‘Could do better’ at making innovation pay
Scotland has the building blocks in place to start translating more innovations into commercial successes – but it has to step up to the next level, according to a senior industry leader.
Deborah O’neil, chief executive of Novabiotics, said: “Our focus is how can we deliver, by driving growth through collaboration, more commercialised outputs.
“We have a proven track record in Scotland, we are innovationready, we have a unified health service and access to worldleading research, as well as great entrepreneurial leaders.”
However, O’neil admitted, the report card still said “could do better” when it came to the three targets – improving the whole ecosystem, maximising economic growth and creating more companies of scale.
In terms of the ecosystem, O’neil said: “Scotland was one of the first movers to the triple helix, where health campuses had hospitals, private businesses and academia on the same site.
“None of us are innovating in independent silos. We are ahead of the game in terms of innovating and collaborating but could do better [at communicating that].”
O’neil is co-chair of the Life Sciences Scotland Industry Leadership Group (ILG) innovation and commercialisation workstream, along with Ricky Verrall, head of the Chief Scientist Office.
She said it was typical of the forward-looking attitude of the ILG that there was one co-chair from the private sector and one from the public sector.
“The mechanisms to collaborate and join are better than we thought, and we do not necessarily need to do more of it, just signpost it better,” O’neil said. “The Health Innovation Partnership (HIP) is a star performer and we need to build on that.”
Dave Tudor, joint chair of the ILG,
Focus on the scale-up funding gap and examine the apparent disconnect between what companies are trying to achieve and what funders think they are funding.
Look at extending the 18-month funding round, which is not enough to take companies through to manufacture. also praised the HIP, a partnership between trade body the Scottish Lifesciences Association and NHS Scotland, as “a brilliant creation” which had already delivered 174 collaborations between industry and the NHS.
“We have a great relationship with the NHS through the HIP,” said Tudor. “If we can use NHS as a test-bed as real world evidence, wouldn’t that make a big difference?”
In terms of creating companies of scale, O’neil was clear: “We do not want Scotland to become an intellectual property (IP) factory. Internationalisation is essential but that does not necessarily mean taking the ideas elsewhere.”
O’neil said one key objective was ensuring serial entrepreneurs stayed in Scotland: “We have real talent here, but how do we develop it further and get people to say that Scotland is a fantastic and sustainable life sciences cluster, where entrepreneurs want to be and want to lead?
“It’s about attracting, retaining and developing those leaders, not just in the private sector but also in the NHS and academia. It is these entrepreneurial leaders
Bring together all sources of advice and support and signpost clearly to the industry where to find this information.
Examine whether IP costs could be re-balanced and not all be payable at an early stage when a new company is hard-pressed for money. who will drive growth.” In his keynote speech, Tudor said that Scotland needed to convert just 20 per cent of our innovative ideas into commercial reality to make the difference needed to move towards the £8 billion 2025 target. He praised the Industrial Biotechnology Innovation Centre (IBIOIC) and said: “It has 40-plus projects looking at creating enzymes and organisms. That’s game-changing stuff.”
However, the discussion groups on innovation and commercialisation questioned whether the triple helix was as strong as some of the speakers suggested.
A number of contributors thought there was still a way to go to develop a truly Team Scotland approach.
Dr Julie Brady, of Dundee University’s Drug Discovery Unit, said: “Funding is squeezed and sometimes it is hard to take an innovation on to the next level – because sometimes, the focus is your next research grant application.”
Richard Gibbs of patent attorney Marks & Clerk, who chaired the innovation discussion groups, said: “Industry and academia are not always talking and collaborating because the big thing in the middle is IP.”
However, Kirsty Black of Marine Biopolymers, a micro-business employing four people, said her company had entered into shared IP arrangements. n