Education for innovation

1
Education for innovation  views (and lessons?)
from a research organization
Stéphane Dalmas Department of Transfer and
Innovation
2
Introduction

• Some views on education and innovation from a
  raw material producer for innovation
• Whose workforce is PhD
• A research institution  an interesting place at
  the crossroad of (higher end) education and
  innovation

3
Research institutions  innovation and education

• Play a triple role
• As provider of raw material for innovators
• Research is not innovation, invention is not
  innovation...
• Either implicitly, to the whole society
• Vast body of knowledge in publications
• Or explicitly, for clients
• Through contracts technology transfer, research,
  studies...

4
Research institutions and education

• They are part of the education system
• PProducing PhD
• But they also hire the people that have spent
  the most time in the education system
• Consuming PhD
• To produce innovation components

5
INRIA

• French government funded research institution in
  ICST - Digital sciences
• Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et
  en Automatique
• Under the dual auspices of the ministry in
  charge of research and industry
• Main missions 
• Scientific excellence (basic and applied
  research)
• Knowledge transfer
• The largest of its kind in Europe
• More than 3300 scientists
• More than 200 research teams

6
INRIA is interesting because...

• We are not an applied research organization
• Not focussing on the needs of industry
• In a field largely involved in innovation and
  with a short time scale
• Many initiatives around innovation
• Framework agreements
• Joint laboratories with SME
• IT-Translation  coaching and early stage funding
  of spin-off from public research
• ....
• And a track record  more than 100 start-up
  companies, some bought by Yahoo !, IBM, BO...

7
Our workforce

• PhD  clever, curious, creative...
• Team work is common
• Many joint publications
• Enjoying a large scientific freedom
• No individual goal for grants and contracts
• Multicultural
• PhD students, post-docs, visitors, researchers...
• Some researchers with an engineering background
  (top level engineering schools  common in ICST)
• 1000 PhD hosted in our research teams

8
Who are the best at innovation ?

• As measured by technology transfer, research
  contracts, spin-off creations
• Nothing obvious in terms of background...
• The most effective are
• Notwithstanding the influence of the area
• The motivated ones...
• The ones that found the right person to talk with
• A user, an engineer, a business person (sales,
  marketing, funding...), another researcher...

9
Because

• From research ideas/products
• Some other stakeholders are needed to convert
  them to innovation
• In a way that we don't really understand...
• The vision has to be built incrementally
• And every case seems to be special people and
  relationship are key
• Many results are generic and can be applied in
  many different markets
• Complicated and many are too advanced...
• The key point, besides finding the people. 
  being able to talk with them

10
From an education point of view

• Enable our researchers to talk the language of
  the people needed to realize the innovation
  potential of their research
• Translators do not really work...
• A real challenge
• Hard to know what could be useful...
• Business school (finance, marketing), some
  engineering, psychology, ...
• Entrepreneurship and innovation teachings are
  something else, probably
• No need to have a shallow understanding of the
  whole picture and avoid being too
  unscientific...

11
Improving our understanding of innovation

• Research institutions such as INRIA are good
  places to get insights
• Measuring innovation
• Evaluation of our actions around innovation
  (including collaborative projects)
• Benchmarking with other research organizations
• Taking into account the differences between
  organizations
• and their people
• At a European level (KIC ICT-Labs)
• Ultimate goal to improve the performances of the
  organization and the performances of our people