial consultants, for our future industry.
"I think it would be fair to say the service economy has had a considerable impact in transforming Ireland over the last 15 to 20 years," Dyson told Computers In Business.
"But that should not be at the expense of manufacturing. Because when it comes to the crunch, will a service-oriented economy support you when you don't have anything left to sell?"
No is the most likely answer. "There's a reason that China is increasingly becoming an economic superpower," said Dyson.
"It's manufacturing, not services, that have been the catalyst for this. China manufactures more so it sells more."
Why can't Dyson call up the IDA, Enterprise Ireland and the Minister for Enterprise to persuade them of this? Probably because he's too busy running a hugely successful company that invents things and employs hundreds of people in England. Nevertheless, the billionaire industrialist keeps tabs on what's going on in Irish engineering circles.
"There are a lot of talented young engineers in Ireland," he said. "And there is a history of creative ideas and invention from engineers like Harry Ferguson. But that number is dwindling. I know that in Ireland, a shortage of engineers has hampered the government's aim of having one-third of Ireland's electricity come from renewable sources."
The situation looks likely to get worse. According to figures from the Central Applications Office, applications for engineering and technology courses continue to decline badly, down from17.5 per cent in 2000 to 14.4 per cent in 2006, the last year on record. Conversely, applications for arts and social sciences have shot up from 24.6 per cent to 31.4 per cent in the same time frame. Does the economy need another 20,000 history graduates? Why do Irish kids prefer Dostoevsky to Dyson?
"It seems to be that when you reach a certain level of affluence, you get this shift away from job-orientated things into arts," said Mark Keane, vice-president for Innovation in UCD. "Maybe the motivation is that people know they'll get a job anyway, so they do something they like. Or maybe part of it is that it's hard and people don't always like to do things that are hard."
Even when they do enter engineering or related courses, they still end up being siphoned off to the IFSC or some bank, said another university boss.
"A lot of young engineers end up in financial services," said Professor Charles McCorkell, dean of the faculty of engineering and computing in DCU. "Even PHD graduates end up there, quite a lot of them, because of their mathematical capabilities."
This may mean a lot of mortgage advisers with brilliant tips on how to complete their customers' conservatory extension. But it is not helping the country to find a cure for cancer or a simple way to make wave power economical and efficient.
"In my view, there are a couple of contributing issues," said Dr Mike Murphy, director of DIT's faculty of engineering. "The media shows us successful people in the world, and we then want to be successful - the Denis O'Brien story is a very appealing one. We all contribute to this."
And we are getting what we deserve: a country without engineers, but with an excess of barristers, marketers and consultants.
"We have lawyers and accountants and medics coming out of our ears," said John Power, director general of Engineers Ireland. "And it's about to hit us hard. First it will manifest itself in infrastructural projects, which will begin to slow down or be put back.
"And it will hurt in more subtle ways, too, such as projects that have gone through their research processes but not be able to be brought to market or to the country. It's the engineers and technologists who make things happen, and we don't have enough in the pipeline."
Doom! Catastrophe! Recession! Can anything save us? Yes, says Justin Mason, inventor of the world-leading anti-spam software Spam Assassin, who believes that rumours of the inventor's demise are very much exaggerated. The worldwide web will save us.
"Today's internet is full of kids inventing new technologies," said Mason. "It's not visible in the ways that traditional inventors like Dyson, for example, expect it to be, with registered patents and sheds full of physical prototypes. Instead, the inventions are pure products of the mind, running as computer programs in the intangible online world, but still major inventions nonetheless."
Okay, but does tinkering about on a social networking site really count as invention? To quote Monty Python, what has the internet ever done for us?
"Well, just ten years ago, there was no Google," said Mason. "And ten years before that, there was no web. To my mind, those are some of the most significant inventions of our generation and took some significant inventive leaps to create. Now, the next Wikipedia could easily come from one teenager's laptop in their back bedroom in Kildare. It may not seem to involve the same scale of work, since less physical effort is required to achieve it, but it's potentially still invention on a world-changing scale. So the barriers to making inventive leaps are lower than ever."
