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Review of Lord Broers' third Reith lecture "Management and Innovation"
recorded in Manchester and broadcast 20 April 2005
The 2005 series of Reith lectures is entitled "The Triumph of Technology" and the Reith lecturer is Alec Broers, an engineer who worked in the area of nanotechnology at IBM's research labs before returning to academia and eventually becoming Vice Chancellor of Cambridge University. He is now President of the Royal Academy of Engineering and Chairman of the House of Lords Science and Technology Committee.
The ideas underpinning the series of lectures which were introduced in the first one of the series are that (i) "Technology will determine the future of the human race :we should recognise this and give it the profile and status it deserves" and (ii) "It is time that we in Britain, so good at fundamental science, also came fully to appreciate the intellectual challenge behind product development".
The Manchester lecture, entitled "Management and Innovation" was of particular interest to me as its subject matter is at the heart of what we are trying to achieve here at MTF.
The central idea which Alec Broer's expanded upon in this lecture was that the current innovation revolution "demands a new approach to research and product development".
Although I found myself agreeing with much of what he had to say, both during the lecture itself and during the lively question and answer session afterwards, I did not feel that he articulated his arguments particularly persuasively or clearly.
He began by setting out the old world order which existed pre 1980s where fundamental research went on in universities and important practical advances were made in the large industrial or government funded research laboratories. Confusingly, he subsequently said that it was in these very research laboratories that not only product development but also much basic science was also carried out.
He then set out two questions which he set out to answer.
These were:
- "Where is it best to pursue basic research?", and
- "How should companies manage and organise the creation of new products?"
In my view, it is pretty straightforward and uncontroversial to answer the first question - which he subsequently did - few would argue with his assertion that fundamental research is best carried out in universities and government-funded research laboratories.
A more interesting and controversial question might have been " to what extent should universities be involved in applied rather than fundamental research" - fortunately just such a question was put to Lord Broers in the debate following the formal lecture. His answer was rather unsatisfactory - that this was a difficult issue and that there should be an appropriate mix.
As to the second question he posed (how should companies manage the creation of new products), I felt that he didn't ever quite get to grips with providing a satisfactory answer. However, he did go on to make some useful points on how best to create a university spin-out which very much accorded with my own view based on experience. I'll mention just two of the points he made accord very closely with our own investment criteria.
- On IP that "the intellectual property must be sound and the ownership of patents clear and capable of withstanding challenge"
- On leadership "I believe that technology-based businesses should always be led by those who understand and have most experience of the market"
Overall, I enjoyed the lecture. He speaks sensibly and obviously has great depth of knowledge and experience on which to draw but in my case he was very much preaching to the converted on an area I was interested in both personally and professionally. Standing back, I asked myself, Broer's style, the following two questions:
- Whether the style and content of his lectures would engage the majority of Radio 4 listeners; and
- Whether he had done anything to bridge "the gulf of mutual incomprehension" between literary intellectuals and scientists famously identified by CP Snow in his 1959 book "The Two Cultures".
The conclusion I reached was (i) he had tried hard to engage the lay listener by avoiding jargon and including arresting quotes and anecdotes but his delivery (perhaps inevitable with a pre-prepared lecture) was a little stilted and lacking in spontaneity. In the case of (ii) it is my view that there is still a gulf between these two communities and it will take more than one series of lectures to bridge it.
Jennifer Raffle
April 2005
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