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On Innovation and the Innovation Fund
An interview with Duncan Raftasath — senior commercialisation manager
Recently Duncan Raftesath IF's Senior Commercialisation Manager sat down with Paul Cockburn, a film maker commissioned by the Department of Science and Technology, for a discussion on Innovation and the Innovation Fund. What follows is an edited version of that discussion.
Paul Cockburn (PC)
What does Innovation mean to you?
Duncan Raftesath (DR)
Innovation is often confused with creativity. Innovation is a journey that starts with creativity and ends in the market; broadly the market place is society. So, something creative is not innovative unless it actually impacts on society.
PC: Can you give me an example of an innovative product that is used by society?
DR: A cell phone is innovative because it is in your pocket and millions of other
pockets. The original electrical engineering was very creative and very clever but it didn't become innovation until it impacted society. That's why I talk about Innovation as a journey and not as a single point in time.
PC: What do you think drives innovation within a society?
DR: The ability of a society or country to be innovative is in its ability to actually meet society needs by being creative. This, in principle, is a source of comparative advantage in the world economy that is based on people's own creative abilities.
The challenge for South Africa and for many other countries is “Can we have systems in place that support creativity and nurtures ideas until they are fully developed and then support the journey of the resultant product or service to the market place.”
PC: What is the Fund's strategy towards investing in the success of South Africa's technological innovation?
DR: The Innovation Fund is an initiative of the Department of Science and Technology. Our focus is on technological innovation i.e. innovations that are based on Science and Technology as opposed to those that are based on new business processes or new behavioral processes. We focus on trying to find South African's who have good ideas that are rooted in Science and then we partner with them to take those ideas forward towards the market place. The journey can sometimes be quite short, sometimes it can be long.
PC: If I have an idea and I'm looking for funding, how can the Innovation Fund assist me?
DR: Our normal way of encouraging people to innovate is to get them to send us proposals of what their idea is, what is the basis for it and what is required to take it forward. Because these are scientific ideas, they usually require research and development and through our Technology Advancement Programme(TAP) we provide funding for such ideas which have proof of science. The primary goal of our TAP is funding the development of a prototype or equivalent. We also provide patent support funding which ensure that the idea is suitably protected. Once a prototype exists we then invest in the commercialisation of such a product or service.
PC: How does an idea qualify to be an innovative project?
DR: We look at ideas with a sharp eye. We check if the idea is promising, that
there has been scientific activity so that the idea is not just an idea which for example was only just formulated whilst taking a bath one day. The idea must come with evidence that an experiment took place to show that the idea has some merit in science. We also look at the market potential of the idea.
PC: Can you tell me more about Innovation Fund's investment instruments?
DR: The Innovation Fund typically provides an investment of up to R15 million for a 3 year Research and Development projects. That can be quite a lot of money but in some cases it can be too little money. But it's typically enough and it allows people to develop their ideas.
The Seed Fund invests in the commercialisation of novel and inventive technology. For companies to qualify for a Seed Fund investment they must have, first, tried to secure an investment from at least three other possible sources of funding and their technology must have reached the prototype stage.
In the past we had many ideas that were developed but were not really commercialisable. These days we find that some of our projects, even though they are halfway through Research and Development, they are starting to sell their products or licence their technologies. So we are getting very excited about the future more and more ideas are holding increasing promise that they will actually have an impact in society.
We also have patent support funds. These are a groups of instruments meant to assist individuals, SMEs and publicly funded institutions with fundings that will enable them to file for patents.