Get me a dealmaker – One part innovator, one part salesman. Shaken and stirred.
Friday, May 01, 2009 | Posted by: Brian Maguire
Categories:
Business,
Education,
Technology
| Tags: innovation,
technology,
research,
financial,
university,
europe,
intellectual property,
economist,
patent,
entrepreneurial,
capitalism
Seventy years ago, Schumpeter, economist and entrepreneurial cheerleader, declared the pending death of capitalism and the rise of sober socialism – the consequence, he said, of the innovation equivalent of corporate perpetual motion.
Despite its own best efforts of late, capitalism is still alive and licking its wounds. Champagne sales are down 4% year-on-year, but any sign of sober socialism on the horizon is a mirage. Economic Alka-Seltzer has little remedial effect for an economy with chronic confidence disease. What it needs is a confidence transplant.
If the 90s brashly announced the era of IT, the next ten years will quietly herald an era of IP, and a subtle display of confidence in the future. Europe is waking to the value of intellectual property as its manufacturing economy depletes, and its service sector is shaken down by fiscal fallout. Einstein would be delighted. The one-time patent office clerk knew the value of a neat equation and the display of confidence.
In Prague recently, a city close to Schumpeter’s birthplace, The European Patent Forum 2009’s keynote speaker, Professor Ove Granstrand from Chalmers University of Technology in Göteborg, called for greater IP awareness amongst the political class. In particular, Granstrand voiced his concern that politicians fail to understand the impact of IP on the economy, and consequently, we are limiting our capacity to stem the tide flowing towards another financial crisis, perhaps only a decade down the line. Heady stuff.
At the same conference, Gillian McFadzean, Director of Technology & Research Services at the Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh said academia feels a “disconnect with the innovation system”.
Simultaneously, an ocean away, in Chattanooga no less, Volkswagen Group of America CEO and President, Stefan Jacoby, addressed the Chamber of Commerce Spirit of Innovation Awards luncheon. He told the Land of the Free: “We have to give industry and the universities, freedom to develop and engineer in various directions.” Jacoby described the character traits of successful innovators, and the need to join dreamers with doers.
Which brings us back to Albert. Einstein is remembered not merely for his formulaic genius, but because he was an expert salesman. Unlike Schumpeter, Einstein was a living brand, intellectual property, all wrapped up in a moment of inspiration. Eminent though the remainder of his academic work was, Einstein never again achieved brilliance to equal E=mc2; so dazzling was this brief equation, that we think only of Einstein as a lifetime of success. Schumpeter’s success was, in part, asserting the evolution of an innovation driven society. Where he continues to fail, is in the anticipation of the death of capitalism.
Einstein presented the elegance of innovation in a short pen stroke, he cut to the chase. Without Albert the salesman, however, the ego unsuited to the confines of the patent office, we would perhaps remember more clearly Otto Hahn and Lise Meitner. Every great discovery needs a dealmaker, a salesman; seldom though, are they the same person.
Today, European universities are increasingly matching scientific flair with deal-making steel. The outcome will not be sober socialism, but a newly vibrant economy. Europe, despite its Silicon Valley envy, is finally becoming an innovative hot-house. One might call it, a renaissance.
Read an interview with Teri Willey, Chief Executive of Cambridge Enterprise. Willey discusses the challenges of fostering creative genius to achieve commercial success at Cambridge University:
Reader Comments (0)