Time to blow the final whistle on NESTA? Share your thoughts with us
Date: 20/06/2008
NESTA was set up by the government to help inventors. Now they're the last people it wants to help. What went wrong, and what's the point in keeping NESTA going?
We think it’s high time to shut NESTA down, because it’s doing the very opposite of what it was set up to do. It’s maybe also high time to put an end to NESTA’s propaganda – sorry, PR output - which has been aptly described to us by one seasoned business adviser as ‘an endless stream of happy-clappy bullshit about some pseudo-science called innovation’.
But rather than propose leaving just a smoking crater, over the next few weeks or months we’d like to construct a blueprint for a replacement organisation much closer to the original, invention-oriented NESTA of 1999. We have our own ideas, but on their own they won’t be enough – so please send us YOUR thoughts [use the Replies box below] on what might make a workable, credible, affordable and sustainable organisation committed to supporting and encouraging invention by individuals and very small companies. Then maybe we can persuade some department of government to fund it. But NESTA will probably have to go, or at least change radically, before that can happen.
So what’s wrong with NESTA?
In our Invention Watch posting of 26 September 2006 [‘Where did the NESTA Invention & Innovation Programme go wrong?’] we commented on the sudden closure of NESTA’s Invention & Innovation Programme, the best-funded programme of help for inventors ever seen in the UK. Since then, NESTA has turned completely away from helping individual inventors – and in doing so has put itself in breach of the law under which it was established.
According to the National Lottery Act 1998:
NESTA’s principal statutory purposes as set out in Section 17(2) of the Act are:
(a) helping talented individuals (or groups of such individuals) in the fields of science, technology and the arts to achieve their potential
(b) helping persons to turn inventions or ideas in the fields of science, technology and the arts into products or services
(i) which can be effectively exploited; and
(ii) the rights to which can be adequately protected; and
(iii) contributing to public knowledge and appreciation of science, technology and the arts.
The Act has not, to our knowledge, been amended. NESTA’s remit therefore still includes helping inventors; and we recall NESTA’s senior personnel in its early days being adamant that the Invention & Innovation Programme was there to help ONLY individuals and very small businesses and NOT universities and other large organisations. The thinking – as correct now as then – was that most organisations already had access to sources of innovation funding, whereas individuals and many start-ups did not.
How, then, can NESTA reconcile one of its statutory purposes with this key statement among the FAQs on its website (http://www.nesta.org.uk/faqs/ - or at least there on 26 June 2008):
Who and what do you fund? NESTA uses its resources to build and test new models of innovation, often working in partnership with other organisations. We are not primarily a grant-making organisation, so for example we do not fund the following: - Individuals looking for funding to develop an invention or idea (with the exception of our Starter for 6 programme in Scotland).
- Charities; however, we do work in partnership with charities that are delivering work on our behalf.
- Student funding, i.e. for courses, bursaries, etc
That’s it then. No matter what the National Lottery Act says, if you’re an inventor you’re a nobody. You’re lumped in with charities and students and deemed unsuitable for funding. (For the record, the Starter for 6 programme is aimed at business start-up – something many inventors don’t want to do – and offers only £10,000 of support. The programme ends in 2009 and application for 2008 is already closed, so not much joy there.)
A good idea can’t come from anywhere
And it gets worse. Not content with kicking inventors into the long grass, NESTA seems hostile to the whole notion of individualism in the field of innovation. This is rarely explicit, but one example illustrates it perfectly. NESTA’s Annual Review 2008 contains an article by Megan Smith, a manager at Google. Its title is: 'A good idea can come from anywhere'. Whooee! Right on, Megan… But then you read her piece and discover that it’s actually a rather dull hymn to collaborative innovation at Google. Her 'anywhere' means 'anywhere within a large organisation'.
What NESTA seems to be promoting as its vision of innovation is Orwellian stuff - the outsider has no right to innovate. You must be a paid-up member of some corporate or academic party, then you’ll get a licence to innovate. Imagine telling that to an artist, a film-maker, a poet - all of whom other parts of NESTA seem keen to support. One could dismiss NESTA as a lost cause were it not for the fact that one of NESTA's stated missions is to help educate future generations of innovators. Will this include how to invent, think for yourself, maintain control of your inventive efforts and fend off those who will rip you off? We'll happily put five quid on No. Instead, it'll be how to become an innovation apparatchik within some university or large company. Disturbing.