This is a seductive argument, but James Dyson isn't having much of it.
"Without wanting to sound like a Luddite, I think that we are sometimes too quick to go straight to the web for inspiration, or to look something up," he said. "So much so that we forget to take a look around our environment and take inspiration from that. I think the internet offers a great many freedoms but it often only offers part of the picture, and sometimes the wrong part. It doesn't give you the same sense of discovery as coming across something in real life, and it's not always as reliable as a reference book."
Away from the issue of whether the internet counts as a proving ground for innovators, another problem besets Irish invention. This is the growing tyranny of existing market requirements - and multinational company diktats - for science and engineering graduates and their universities. Put simply, no college in Ireland is trying - or even investigating - the possibility of a perpetual motion machine, cold fusion or the next cure for cancer. Instead, they actively encourage students into projects aimed at shaving a millimetre off a silicon chip or ways of compressing bandwidth more effectively. Are Irish universities guilty of simply operating an assembly line for multinationals?
"I don't think we ever did that, really," said Mark Keane, UCD's vice-president for innovation. "It's true that there's always the pressure to produce exactly what multinationals need, but if you go and look at our students' final year projects, you'll see some great stuff."
Yet in DIT's annual Inventor competition, held last month, entry was only open to those who could demonstrate a clear market value to their suggested application. Thinking outside the box was not, therefore, at a premium. Such adherence to the current commercial agenda, which has become the hallmark of Irish third-level institutions, is arguably not the role of a university. It is certainly not the default setting of major US or European universities which lead the world in innovation.
Those who advocate a blended approach of independent thought and commercial recognition say that results justify this modern approach.
"We launched a special product design programme four years ago, which was roughly 70 per cent engineering with the balance in applied arts from creative design, business from entrepreneurship," said Dr Mike Murphy of DIT.
"One of the first groups that emerged developed an excellent device cal led Eezy Peezy, a system which recognised when a baby peed into a diaper and needed attention. Another student designed his own game console handset. We wouldn't exactly be driving him toward a PhD. We also have a lecturer who's going to take a leave of absence, as he's come across a good idea for a cycling apparatus."
Besides, say other academic deans, commercial discipline can encourage invention discovery rather than stifling it.
"Nowadays, we have a very large post-grad population," said Professor Charles McCorkell, DCU's dean of faculty of engineering and computing. "As part of their research they file patents and invention disclosure. It's becoming increasingly professional." Indeed, using this measure - the number of patents filed - the response to the invention dilemma in Ireland might be: crisis? What crisis?
"If there are any concerns about the fall-off in innovation, they're not based on patent filing," said Mike Murphy. "If you look at the statistics on licensing and patents, you're seeing a huge increase in that here. Okay, some of that is companies looking to protect what they develop, but I think that some of it is people trying to build the better mouse-trap."
A look through the most recent annual report of the patents office bears this out, with the number of patent applications rising about 10 per cent per annum over the past five years. But it is hard to divine much from the headline patent figures, which are usually the mark of a large organisation or an administrative unit with a company.
"Doing the books, checking government regulations, completing customs forms, and filing patents is often something that inventors are completely unsuited to," said Nicola Rathbone, the founder of the Irish Inventors' Association. "Inventors tend to be mono-brained, and, while good at skills like maths, they tend to suffer more from dyslexia, dyspraxia and different ways of information processing, such as Asperger's Syndrome."
If making patents easier to file isn't the answer to encouraging more inventors, what is? On this point, most IT, science and engineering experts point to one resource: education.
"We appear have lost our way from primary to third level," said John Power of Engineers Ireland. "At the moment, science is not compulsory at junior cycle. And in secondary school, we have to make science and maths more interesting in how it's taught and how the curriculum is set. We've got to reduce the threat of maths and science in points terms, and bring a more practical element to it."
