Welcome back after the holidays and all the best for 2016 from the team at SA Instrumentation and Control. We trust you are all well refreshed after the December holidays and ready to face the challenges of the year ahead with renewed vigour.
Perhaps the most significant piece of news in this issue is the handing over of the SAIMC Presidency to an enthusiastic and competent young man by the name of Oratile Sematle. Oratile’s potential to lead the Society to even greater achievements than his predecessor, Vinesh Maharaj, has long been recognised by Council. In fact, the only reason he did not take over last year was because work and travel commitments did not make it practical. Thanks to Vinesh for agreeing so willingly to give up his time for one more year.
Vinesh’s greatest achievement has been transformation, and not just at a superficial level. Under his leadership the SAIMC grew in stature into an organisation deeply committed to getting C&I engineering recognised as the tenth official Engineering discipline by ECSA. He was also instrumental in the development of a medium-term business plan for the Society. It is this vision which will now ensure a smooth transition of the Presidency, without any disruption to the organisational objectives.
Oratile, we at SA Instrumentation and Control look forward to working with you over the next few years and building on the pride with which we view our position as the Society’s official publication. We wish you well. Your time has come.
You will find Oratile’s first official communiqué as SAIMC President in 'SAIMC: From the President's desk'.
Cashing-in on university research
In his report from Europe this month, Nick Denbow puts forward some topical ideas on what governments can do to build industry plans around technology leadership. The objectives should be to create higher value jobs from technology, and to develop the skills of the workforce.
In Norway for instance, the whole economy revolves around the extraction and processing of oil and gas from offshore fields. The universities are well linked into this industry and have separate nurseries for funded R&D projects, where university types are helped to develop new ideas into products. Promising ones are financed through the university until they are taken on by a venture capital group, who develop the business and then sell it on a few years later.
A good example is of a Norwegian university that developed a battery-powered wireless flammable gas detector for use on offshore platforms. Then, with a funding investment from a Norwegian venture capital (VC) group specialising in start-ups, spent several years perfecting it on trials with Statoil and other North Sea installations. After gaining worldwide approval, and interest, the VC management sold the business to Dräger for around US$50 million, with a commitment to retain the research centre base in Norway.
In a nutshell, the message is that researchers, and universities, need to attract the interest of start-up technology investors, and even provide some seed funding or facilities to start the process. Then, the ability to involve venture capitalists is needed to pay back the university or start-up investor. The VC exit route is then to sell out after some years to a larger company looking to grow through acquisition. This is when, hopefully, the inventor and company managers make some profit.
I’m pretty sure that with a little creative thinking the model could be adapted to African conditions and opportunities. It is something worth considering in light of the gloomy prediction that big business will not be able to create the jobs so badly needed to address the unemployment crisis. You will find the full article in 'Nick Denbow's European report: Commercialising university research'.
Steven Meyer
Editor: SA Instrumentation & Control
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