As we reported earlier this week, the Queen Elizabeth prize for engineering didn’t quite engage the wider media as it’s organisers might have hoped. It wasn’t helped, perhaps, by the column hogging events in Cyprus, the budget build-up and the coverage of the new press charter, but the announcement deserved more than the short articles that were buried in the national newspapers.
Nevertheless, the prize – which went to the inventors of the internet and the world wide web – has certainly triggered plenty of discussion within the engineering and scientific communities, not least on the perennial subject of how to boost the profile of engineering.
Any debate along these lines is always welcome. But as one reader pointed out this week, if this momentum is to be translated into anything meaningful, it’s now up to engineers to take the debate out into the wider world: to the pub, the family meal, the football match, and the playground. That, dear reader, is your mission for the weekend.
While you’re at it, if you’re in the mood for championing British innovation, there’s still time to pick your top British Innovation from the past 100 years, as well as the technology most likely to shape the future, over at the Great British Innovation vote, an initiative set up by, amongst others, the Science Museum, The Royal Academy of Engineering, and The Royal Society.
The list of past innovations is a particularly striking – if somewhat random – reminder of Britain’s impressive track-record: with the jet engine, Turing’s “universal machine”, the invention of antibiotics, DNA fingerprinting, and QE-prize winner the world wide web amongst the huge number of world-changing UK innovations slugging it out for the top spot.
Indeed, it’s so impressive that, when viewed alongside the list of “future” technologies, it risks stoking the conviction of those prone to a bit of industrial nostalgia that we don’t innovate like we used to. For instance, It’s difficult to imagine graphene, or indeed the Rapsberry Pi (which is currently leading the field of future innovations) having the same impact as the invention of antibiotics, or the world wide web.
But it’s unfair to compare the known past with the unknowable future, and whilst sceptics might bemoan a lost age of innovation, the list of UK success stories actually gives us plenty of reasons to be positive.
For a start, many of the most transformative innovations of the past are not huge shiny chunks of engineering – which we are incidentally still good at (Crossrail springs to mind) but unglamorous, intangible, and relatively recent technologies – the world wide web, the invention of fibre optic communications, even antibiotics – that have underpinned and given birth to entirely new sectors. And the pace of innovation in those sectors is perhaps faster today than at any point in the past.
It’s hard to pick a winner, and impossible to predict the future, but what both the QE prize and the Great Innovation Vote remind us is that there’s no shortage of inspiring British engineering stories.
So back to my earlier point. Get down the pub, and start talking.
And while you’re at it, why not let us know your favourite UK innovation?
I know it’s obvious, but in many cases the exploitation of technical innovations often requires business model innovations. (e.g. the Ipod revolutionised legitimate music sales).
Engineering innovations are not enough on their own as it not always the most innovative and “best” engineered solution that wins the market.
If we really want to increase the amount of innovation in the UK we need to radically reform the patent system. The rush to patent key technology concepts for the future tends to stifle innovation now, especially when the innovator finds the key concepts of their technology is “owned” by someone else, who has no intention of developing that technology, and in many cases seems to be holding patents in order to prevent development, or profit from the work and expense of others. Patents should be issued on working prototypes, not on concepts, which very often prove to be ideas that have no practical chance of working unless someone else does the hard work. Companies who fail to develop some proof of concept or a working prototype after say 2 years should lose the patent in order to give others a chance to try. No one will put research time and money into areas where there are already patents in profusion, and this creates the obscene rush to patent different uses of emerging technologies such as nano-tech and graphene when they may prove to be much less use to the world than the hype would have us believe. Patents issued by the British Government should also be backed by the British Government. I have heard far too many tales of equipment with UK patents being passed to large companies for “evaluation” only to have that patent broken and the technology pirated because “we can afford the patent attorneys fees and you can’t” If you want innovation there has to be incentive, and protection for the innovator. The present system is worthless to all but the mega corporations, whereas most groundbreaking innovation has always come from individuals.
I do not wish to take away anything from the people nominated and their achievements which have been one of the greatest achievements of the twentieth century.
The problem with the award is that it was announced as being the “Nobel Prize for Engineering” but it does not follow the same or even similar rules. More than three people were awarded the prize, and the effect of their invention has been known for a long time.
The result is that it appears that there have been no significant engineering achievements since the Information Superhighway and WWW.
Time to consider splitting up the prize into different disciplines – which would also educate the public as to the range of engineering being carried out in the UK and worldwide.
I agree with ‘anonymous’.