Model, schmodel
Let’s go further and look at NESTA’s messianic desire to ‘build and test new models of innovation’. This begs one very simple question: who needs a model of innovation? Can anyone imagine Alan Sugar, James Dyson or any of the ‘Dragon’s Den’ lot needing one? Or, more to the point, needing NESTA to ‘build and test’ one for them?
A model of innovation may just possibly mean something to large organisations, who often struggle with new ideas because everything has to be filtered through layers of bureaucracy and internal politics – but if so strapped, they’re probably beyond any help a model can give them. To small companies and individuals, a model is irrelevant; their main struggle is with resources (usually financial) and the risk aversion of others. One learns very little from NESTA about how to deal with these rather crucial aspects of getting new ideas off the ground - possibly because there is scant evidence that anyone at NESTA has any experience of risking everything they've got for an idea.
And let’s look at the notion of innovation itself. Most businesses probably wouldn’t recognise innovation as something they deliberately set out to do. They simply strive to develop new or improved products and services, and whether or not it’s innovation really doesn’t come into it. Whether or not it makes a profit is all that matters. NESTA seems unable to grasp this – but then, to do so might involve puncturing the balloon of self-importance they have very successfully inflated around themselves. And that’s one risk they’re unlikely to take.
In our next instalment of this gripping yarn, we’ll attempt a spot of forensic on what NESTA costs, who runs it, and what it does with all the money at its command. And maybe we’ll get around to talking about what should be put in its place. In the meantime, please let us have your comments, criticisms and suggestions to keep the pot boiling. Postings will be moderated, but we promise to air all views as fairly and fully as possible.
For more on NESTA see also:
Where did the NESTA I&I Programme go wrong?
Replies
Reply From: Ian Davies
Date: 09/07/2008
I was recently granted a patent for my disabled aid, The Plugster, and I had an idea that might interest you. Not many ideas actually get to the grant of patent stage, so the Government or NESTA could actually monitor patents that are granted. They could assess if they are UK inventors, then offer help given that it has got past the novelty test. The UK has lost so many ideas that have gone on to damage other UK manufacturers - the two-stroke motorbike is just one example. This is UK inventors with ideas that the country could benefit from financially who get no help, but if it turns into a money-spinner in any way they will be after tax from any profits.
As for NESTA, the individual UK inventor has little hope of getting anything from them. I have seen foreign inventors that have got help from NESTA; one I recall seeing was called Fan-Wing and the inventor was American.
My circumstances are such that I am on benefits, using my chronic illness to develop ideas and products that benefit the elderly and disabled. The latest idea only needs around 2K to get it going, but the Government would rather spend thousands keeping me on benefits.
If you want a case study of an inventor whom it would make sense to help, then put my name down. I have been on TV, the radio and in the papers so exposure won't worry me. If it helps me promote the fact that I want to help the elderly, frail and disabled, then I'll do it.
Reply From: Basil Philipsz
Date: 10/07/2008
I, together with Dick West and at the behest of the committee of Ideas North West, have developed a detailed, sustainable plan to support innovation. It is directed at the Proof of Concept funding gap and is based on selection, project management support and commercial feasibility with chosen ideas returning times 3 the cash injection if, and only if, successful. There is no equity participation involved.
We wish you well with your examination of NESTA but tilting at windmills populated by Government cronies doesnt seem a good use of time.
Reply From: Duncan Jones
Date: 14/07/2008
First things first: we need to find out what it is the British inventors need, and that means talking to them.
It's also important that we move towards a government strategy that would bring various key agencies together, supporting the inventor from the earliest stages to the marketplace. There doesn't need to be one body doing everybody's job. We should build on what's already there.
As far as the clients are concerned, this doesn't have to be about business start-up; some individuals could be looking to license the product. But whatever's coming through needs to be marketable in some sense.
Here in Birmingham, as with many of the patlibs around the country, we are building up relationships with other support agencies in the local area. However, we're conscious that so much more could be happening on a national level.
