Science for presidents

The elusive innovation

For the first time, a list of the 50 companies that best meet the criteria of innovation has been published

The list is incomplete and full of uncertainties and ambiguities. However, the effort made by the MIT seems useful to see how 50 leading companies in various fields address, which from the prestigious American centre, is covered under the term of innovation. This is a concept that, as in other areas, shows significant differences between the United States and Europe.

Malén Ruiz de Elvira |16 March 2010

Photo: Theonlyone

Among the 50 most innovative companies in the world that have been chosen this year for the first time by the MIT's Technology Review magazine, there are 13 from the energy area, 11 from Internet, 6 of materials, 11 of biomedicine, and 9 of computers. The companies were chosen after an evaluation by three criteria: the business model, strategy for deploying and expanding the scope of its technologies and the probability of success. As an example one can mention that one of them, Medtronic, biomedical, was selected for "its leadership in the development and introduction of therapy Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS), which helps treat neurological disorders by stimulating a specific part of the brain with controlled electrical pulses".

This new list of the best reflects the life of the classical concept of innovation, dealing with new products and technologies that arrive to the market. However, it is now fashionable in Europe to consider that innovation is a much broader concept, which is an even more important part of the chain starting with basic research and which, as such, can be stimulated by public policies. This is something that simply has no evidence, but that does not stop the grand stimulation of innovation announcements whose latest examples of public money are the draft of the new Spanish Law of Science.

Without definition

In the linear model, if enough money is put from the beginning of the chain, in the basic research, there will be benefits in terms of innovation at the end of the chain. But this is not always or automatically true, said Miguel Ángel Quintanilla, former Secretary of State for Universities and Research at the V Congress on Social Communication of Science held last week in Pamplona, with a large attendance. And it is not satisfied because there are many influencing factors, such as geographic and cultural rights, which in turn influence the processes of generation and transmission of information that lead to new products and techniques. Discussions on this issue, moreover, are handicapped by the lack of definition of what is innovation.

According to Quintanilla, there are two important aspects in the development of innovation in a country or region. The first is the ability to innovate, directly related to the fact whether the R & D is sufficiently developed and funded. The second is much more ethereal, the propensity for innovation, the environment that makes people be interested in innovating.

And Morrás Esteban highlighted this point, previously from EHN and now of Acciona, by mentioning that innovation is mainly an attitude, a willingness to do something that others do not, improve the present and contribute something to society that one lives in. "What is your differential?" is, in the business vocabulary of innovation, the question to be asked.

Besides, innovation always has a scientific basis, recalled the sociologist Jose Juan Toharia in the same session. This is something that also tends to be overlooked in these times of ambiguity in which innovation can seem to come from nowhere or be recorded for example in the design, the mere shell of the products, whether gaming or mobile phones. And Morrás clinched: "The technique is to know where the limits of science are and trying to reach them".

This innovation in enterprises, which are the natural framework of innovation, as reflected in that MIT TR50 list, is an incomplete attempt, impossible to achieve, to putting gates to the field.

Innovation sectors

And there are areas where there is a large amount of innovation that does not call much attention as the biotech or chips. One is medicine, medical treatments that are in continuous and rapid innovation process, from the hand of art. Another is the environment, full of encouraging technological innovations which often only have to overcome the cost barrier for mass application. But to innovate in any sector, including the environment, we must lay the foundations. So it is interesting to see how focused innovation is on environment in a small country like Finland, which has already proven in other sectors that it has its ideas clear.

What Finland wants is to export, through its companies, its related technologies, such as water, to countries where there is demand or will be, like China. Innovation, say the Finns, is the result of a need or regional specific knowledge. A small country that manages to solve a local problem can provide significant innovations in the international arena. Important are the support mechanisms of society, including the maintenance of high quality research in science centres, and development of laws and measures to promote internationally attractive business sectors. And, importantly, a framework for evaluating what is being done, which takes into account the variables crucial to the international success of an innovation environment. Still, nothing and no one guarantees that the effort will be successful, because what counts is the practice, theory is still very green and good analysis, as in economy, are always "a posteriori". That's how innovation is elusive.

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