Piaras Kelly PR - Public Relations in Ireland

The title of this post comes from an opinion piece by the inventor James Dyson in the Observer. One of the good things that will come out from the recession is that people will stop following the money and realise that we have to create and produce stuff again if we are to return to former glories. Interestingly, if similar trends are to be repeated we will see a rise in students applying for science, engineering and ICT courses in university due to the better job prospects and security.

Plenty of commentators are calling for banks to start lending to businesses again as cash flow continues to be an issue and others call for an entrepreneurship policy in order to create new Irish companies to take the place of multinationals who have pulled out of Ireland because of high costs.

Calls for an entrepreneurship policy though have me scratching my head slightly because if we are truly aspirational of creating a culture of innovation, then we fundamentally have to change the pessimistic attitude that exists in society. There was a 21% fall in the number of new businesses started last year compared with 2007 according to ICC Information. Of the new businesses that were started but failed, how many do you think will be successful at getting another loan from their bank manager?

Just like with our students in the education system, at a business level we stamp out the risk taking culture from potential entrepreneurs. Talking about engineering, Dyson bemoans what has become of our mini-engineers:

Let’s start with the makers, breakers and remakers - children. Children are mini-engineers and it’s their rite of passage to pull anything mechanical apart to get at the guts.

…

So the young are innately curious about how and why things work. Yet what happens between childhood and adulthood? We stamp it out of them. Engineering gets stigmatised and we encourage our kids to become “professionals” - lawyers, accountants, doctors. Unlike in France or Germany, engineers are a bit of a nonentity here. Engineering is almost a dirty word. We’re told it’s “old industry” and that we are a “post-industrial nation”.

To have one good idea, you need to have a thousand first. Thankfully groups of people and businesses are banding together to create forums to stimulate startups such as BizSpark and BizCamp.

Moving back to the topic of Dyson’s article though, what about Ireland’s young people? I had the fortune of attending the BT Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition in the RDS for the first time this year. The Government’s white paper, Building Ireland’s Smart Economy - A Framework for Sustainable Economic Renewal, talks about fast tracking BT Young Scientist winners, but who honestly believes that if there was a standout idea among the exhibits that it would get funded?

Two students at the Exhibition stood out for me - Gabriel McCoy for his ‘Fuel Safe’ project and Aaron Kelly’s Animal Behavioural Robot. McCoy developed a simple device to solve the petrol diesel misfueling solution. Misfueling happens four hundred times on a daily basis and with more consumers buying diesel cars, it is a costly problem that is likely to increase in occurrence. Unlike most other solutions which are based on the pump nozzle, similar to that in the video below, Gabriel’s uses magnets and only consists of three components, fitting onto the flap of the fuel tank. When a motorist tries to incorrectly fill his tank with petrol, the circuit switches and emits a buzzing noise. This simple and cheap solution addresses a problem that affects an estimated 120,000 UK motorists alone. McCoy has gone so far as to patent his idea and has approached the Irish version of Dragon’s Den to secure funding. Fingers crossed they’ll give this thirteen year old the funding he wants, but as people like Patrick Collison can attest Ireland doesn’t have a good track record putting its faith (money) in young people.

Simply linking BT Young Scientist Exhibition winners with third level institutions is short sighted, there are plenty of students with potential at the event and they should be fast tracked. Just look at Aaron Kelly’s project below. Speaking with Aaron to get background on his project, he displayed the type of enthusiasm to tinker that is reminiscent of Dyson’s article. Not satisfied with the RC Robot he purchased on eBay, he pulled it apart to see how it worked and rebuilt it, adding sensors in the process to create something new. Exactly the type of individual we want to put out into the economy to make money from making.

If you would like to see other videos of some of the BT Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition participants, they are available to view here.

If we are to create more students of Kelly and McCoy’s ilk, then we have to continue the shift from rote learning to learning by doing. There are some promising signs in the way we teach young people such as Project Maths, Discover Primary Science and the project based element of the new Junior Cert Science curriculum. However, we need to put an added emphasis in investment and reform of our education system if the Celtic Tiger is to return to its former glories like a phoenix from the ashes.

Klaus Landfried, former president of the German Universities, underlines this with some of his recent comments:


There is a strong link between innovation and the way we are used to learn: either, first, by being lectured from “above”, being filled up with so called “confirmed knowledge”, passively trying to memorize it for the next examination, but forgetting rapidly after exam what was not really hitting our interest and emotions, our will to comprehend. Or we learn, second, by searching for new knowledge on our own, gently guided by teachers, experiencing by trial and error what is real, what is possible and what is not, experiencing our own responsibility, also in ethical terms, because our efforts to learn are respected and we as personalities are recognized.

I cannot elaborate more extensively on this remarkable difference in the culture of learning, but I do insist that a change in the way children in schools, students in Higher Education Institutions (HEI) and vocational trainees in school and workplace are mobilized to learn will make our whole educational systems much more effective in terms of generating more innovative minds. This does not mean, that learning is made easier, on the contrary, but just more active and self reliant.