Finland and Sweden are prime examples of governments that take innnovation seriously. See the link to an article on Finland here:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/13/AR2005071302227.html
Reply From: John Mitchell
Date: 21/07/2008
Government has two different definitions for innovation which allows the UKIPO to consider patents only if the idea is entirely novel and for HMRC to allow an R&D tax credit - a definition small inventors are bound to while almost all other Government bodies define innovation as something new for an organisation ie often tried and tested elsewhere. In many cases this is standard marketing etc found in any business textbook so cannot be innovation in any real sense. Still, I have really tried to understand why this anomaly exists and after numerous meetings with RDAs, Business Links and DTIDBERR over the past decade have concluded that these bodies do not have any real understanding of invention. To offset this known difficulty they employ consultants and commission studies - all performed by those who also know little or even less. The net result is that Nesta and these other bodies have all lost the plot while Government quite ridiculously states that it instead supports innovation and invention. These bodies are a great cost to the nation in many ways. Some of course are better than others, but none are actually particularly helpful or effective despite reports that they write or commission that naturally claim the opposite.
The solution is simple and obvious which is to scrap them and decline to pay the staff any payoffs or pensions - then they might learn about being creative and inventive for the very first time. But hey, let's be realistic, that isn't going to happen while all these oiks can continue to milk us all while quite irrationally claiming that they know best and telling us to be patient while inventors and the UK economy heavily loses out.
So a sensible compromise would be to fund a national inventor's club run only by those with invention and business experience - and consult with them on all invention matters - and take invention seriously OR admit that Government does not support innnovation so inventors can elect to go abroad and flourish where they are truly recognised as the backbone of a knowledge economy.
Reply From: Geoff Ford
Date: 25/07/2008
I think that the UK has suffered from a blind spot for decades when it comes to innovation and invention combined with seed funding. When NESTA was created by an act of parliament back in 2000, with financial backing, I hoped that this would be a turning point in the opportunities and our attitude to this vital area. Alas, NESTA has proved largely ineffective and the UK seems to have learned nothing.
The truth is that most inventors and innovators would be better off financially by working in product sales or services or just about anything else rather than trying to innovate and get new ideas to market, assuming that you want to put food on the table.
I would like to see serious questions being asked in the House of Commons and its various committees regarding NESTA's remit and performance to date and, more importantly, its future viability.
Reply From: jim robertsd
Date: 31/07/2008
I have never had the experience of being involved with NESTA or similar, only Blackburn Business Link. BBL introduced me to a possible outlet but that firm was taken over and policies changed.
One major difficulty faced by inventors is getting the attention of an organisation that might be willing to take up an invention. Even when this has been overcome, inertia within the organisation means that things stall after an initial meeting has appparently impressed. There is also the 'not invented here' syndrome.
To return to the theme of facilitating agencies, I believe that too few of their employees have experince of industry and its day to day pressures.
It is interesting to note that NESTA is seemingly in conflict with its stated aims. This sounds like a typically counter-productive Government initiative.
I feel that inventors have a role in helping each other and that a greater public awareness of inventors' groups should be sought. This could help in promoting inventions.
[Note from moderator: last sentence has been truncated as the remainder was for some reason unreadable. Jim, if you'd like to email the last sentence or paragraph as you intended it to appear, I'll gladly edit it in.]
Reply From: Tania Fellows
Date: 24/09/2008
The only thing that NESTA seems to have produced is mountains of research that doesn't do anything, good canapes at their launches, a great big spin machine serving its own pr needs, free conferences with great speakers costing huge amounts of money (therefore ensuring bums on seats - again good for pr) and a very effective career springboard for those that want to get closer to government.
It would be really interesting to do some research on how much impact NESTA has had in the world of innovation and whether it deserves the millions it gets from government.
Actually, let's do something really unusual and not spend any more government money on meaningless research, the answer to whether NESTA is value for money or has any impact in the innovation world is a resounding NO!!!
Reply From: f.adams
Date: 26/10/2008
I agree 100%.
email- ukinnovation@live.co.uk
I can offer advice to those wanting cheaper altenatives for getting drawing3d designsprototype'smoulds etc. made from china and india.
