operations; and poLight, which makes re-flowable autofocus actuated lenses for camera phones.
Thunem stressed that “most SMEs
are failing because of a lack of access to funding. Start-ups and SMEs need complimentary funding instruments to be successful and stay in business.” It is this cross-over in thinking – from the scientific creation process through to commercialisation and business and operational focus – which has ensured that Norway is ranked 18th on INSEAD’s Global Innovation Index, compared to South Africa’s rather lowly ranking of 59th out of 125 nations.
That said, there are successes locally too. The CSIR’s Botha highlighted, for example, UVIRCO, which manufactures cameras used to visualise the UVc band in daylight and which has been rolled out into a range of products. “For me, what is inspiring about UVIRCO is that we did this from scratch with CSIR input and money. And it is a success,” said Botha (pictured below).
It started with an Eskom power
problem: they needed to inspect transmission lines without downtime. In 1993 they approached the CSIR and it took until 2007 for a solution to be found. The CSIR then approached Treasury for permission to set up a company in 2008 and finally received permission in 2011. Today the products help inspectors conduct preventative maintenance by using the technology to identify localised hot spots which limit capacity and cause black-outs due to failure.
Another product – Cellnostics – was not so lucky. A low- cost diagnostic
platform, perfect for the mobile health- care market which allows the user to administer life-saving tests on a patient simply by putting their finger in the device, has been restricted by a lack of funding and will. “We are fantastic at due diligence and evaluating but you battle to get things moving,” laments Botha.
While we are still some distance from Norway’s slick approach to innovation, there are positives, stressed Botha, including pockets of leadership and will within the NSI (National System of Innovation, a cluster of interacting public and private organisations focused on nurturing science and technology) and “public funding agencies – like the Industrial Development Corporation – are coming on board. Plus there are smart entrepreneurs who can make things happen.”
More, however, needs to be done at a university level and within science councils, says Botha. “Very few people exist in terms of intellectual property-generating ideas. We have a lack of serial entrepreneurs who will work with us on these ideas. There are pockets of technical depth but we need to find ways to attract it. There is fragmented funding plus an issue around remuneration; quite simply many of us go into management because we do not get paid as technical innovators.”
Botha’s colleague at the CSIR, Executive Dr Thulani Dlamini agreed that while all the role players currently operating in the innovation space have good intentions “I do not think we have reached a stage where we can say the system is operating at optimum in South Africa”.
The process of innovation, explained Dlamini, is made harder by the fact that it is not a linear approach which can be handled in terms of rigid systems. “It is a
June 2012 | Management Today 93
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