President signs tech innovation Bill

The president has signed the Technology Innovation Agency (TIA) Bill, which forms part of the Department of Science and Technology`s (DST`s) 10-year innovation plan.

The Bill is designed to help the DST fulfill its mandate to stimulate innovation in the country, and is jointly driven by various other government departments. The TIA`s primary role is the facilitation and the provision of venture capital to fund research ranging from the basic to the advanced, through the establishment of an innovation agency.

"The role of the Bill is to close the gap between universities, whose main role is research, and the market. It is about taking the research and mining the data and converting it into products and services. This knowledge can then be commercialised and taken back into the market," says Nhlanhla Nyide, chief communications officer at the Department of Trade and Industry.

Raven Naidoo, chairperson of Radian, notes the Bill is a good thing overall, but will face structural problems.

"Right now the Bill is all over the place. It falls under the DST, a little bit falls under the Department of Trade and Industry, some of it under the Industrial Development Corporation and even the Development Bank of South Africa. And the focus of each is different."

The key question is whether the creation of a new agency will actually boost innovation, says Naidoo. With current government agencies beset by various problems, this is an issue that the government needs to address, he adds.

"But an even bigger problem," notes Naidoo, "is that the country is losing local knowledge. And addressing this problem doesn`t fall within the mandate of the Bill."

He emphasises that people drive innovation and the agency needs people in it for it to work.

An important component of the TIA concept is government`s policy on intellectual property, derived from publicly financed research and development.

"The TIA is only a funding mechanism," emphasises Nyide. He feels that intellectual property rights and ownership should be regarded as a separate matter.

"I don`t see the Bill as crowding out any innovation in the private sector, because its main focus is on funding," Nyide emphasises.

He states that one of the main reasons the Bill was adopted was due to the failure of private industries and venture capitalists - the traditional sources of innovation funding - to provide adequate funding for local innovations.

Naidoo comments that the Bill is designed to stimulate the private sector and not to operate in competition with the sector. But, he notes, existing structures such as the CSIR point to the dilemma that can result when there is both public and private interest in a single agency.

Small and medium enterprises will not feel the benefits of the Bill immediately as only once all practical and operational issues have been considered will the agency come into full operation.

"In the next four to five months, we will be looking at nominations for board members for the agency and establishing important terms of reference for the agency. We will be consolidating existing structures into the agency, such as the biotechnology centres and the Innovation Fund, to capitalise on existing structures of knowledge. That will take around six months," Nyide notes.

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