Innovation CHEF

Tuam, the County Galway Town famous for High Crosses and The Saw Doctors could soon be making headlines as the first City in Europe to have commercially deployed Near Field Communications.

Tuam Retailers are implementing a new electronic loyalty card scheme based on Near Field Communications over ordinary mobile phones. From next week shoppers in Tuam will just have to tap their phones at a terminal near the cash register to get discounts, special offers and bonuses.

The technology behind this is from Zapa Technology. You can see them in Irish coffee retail outlet Insomnia already.

What is Near Field Communication?
It’s a short range (4-10cm distance) communication technology aimed at mobile phones primarily.

Is it like Bluetooth?
This has a shorter setup and requires less power than Bluetooth but is a fair bit slower. Also the devices need to be a lot closer together to work. It is ideal for smaller amounts of information to be transferred quickly.
Another handy element is it can work when one of the devices is not powered. Like a label, a tag or a poster.

myLot User Profile

Perhaps a bit late but mark your calendars with some interesting looking Innovation events in Ireland for the rest of the month of September

19th September 2009
Bizcamp Ireland
Guinness Storehouse, Dublin
Great free day of learning and networking for Entreprenueurs, start-ups and business people.

23rd September 2009
Sligo Information evening
The Glasshouse Hotel, Sligo
Thinking of starting a Technology business in the West? Head along to the free information evening

24th September 2009
Fingal Day of Enterprise
Europa Academy, Swords
A one stop shop for business supports and advice.

I’ll Get October out soon

If I missed an event let me know or if you want to promote something or let others know about something cool drop me a line

Thanks

Just posted over at the Business in Ireland and Irish Business Forums.

Love to get your feedback on what do you need? what do we all need? and whats stopping us?

check it out there or reply here.

Thanks

innovationchef.com is an Irish based blog looking at innovation news, practice & events from a local and global perspective.

Innovation is an incredibly overused and poorly understood term. We have Innovation Policy & the Innovation Taskforce and mantras. Innovate or die! Right?

You may have been turned off or disappointed. You personally might be interested but think you don’t have the time or can’t take the risk. You might have been influenced along the way to feel that innovation is too complicated, distracting or weird for you.

You might want it to be different, now.

In fact:

• The tools to double or triple the numbers of valuable ideas for your business or customers are pretty easy to understand and are straightforward to implement.
• There common limiting beliefs are and mistakes that companies make that sabotage their innovation efforts
• The processes can be engaging and positive.

Love to hear what you need, how you feel about innovation, what is stopping you and whether we could help.

short and simple

This is a blog response to the debate on Fred’s IP and Competition Law Blog.

SFI (and other) funding has gone into some fundamental scientific fields that are going to be important in the future. The thing to realise is that research drives one main output; more research, You find something cool, you look at it more. That is needed and Ireland has been lacking in recent times so good to see some investment. This is not really enough on it’s own though to realise a return on the investment.

Can you get a return on that investment ?

When ?

Let’s pick for example Nanotech. Most people would agree that this is a key area with a high potential to revolutionize the world. (Unfortunatley, most people get that insight from Star Trek and would be a bit wary if them met a nanite.) Also unfortunately is the fact that you can’t look forward in time and see when, or in what field the returns will be made first. It is a race where you might not finish first or at all.

Ferdinand von Prondzynski, from DCU, has written in his Blog about the need to be single minded about our need for research and innovation. To a point I agree. The policy of investment should continue in high value areas. There must also be a viable environment that can take on this new knowledge and ultimately help support the funding of the research.

What is needed is more of the resources that enable the conversion of IP and new knowledge to products, services and ultimately value.

Fred on his blog argues:

…would we not be better served licensing in technology and know-how from around the globe to become system-integrators? How about using our relatively small size to become a location of rpilot studies for new products and processess?

Good Idea from the perspective of  building innovation and commercialisation muscle that we will need when the investments in fundamental research are ripe. This all cannot be regarded as a serial process, We have to build and cultivate at every stage. Fundamental research is an important investment, but will not bear fruit in the short term. Integrators, innovators and businesses should be developed in the same areas to provide a future market for those ideas. This will enable the return on investment to be realised in the Irish economy.

It would be unrealistic to expect that researchers being spun off into companies would be solely enough. Larger corporations will have the resources to licence in IP to build their portfolios. This is the reality that the Open Innovation ethos drives. A good question to ask is whether there will be Irish companies who and build and exploit IP portfolios in these technological areas that we are investing R&D money into and whether they can grow and scale to make returns.