Innovate UK Promises to Simplify Siege Engines

Trebuchet Vouchers 'confusing', admits McKernan

The Chief Executive of the UK's premier producer of catapults, Innovate UK, has promised to simplify the range of medieval siege engine-style funding schemes it creates.

'I appreciate that our range of siege engine schemes may be confusing to many academics and companies who just want a bit of funding to start a collaboration,' admitted Ruth McKernan. 'However, what they don't realise is that, in a crowded funding scheme marketplace, you've really got to stand out from the rest of the competition. And ideally brutally bombard them into submission.'

King Arthur & the Internet of Things

'We have been charged by God with a sacred quest'

The TSB this week advertised for an Internet of Things Ecosystem Demonstrator. Now read on.

Prof Arthur and his RAs, along with their servants, "ride" up to a castle. Prof Arthur's administrator, Patsy, blows a horn. 

Arthur: HELLO! (waits) 
 Bedevere: HELLO! (waits) 

An armour-clad face appears at the top of the rampart. It speaks in an outrageous French accent. 

Soldier: 'Allo! 'Oo is it?
Arthur: It is I, Prof Arthur, and this is my team of Researchers. Whose castle is this?
S: This is the castle of my master, Professeur Guy de Lombard.
A: Go and tell your master that we have been charged by God with a sacred quest. If he will give us food and shelter for the night, he can join us in our quest for the Internet of Things.
S: Well, I'll ask 'im, but I don't think 'e'll be very keen-- 'e's already got one, you see?
A: What?
Lancelot: He says they've already *got* one!
A: (confused) Are you sure he's got one?
S: Oh yes, it's ver' naahs. (to the other soldiers:) I told 'em we've already got one! (they snicker) 
A: (taken a bit off balance) Well... ah, um... Can we come up and have a look?
S: Of course not! You are English types.
A: Well, what are you then?
S: (Indignant) Ah'm French! Why do you think I have this out-rrrageous accent, you silly professeur type?!
Galahad: What are you doing in England?
S: Mind your own business!
A: If you will not show us the Internet of Things, we shall take your castle by force!
S: You don't frighten us, English pig-dogs! Go and boil your bottoms, son of a silly person! Ah blow my nose at you, so-called "Arthur Professeuuur"! You and all your silly English Reeesearcheuuurs!!! 

(the soldier proceeds to bang on his helmet with his hands and stick out his tongue at the researchers, making strange noises.)

Galahad: What a strange person.
A: (getting mad) Now look here, my good ma--
S: Ah don' wanna talk to you no more, you empty-headed animal food-trough wiper! Ah fart in your general direction! Your mother was a hamster, and your father smelt of elderberries!
Galahad: Is there someone else up there we can talk to?
S: No!! Now go away, or I shall taunt you a second time!

(In the distance, the sound of Horizon2020 gently crumbling can be heard).

Beware the Poets

I'm worried about those clever people at Polaris House. Our great and glorious research leaders, those academic taste makers who hold UK funded research in the palms of their hands, seem to be entering the world of self parody.

A couple of weeks ago I devised the Research Council Priority Generator. This randomly mashed together abstract nouns to create strategic priorities that sounded edgy and thoughtful, but were ultimately empty and meaningless.

Whilst it highlighted how randomness could produce apparent profundity, I thought it was too exaggerated and  stupid to really bear any resemblance to reality. How wrong I was. Within hours of launching the Generator, the AHRC had produced its latest 'emerging theme': 'Care for the Future: Thinking Forward through the Past'.

Beautiful. I couldn't have invented a better nonsense programme myself. But, oh, it got better. The AHRC weaved together a fine piece of poetic prose to explain the rationale of the theme: it was, they gushed, 'an opportunity for researchers...to generate new novel understandings of the relationship between the past and the future, and the challenges and opportunities of the present through a temporally inflected lens'.

'New novel'? Really? 'A temporally inflected lens'? If I had a temporally inflected lens I'd be sure to take it down to Jessops to have it looked at.

But the muse is upon them, and they continue in a stream of consciousness that would make Molly Bloom blush:

'...these include questions around what is meaningful about continuity and change, and the role that narratives, experiences, visualisations, performances and stories have to play in these processes. Issues around understanding modes of cultural learning and intergenerational equity, as well as questions relating to authority, ownership and justice within and across time, may help inform understanding of current and future global challenges faced by society today. Technological development, alternative lifestyle movements, and the nature of ideological and philosophical, ethical and creative, historicised and imagined perspectives jostle for attention and require a diversity of approaches and disciplinary engagements for the theme to reach its full potential.'

It's like a postmodern disciplinary shopping list, complete with an unreliable narrator. It's all there, but it's up the reader to try and make sense of it.

However, the AHRC is not alone in bowing to the creative urge. Following swiftly on this is EPSRC's announcement that it will be running a 'creativity greenhouse'. They've already had us playing in 'sandpits', and the TSB is encouraging us to develop 'catapaults'. What analogy, metaphor or simile will they reach for next? The ESRC Trouser Press? The NERC Hostess Trolley? The BBSRC Kenwood Mixer? Now there's an idea for a new generator...

But should we welcome all this creativity? After all, other great leaders have succumbed to the inner poet. Barack Obama has written poetry, as has Jimmy Carter. But then, apparently, so has Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Ivan the Terrible and Goebbels.

Hmm. On second thoughts perhaps the Research Councils should stick to their day jobs before they take UK research any further into this weird parallel universe.

TSB: What's It All About?

David Bott, the Director of Innovation Programmes at the Technology Strategy Board, visited the University today to give an overview of the background and the ethos of the organisation. Innovation, he said, had become a talisman for many. But what does it mean, and how does the TSB facilitate and support it?

Put simply, innovation is the process of turning ideas into money. Sounds easy enough, but innovators face a number of problems:

• Investment is often too little or too late;
• Innovation is inherently disruptive, and change has to be effectively managed;
• Long term trends aren't always apparent;
• Infrastructural support is often complex or inefficient;
• For better or worse, the government is a huge player and needs to help rather than hinder.

The TSB, then, was founded four years ago to help overcome these challenges by:

• fostering a better environment for innovators;
• reducing the financial risk;
• signposting market trends;
• facilitating collaboration and networking;
• feeding back to government.

Since its foundation it has developed into a body with around 130 staff, who between them have some 1700 years of business experience. So they're commercially focused, and understand the needs of business. The TSB has around £300m to distribute annually, and rather than identifying surefire winners it identifies areas of potential growth and capacity.

How? Well, predominantly by talking to government and analysing the needs of the market. Based on this, the TSB's priorities are:

• Low carbon vehicles;
• Assisted living;
• Low impact buildings;
• Detection and identification of infectious agents;
• sustainable agriculture and the food chain;
• stratified medicine.

In practice, it distributes its funding as follows:

• Through consortia, via a standard (2 stage) or fast track (1 stage) funding scheme. Neither of these should be as time consuming as those for the Research Councils, and David suggested a 2-3 month turnaround was the norm. They also fund feasibility studies, workshops and sandpit events;
• Through individuals, via Knowledge Transfer Partnerships and grants for research and development.
• Knowledge Transfer Networks;
• Missions, to spread the word about innovation in the UK;
• Centres.

If you want to find out more about the TSB and whether it's right for you, contact my colleague Brian Lingley in Kent Innovation & Enterprise who can answer your questions and support you in developing a proposal for them.