RESEARCH:  A new government initiative that involves pushing Irish companies to be more innovative by Getting involved with third-level institutions, Is attracting interest from abroad

Just six months since it began operation, the Government's voucher system to push Irish companies into innovation is already beginning to attract international interest.

The system, modelled on the original Dutch programme, offers firms €5,000 to pay for third-level experts to help them design a product, or examine the way they do business.

In May, 194 vouchers were given out by Enterprise Ireland. In July a further round of 106 were approved; while the success experienced prompted the granting of 128 more in October.

So far, it has been the very simplicity of the vouchers that has been the greatest surprise for firms, most of whom are putting their toe into the innovation waters for the first time.

"Often, the description of the project in hand is 100 words long. It is extremely simple. Just download the application from the web," says Enterprise Ireland's Pat O'Brien.

"Sometimes companies have the application completed while they are on the telephone to someone in Enterprise Ireland seeking information about how to fill it out," he told Innovation.

The simplicity is important. The companies, Enterprise Ireland and the colleges and universities who are involved in giving the help the small and medium-sized businesses are feeling their way into unexplored lands.

So what does €5,000 buy? "Some have large very large expectations," says Tom Corcoran of Waterford Institute of Technology. "They are not quite sure what it will buy them.

"There was a lack of knowledge on both sides in the early stages of all of this. We had to figure out what was required from us, and to make sure that we broke even.

"We are not trying to make money out of this," he says. So far, the Waterford IT has dealt with 12 firms, and finished two projects.

"We are bringing one piece of software to fruition for a company that uses hand-held computers for stock tracking, and finishing a market study for another," says Corcoran.

Yet another application has come from a secretarial company that wants to use voice-activation technologies to make it more efficient.

"We are looking at what is available for a company like that," Corcoran continues.

Most companies who have come forward have been greeted with an open door.

Three-quarters of those in the first round were successful, while 81 per cent received vouchers in the October share-out.

"Most of the companies so far have been in business for quite a long time. They would never have done anything like research and development before, and they would never have engaged with colleges and universities before," he says.

But the appetite is there. "They are willing to find out. Everybody is encouraging them to be innovative, to think differently, but it isn't that easy. This helps them to do that."

The €5,000 spend is not a ceiling for those firms who want to go the extra mile and put some of their own cash behind research.

"We are open to them to put in their own money," says Corcoran.

Every company, says Enterprise Ireland, should be looking at ways of becoming more innovative.

"Technological progress and new ways of doing business set new standards.

"In the future many Irish companies, including manufacturing ones, will gain a greater proportion of their revenues from offering services as part of their business," it says.

While applications have been received from all 26 counties, the major cities dominate. Half of all the applications - the majority of them from IT companies or companies that use IT heavily - originate in Dublin, Cork or Galway.

Next year, the programme will expand when five rounds of funds will be given out, and a link with Northern Ireland is on the cards if current talks work out successfully.

If that happens, firms in the Republic will be able to use, if they want, expertise available in colleges and universities in Northern Ireland, with a reciprocal arrangement operating south of the border.

"The feedback from companies suggests that the application procedures, the level of funding, the low level of bureaucracy and the timing of calls are welcome features," says Enterprise Ireland.

The key message for interested companies, O'Brien says, is to remember that there is help out there when problems arise.

"If you can identify a problem and you don't have to have the capability to solve it. There is help available," he says.

"The €5,000 figure is important because it is often the size of a voucher that a small company can take on board. A €50,000 grant would require more strategic thinking and planning."

Though the Dutch were the pathfinders with innovation vouchers, beginning with ones as small as €2,500, the Irish experience is proving to be one that other countries want to learn from.

"What has come as a surprise is the level of attention that it is attracting from outside the country.

"We have just had delegations in from Belgium, Singapore and the United Kingdom.

"Ireland has a reputation, I think, because we have used European Union structural funds well. Ireland, for them, is new and fresh.

"Today, I have just had an e-mail from Newfoundland," says O'Brien.

Timely reminders

Nothing is measured like temperature, and nothing requires more regular check-ups than a temperature gauge, as instrument maker, Eurolec Instrumentation can testify.

For years, the small Dundalk-based firm has sent out reminders to customers about annual maintenance and calibration inspections, and kept paper records of the work done.

For a seven-strong company, the paperwork was a burdensome exercise done by third-level graduates, says managing director Tom Mears (pictured left, with Rosemary Sexton of Enterprise Ireland).

"They could have been much better employed doing something else," he says, and he applied for an innovation voucher to help find a way around the issue.

No off-the-shelf software package could do what Eurolec needed, so, backed by Enterprise Ireland's €5,000 voucher, the company and Dundalk Institute of Technology designed one that would.

In fact, it is worth highlighting the fact that an off-the-shelf option was not available, because, if it was, the innovation voucher would not have been.

"Enterprise are not into reinventing the wheel," said Mears. Once before, Eurolec went in search of State research funding, but the attempt failed when it was decided that a design was commercially innovative, but not technologically innovative enough to attract grants.

This time, though, the experience was altogether different.

"The procedures were straight-forward, common sense, fairly simple. It was a one-paragraph synopsis to start off with," he told Innovation.

"Many small companies like ourselves would have many ideas floating around and we end up saying, 'If only we had time to stand back, and do that'," Mears says.

The work was carried out by Dundalk IT's Peter Gosling, a former US multi-national employee. Eurolec, he says, "are very good at what they do, but it was good for them to have outside people in. People don't have time to sit down and think".

Now, linked with the company's Sage accounting software, the new software, designed in 80 hours by Gosling, will do more than send out reminders.

"Companies facing audits, for instance, will be able to get a provable record that everything was done right.

"That deepens the relationship between customer and client," says Gosling.