Reply From: Mark Grundy
Date: 24/11/2008
I'm a private inventor living and working in the UK. I approached NESTA with regard for funding to help cover prototyping costs for one of my inventions. I needed about £1500. The woman I spoke to on the phone in London was very rude to me in that she remained stoney silent to point where I said Hello, is anybody there... thinking that the line had gone dead.
I looked on the NESTA website, and found a person to contact in the North East. To date I've not received a reply.
Reply From: HARRY COLE
Date: 03/12/2008
Hi Innovators
When NESTA was established in 2000, I suspected at the time it would amount to nothing more than another Government quango. It is often the case when government quangos are given millions of taxpayers money to invest in industry, that they usually end up by firstly investing in themselves. They pay themselves substantial salaries, performance bonuses and fat index linked pensions, renting palatial offices, and in the final analysis, they are usually strapped for cash and have little left over to invest in individual inventors. Welcome to Nesta.
I live in Jersey and have witnessed similar mismanagement of Government funds. We have a so-called 'Enterprise and Business Development Department' who will be on 'stand-by' to 'commercially evaluate' your projects and offer business advice (based on their lifetime of being a civil servant) but often fail to come up with what you really need: MONEY to launch your product! Laundering taxpayers' money to innovators is really not on their agenda - but they won't tell you directly to get lost, because it would not be politically correct.... got the message so far?
Let me give you one example of their shortcomings or lack of business wisdom. Assume you pass their commercial criteria (which they never tell you just what that is because they usually don't know themselves). They all get excited about your product, despite the fact that it's not their enthusiasm you are after but some government capital to help towards exhibiting your product at some trade fair or other, which costs around £10,000.
Their excitement for your product soon ends when you ask them for financial assistance to launch your product.
Okay, I can't speak for the UK, but these Jersey clowns, who are masquerading as business advisers, have a cunning plan to deter you from actually achieving any success. You will hear, 'Look Mr Inventor - you are asking the taxpayer to fund your dream - but you have to firstly fund everything yourself and put a claim in when you return from your trade show. Only then will we consider it'. Don't these government bonzos by now realise that, the only reason you wasted your bloody time in seeking government assistance was because you have spent all your capital on developing your product, and haven't got any left to attend trade shows?
I despair, I'm planning on returning to the UK (Hampshire) in Feb 2009 as this place is driving me crazy. Anyone interested in making contact, I'd love to hear from you. My website contains all my details: www.idesprotected.com.
Yours truly,
Harry Cole
harry.cole@jerseymail.co.uk
Reply From: Tom Twain
Date: 12/12/2008
Most inventions go unnoticed in most countries and no country on earth has yet found a way to take full advantage of its inventors. The matters involved are just much too complicated to solve through a quango. You need real finance (not experimental like NESTA's), real resources (NESTA's lives off the interest it receives from its endowment! very little resources to support inventors), and real business support. It might well be the case that UK government has naively thought it can help innovation by creating a small and poorly funded organisation like NESTA; or simply just paid a lip service to the wider innovators community. Inventors behind Microsoft, Google, or Dell never waited for government to give them aid, if you think your idea is great and has a market potential you will be better off spending your time realising it than fighting a government quango.
Reply From: Deep Thunk
Date: 26/12/2008
NESTA exists to enrich the CEO and his cronies.
The CEO is now paid more than the Prime Minister. This is a 48% increase in salary from 2007.
This is the reward for removing finance from inventors and giving it to corporate rats.
Reply From: C K Chung
Date: 12/05/2009
Interesting article and posted comments I can related to.
Don't wish to beat around the bush, I have little success with correspondence with various bodies that apparently deal with invention/innovation and very surprised by the paper trail ending full circle back from the original correspondence message.
I have requested if there are any help to Inventors. No help are given by:
BERR, who directed me to Business Link (only advice, which BERR co-wrote);
RDA - still awaiting reply????
Nesta - No help whatsoever...(added statement that Innovation helps to create jobs and wealth to the country)
Design Council - No help whatsoever - directed me to IPO!!!!
What are these bodies for??? Why are they funded when they don't help and the ethos that they are founded? What has become of the nation that produced the inventions and Ideas that changed the world?