Having innovation-related courses on the curriculum is one thing, but having someone who will actually make a case for those courses to be continued into third level is quite another.
"Most secondary-school guidance counsellors are not from technical background," said DIT's Mike Murphy. "It's not that they're talking it down - they just have a better understanding of what accountancy has to offer a student."
Whatever is to be done, it had better happen soon. According to last month's report from the ‘Expert Group on Future Skills Needs', there has There has been "a significant overall fall'‘ in interest among college applicants in engineering and technology, the CAO subject category that includes most computing and electronic engineering courses. Excluding numbers applying for nursing applications for engineering or technology courses fell from 17.5 per cent in 2000 to14.4 per cent in 2006.
In contrast, the report says that applications in courses in the arts, social science or artistic disciplines has increased sharply since 2000 from 24.6 per cent of applications to 31.4 per cent. (Source: Future Requirement for High Level ICT Skills In The ICT Sector, 2008.)
But even if we change the system, will the kids listen? Is this generation now simply interested in Bebo and Facebook, rather than building box cars? Aren't kids turned off getting into the garage and tinkering with nuts and bolts?
"It's a good question," Said Murphy. "As an engineer, it's hard not to resonate with that. It's true that, as a rule, you don't fix the bicycle any more. You don't have a box of spare parts. In my day, radio kits used to be the big thing." And all those high-quality cheap imports aren't making it any easier.
"Today, you can just walk into a shop and buy a plastic equivalent at a much higher specification when your thing gets damaged or broken," said DCU's Charles McCorkell.
Does this mean inculcating invention is gone forever, then? Not at all, according to Mark Keane.
"People do put things together from scratch, but they're almost always very small," he said. "You can't just glue stuff together anymore. It's not just a mechanical device that qualifies for innovation status. Audi are making cars now where you can't open the bonnet because it's too complicated."
All of this is having a knock-on effect in terms of educating kids to be creative and inventive.
"The so-called net generation want their data in byte-sized chunks," said DIT's Murphy. "If you're trying to grasp the essentials of thermo-dynamics, it's just not as easy. There is a real challenge for educators here and we do tend to be conservative."
It's a challenge that everybody in this country is depending on, according to the head of Engineers Ireland.
"I feel pretty strongly about this," said John Power. "As an economy, if we are to continue to prosper, we need more engineers badly. They've got to do whatever needs to be done with our help and the help of other bodies."
At stake is more than our economic future, but the future of the planet.
"The biggest issues facing mankind are climate change, water, energy and the environment. And we need engineers to help fix them. We don't have enough in the pipeline and it's time we had a strenuous debate about it. We need to think about it," said Power.
The future of Irish invention
While the number of Irish inventors seems to be falling, some young people are still interested in changing the world, one bolt at a time.
Fourth-year DIT student Stephen Geary was a runner-up in DIT's annual Inventor competition for creating a system to reduce air turbulence in passenger aircraft.
His invention predicts and detects the differences in air pressure around an aircraft's wing, allowing a self-stabilising technology to prevent friction and turbulence which can unnerve passengers.
The aircraft mechanics student, currently on a work placement in Shannon-based Air Atlanta Aero Engineering, said that he got the idea from observing technology used on other parts of a plane's maintenance.
"There are already sensors on a plane to detect changes in pressure, but this system should prove more accurate," he said.
"It can also reduce the risk of a plane stalling, another situation that is sometimes brought on by a change in pressure."
Already, there is potential interest from aircraft giants Airbus and Boeing, with a patent for the invention now pending.
Geary was one of three students to win awards last week in DIT's annual Inventor competition. The best overall entry went to Charlie Cullen for creating software to speed up how animation is made, while the best post-graduate entry went to Miroslaw Narbutt for developing technology to improve the quality of internet phone calls.