Professor Andy Hopper says the government's innovation strategy is poorly conceived
The head of computer technology at Cambridge University has delivered an attack on the government's innovation strategy. "I see a drift, despite good intentions, to box in innovation," Andy Hopper told Director. Funding is too often conditional and meticulously managed, he said. "How do we make sure we produce the thought and the innovation? It's about empowering people to change direction, to go into new areas as they identify them. You have to let the applied maverick element flourish. Funding that is micro-examined... constrains rather than enables. It is counter-productive."
Gordon Brown has made the commercialisation of university research a central tenet of his plan to pull the country out of recession. But Hopper, who was the third employee at Acorn Computer after founders Chris Curry and Herman Hauser, believes the government has adopted the venture capital model of funding when a business angel approach would be more suitable. "VCs are appropriate for certain things. But plenty of small companies have followed our lead in Cambridge, they start with angel [funding] because that's more likely to let them exist, instead of: 'bit of money, fail to deliver, shot'. A company is a living thing, if you poke it too much it won't live to its full potential."
Hopper says the government's Technology Strategy Board is the exception. "It's a laudable experiment, which is actually doing a worthwhile job pushing back on all this," he said. "If I look at all the other major projects being funded in the university system at the moment, they are all [based on] measurement, measurement: it's not going to work."
According to Hopper, researchers must be free to perform the "handbrake turns" necessary to react to their findings and produce products that the market will buy. "Academic freedom doesn't mean do whatever you like. Yet the bulk of the funding to universities is like this: say what you're going to do, promise to deliver—how's it going to innovate, how's it going to influence UK industry—explain it all upfront. And stick to it, because I will give you marks out of ten. If you don't get a very good mark then you won't get the next grant."
Hopper also criticised the tendency for technology transfer offices to rely on patents to create value. "Patents are about protecting the small entity from being trashed by a big entity—very important. But that's it. These guys have got to have a business. They have to sell things in a real sense. This whole world of IPR and lawyers is disproportionate. They are not contributing real value. We will have a real problem in due course. Patents in most areas are not the conditioning thing in successful businesses. You can have all the patents you like but it's about what actually happens: the fundamental business."
Hopper is aware that his comments will be perceived as politically incorrect. "It's desperately difficult to say anything bad about innovation," he said. But the Cambridge professor is no stranger to controversy. He began the year by upsetting privacy campaigners with his vision of a Big Brother-style solution to global warming, which centred on the use of surveillance technology to promote lower energy consumption.
Sensors could be used to monitor an individual's carbon footprint, Hopper said, or track the amount of heat escaping from the roof of a building. The information would then be published online to encourage competition—to "change behaviour by enticement." Peer review, he says, is the key to getting people to self-certify their energy use. "The way we will change the way we live our lives is by sharing this information about energy use."
Hopper stands by his vision. It's a central pillar in his current research project, Computing for the future of the planet, which views computers as having the potential to make a "major contribution" to ensuring a sustainable future for the planet, instead of, as some have suggested, simply draining its resources. "It's an opportunity for the UK, for business, to take a leadership role, and I want make sure that we milk it," he told Director. "That doesn't just mean financially, but for the benefit of society." Referencing the arguably inaccurate report, which claimed that one Google search uses as much energy as making a cup of tea, Hopper added: "Search is good, we want to do more, so let's deal with the energy."
Hopper said businesses must respond to the challenge of "figuring out the intersection between sustainability and computing" by building data centres closer to renewable sources of energy, such as wind or solar farms, and allowing consumers to log their own energy use to share with others on so-called personal energy monitors. "I'm trying to popularise this view. I don't want us as an industry to not be thinking about it. I want to influence innovation and make sure that the freshness in innovation can surface. If it doesn't then Mr Obama will have taken full advantage and so will China. The opportunity is there business-wise because it's about being more efficient."
Posted 19 May 2009 : Director.co.uk