Engineering innovation is always prey to, or restricted by, business interests [e.g. Nikolai Tesla, Rudolf Diesel]. Markets, ultimately you and me in consumer or user mode, whether for goods, services, or ‘lifestyle’, want something that just works, and makes our lives easier. The markets, and their business models, make their profits and we get whatever benefits are derived. It’s competitive, and there are always factors other than the best technical solution in the mix.
I’m a civil engineer by background. Except as a student, or in my head, for fun, I never did a design that wasn’t procured by a Client with a project that my design would help to fulfil. I could suggest different solutions, often trying to meet conflicting interests of architect, services engineers, planners, etc. but I didn’t have the final say.
I think this article, from 2003, puts it in perspective, and it was done before Apple’s iPod re-wrote the book on portable music, even though that was far from the first player available: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2003/jan/25/comment.comment
I’m having dinner tonight with a former neighbour. He’s a ComSci guy. No doubt at some point we’ll bemoan the lack of respect for, and understanding of, Engineering and Technology and resolve to take on the world. Then it will be Monday morning again and time to get back to work. We have to earn our respect.
Earn or demand? respect?
I have posted before on this topic.
When we only offer our skills when our clients are already in the ****, when we cause every dispute or problem to be the vehicle of making work for five ‘sets’ of our fellows, when by definition we will be wrong 50% of the time, when we are guaranteed payment whether we win, lose or draw, when we are unelected, unchallenged and unchecked and ‘covered’ by one of the most restrictive ‘Unions’ ever seen on the planet…then we will receive respect. We will not have earned it, but who cares. The folk who presently act in that manner and who are the apparent leaders of UK society and UK Plc don’t so why should we.
Best
Mike B
Too many people consider that university research is the be all of successful innovation but where in reality it is just one aspect of the ‘innovation chain’. History has shown that they are not the panacea for future wealth creation. Far from it according to the history of S&T where around 75% of the fundamental thinking that created the modern world in a technological context did not emanate from universities or advanced centres of corporate R&D, but from the minds of outsiders who were independent innovators and inventors. Baird with the TV, Whittle with the jet engine, Kilby with the ‘chip’ and Berners-Lee with the WWW for just a small number were all independent innovators where at the fundamental level no university or corporate R&D centre had any input. In this respect it is the fundamental level thinking that counts and what kicks off a new global industry, not the work that comes after. Considering this fact from history the UK to be really is a trail blazer in the future, should set up 8 no. centre around the country fot the sole reason and purpose of allowing independent engineers, innovators and inventors to have their fundamental thinking ‘sifted’. In this respect as 75% of all new breakthroughs according to history come from these people, it is a prerequisite for the future and where the horse would then be before the cart unlike today where all universities and corporate R&D centres around the world have not this in place. Indeed this is common sense really but where the destroyer of technological breakthroughs, innovation ‘elitism’ and the ‘we know best’ thinking that encapsulates all centres of research around the world, does not allow these amateur thinkers to enter into their systems. The very reason why innovation stagnates and never reaches in the numbers required, the new life-changing technological products that we need. It is again the fundamental independent thinker that is the missing link in the innovation chain and what no university of corportae R&D centre presently has in its structure so that the innovation system is complete. If the UK undertook this they would then really be a world leading innovation nation but not before I have to say. Indeed the first country to do this would soon become the pathfinder for all others to follow. All it takes is for our so-called wise men to ‘think out of the box’ for a change and where history dictates this adoption anyway. For those who say this is no longer relevant, the Royal Society and many eminent world-leading scientific institutions have said this in every recent century but where they have been proved totally wrong and where independent minds have advanced the human experience like no others.
Dr David Hill
World Innovation Foundation
“Think outside the box”, “listen to amateurs”, “inventors …thinking” – whoa there, you’re frightening me AND the horses! Sounds far too risky! Ah … perhaps we should be less risk averse?
Back to the old Cherry can we only put forward British Innovation from the past 100 years from qualified engineers, or for all Innovations no matter who brought them to life? Note a lot of the most outstanding Innovations and leaps forward in science and engineering have been from none “qualified” self-taught minds.
Patent systems that only benefit patent agents,
university staff who are about as effective in ‘proper Engineering’ (because it is not academic -whatever that means?) as a damp fish on a wet wednesday in Wolverhampton (no disrespect to that fine city! where it was my good fortune to receive the Higher Education Academy award for best UK Engineering lecturer in session 2003/4)
mathematics that has taken over the reason for its use in Engineering, as a route for academics to show their students how clever they are…and
a State and body politic which pays those who report with a jeer, a sneer or a smear (sometimes even a leer! ) our apparent weakness X5 what it pays us…
have I forgotten/is there any other part of UK plc that seeks to stop we Engineers doing the one thing which could advance Britannia?
Think outside the …
Mike B