Remarks by Minister Mosibudi Mangena at the Innovation Competition Awards

Programme director
Prof. Mzamo Mangaliso, CEO and President of the National Research Foundation
Dr Eugene Lottering, Executive Director of the Innovation Fund
Award recipients
Distinguished guests
Ladies and gentlemen

The 2008 National Innovation Competition Awards take place at a time when our National System of Innovation is being enriched by new and exciting developments to stimulate innovation, develop our human capital and enhance the governance of the public research and development fabric of South Africa.

A little more than a month ago, the National Assembly approved the Technology Innovation Agency (TIA) Bill. Through this legislation, TIA will be established as a new public entity designed to provide financial assistance to individuals and groups to enable them to develop and commercialise their technological inventions. During the early product development stage, the Agency will also facilitate the processes of drawing together, integrating and managing disparate technological innovation initiatives.

I am certain that all of us here understand that, in isolation, an invention is worth very little or nothing at all. For it to result in tangible benefits to individuals and the South African society, an invention needs to be part of an entire innovation value chain. It is in this context that we plan, through the TIA, to link the results of the research and development performed by our higher education institutions and science councils to commercial and industrial opportunities.

Through the TIA, we will begin to address in a significant way the challenges posed by the gap between the local knowledge base and the translation of that knowledge into products and services, which is usually referred to as the innovation chasm.

While our National System of Innovation has developed a substantial repository of local basic research and knowledge, as things stand this has resulted in minimal influence on the economy. The situation is exacerbated by a number of impediments to productivity and technological innovation, which include market inefficiencies, lack of access to adequate financing, specifically for seed funding and first-stage financing for technology development, and a relatively weak and uncoordinated intellectual property rights management framework.

Over the years, these impediments have contributed to the loss of a number of great South African technologies to the developed world. Glaring examples include the South African developed lithium battery technology, which is the basis for the electric vehicle hype in the world today, and which left our shores for the United States of America (USA) two decades ago. In addition, as recently as two years ago, we lost our thin film solar cell technology to Germany.

Another government initiative, which is of relevance to today's Innovation Awards Ceremony, is the development of a framework on intellectual property rights derived from publicly financed research. This has been a grey area for far too long. Bitter experience has revealed the importance of establishing clarity and purposefulness in this regard, and we have therefore developed a policy document and the attendant legislation. Specifically, the said Bill provides for an enabling environment for intellectual property creation, protection, management and commercialisation. It also gives greater clarity on the ownership of intellectual property rights generated from publicly financed research.

The policy and Bill are significant developments in the area of innovation, and in taking South Africa's economy closer to being a knowledge economy. There are many other such developments, like my department's Ten-Year Innovation Plan, which articulates the principal challenges our science system needs to address if we are to successfully realise a transformation to a knowledge economy.

Let us now come back to the specific role of the National Innovation Competition Awards in the context of our rapidly expanding National System of Innovation. The competition aims, among others, to stimulate technological innovation among student entrepreneurs in South Africa. This means that the ideas presented in the business plans submitted had to be technology-related. While technical innovation is important from the point of view of the mandate of the innovation fund, it is market opportunity and the successful implementation of a good business strategy by a competent team that more often than not determines the commercial success of an innovation.

Competition entrants are intended to see the competition as a means of learning about starting and promoting their own business concepts to investors and potential partners. In particular, contestants have to convince adjudicators that their business concepts will be a good investment, and are likely to be successful.

I am heartened to note that 18 higher education institutions have participated in this year's competition, and that some 51 teams will today showcase their business prototypes to the adjudication panel, the innovation community, various institutions, and members of the press. I must emphasise this evening that the real prize is not the R300 000 that the winners will take home. It would be a tragedy if people left this event thinking that only three of the innovative ideas presented here were likely to amount to something. The truth is, all the ideas entered have great potential, and their commercial success will depend squarely on the skill and tenacity of the entrepreneurs trying to make them work. We therefore need to congratulate all the contestants.

In this regard, the words of former US President Theodore Roosevelt come to mind:
"The credit belongs to the man and woman who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming"

With these few words I salute and congratulate the winners and all the contestants in this competition. I have no doubt that all your innovations and the efforts you put in developing them will one day enrich our National System of Innovation and our society.

Thank you.

Issued by: Department of Science and Technology
10 April 2008