Complacent government bodies awaiting the virtual financial market to pick up or to back inventions for wealth generation and REAL increased GDP that the government could tax.
Mr. Chung
Reply From: Andrew
Date: 19/06/2009
The thing people often overlook is that a patent is rarely the asset which makes the money, it is an asset which can be used to stop others making money, provided the owner has the balls to make a claim of infringement and then deal with the usual backlash by way of revocation proceedings.
Newcomers have no idea what faces them in the event that they have some success with their invention. A granted patent in this modern age is subject to minimal examination (what do you expect for a few quid?), so any inventor with a true sense of adventure and determination will need to go way beyond anything that an examiner will throw at them (assuming that the invention is not yet another everyday item just one inventive step away from perfectly adequate alternatives).
A short burst of success doesn't help if it leaves the inventor sidelined or ruined, whilst the invention continues for others’ benefit.
Why care about the inventor? Once the work is done he or she is simply a nuisance who wants to be paid. Now why should that be the general concensus?
I’m also a composer. My publisher is delighted that my work in 1988 puts me in the top 5% of PRS membership and seem quite happy to pay my half of the receipts.
So where is my £500,000? And I’m sure that there are plenty of inventors out there whose dues equal or exceed such a sum who are asking the same question.
Lesson 1. Don’t ask the Comptroller. A smack in the mouth often offends.
But turning to newcomers and the question of funding and NESTA.
Asking for money to do something - like build a spaceship - surely begs the question as to what the person is going to do with it when it's finished. And the second question must surely be “do you know how to fly the bloody thing?” and “who’s going to pay for the fuel?” and most importantly “how exactly are you going to derive revenue from the invention and what makes you think that there is an established mechanism for deriving such revenue and that the mechanism is robust and respectful?”
It’s a dream from beginning to end. And that’s the problem inventors face.
It is pointless encouraging more people into the system when there are people struggling to get through it and people struggling with it after they have come out of the other side and have their registered rights.
The system does not work. It is made to work for some, but only by default.
If I write a good tune, it is guaranteed to earn money and that money will flow in for as long as TV companies use the tune. The reason for this is that I know how to write tunes and I know people who know how to put them on the market, and I have memberships which ensure that the money works its way back to me.
As a replacement for NESTA, the business model to follow is the music industry, which I know well.
At the end of the day, I have more relevant experience of the ups and downs and ins and outs of innovation and IP than any one person, and I can say that the one thing that is needed, above all other things, is RESPECT.
With respect, 99.9% of the problems everyone bangs on about go out of the window.
So all minds should be focussed on how best to build respect for an inventor's entitlement - akin to the respect for a composer's entitlement.
Granted, composers do get ripped off, but not in the same way as happens in the industries which work around the three acts and rules messed about with by the IPO to our detriment over recent years.
All will become clear soon, but in the meantime would everyone please have a think about what really matters - KEEPING a benefit once it has been created, rather than trying to get initial help to create something that will be very difficult to keep hold of once the reality kicks in.
This is not sour grapes, it's the real world. The main problem is that there has never been a proper system to keep tabs on success and failure.
Bottom line. There are literally billions of pounds of claimable money owing to inventors and they have no idea that they are legally entitled to it - they simply think that they are victims of the systems.
Finally, I see no point in shelling out cash to newcomers to enter a system which needs reform.
Use the NESTA cash cow to create a system which will support the people who are already inside it (reduce the amount of litigation by establishing respect - by communal threat if necessary).
Once the IP system is working properly (i.e. in a form opposite to the IPO vision of a nirvana of rubber stamping applications and advising mediation and litigation, instead of doing what it was set up to do - establish robust and enforceable rights which others will better respect and be less likely to abuse).
Like the rules for MPs expenses, just remember who decides what goes into the Acts and Rules (and what is removed) and ask yourself whether the IPO is going to change the acts and rules to help IP rights owners secure robust registrations or is going to eat away at them to make life a breeze down in the private parklands of Newport and keep the professional busy sorting out (but in many cases, busy failing to sortg out) all the problems.
The High Court is the venue for the greatest showing up that has ever been seen. Maybe change and respect will follow.
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