MLE Collapse To Be Investigated

fmk
#1. February 23rd, 2005, at 12:24 PM.

the gig we’re all missing with the govt is the supplying of whitewash. as this was one of bertie’s pets, do you really think it likely that any report will be critical?

John McCormac
#2. February 23rd, 2005, at 12:34 PM.

The report may be critical of the management but not the idea. They can’t go too far for fear of upsetting other potential investors but I think that the bad press about key management players getting big payoffs while the ordinary workers got statutory redundancy did not play well in the press (Sunday Business Post). The PAC investigation is supposed to occur in April and the UK General Election will probably swamp the news cycle around that time.

Bernie Goldbach
#3. February 24th, 2005, at 8:44 AM.

Part of MLE’s failure is funding. We can learn from that.

I wish that Irish bloggers would talk about “Building on MLE’s shell” and discuss how to construct a social network around Irish researchers by using RSS feeds and blog posts to guide collaborative projects.

I wish the Irish government would offer a line item for “collaboration” in all funded research projects.

DG
#4. February 24th, 2005, at 1:20 PM.

A herd of geeks in an an expensive hi tech facility will not an invention make.
Put a few money hungry entrepreneur types in a empty room and promise them untold riches and you’ll have inventions by the dozen, then pass the inventions on to the geeks for a bit of refinement.
Money hungey or fame hungry people make things happen not highly intelligent geeks who know they will be grant funded for the rest of their lives no matter what.

The guys that started this facility were entrepreneur’s who saw the avalabilty of lots of free money, they invented a research facility nad promised untold riches and fame to stakeholders and made lots of dosh. Happens all the time it was never a flyer but the bosses got paid.

John McCormac
#5. February 24th, 2005, at 11:32 PM.

Greater communications is a good idea especially when it comes to spending the kind of money that was spent on MLE. What has appeared in the press in the last 24 hours has shown that MLE was a lot worse run than many expected. It still managed to wow the journalists covering technology in the Irish media.

Entrepreneurship is a rare thing. Describing the people who put MLE together as entrepreneurs is being too generous. The need to invent and create is deeply embedded and most of the long term students who ended up in MLE don’t seem to have that kind of spark.

What is really irritating is that apart from a few honourable exceptions, the journalists in the Irish media did not ask the hard questions when it could have made a difference. It is like a high tech version of the Pied Piper of Hamelin. At least this time no kids were lost but MIT Medialab took the dreams of some technologically ignorant politicans and journalists instead. Well those and tens of millions of Irish taxpayer Euros that could have been better spent.

heather
#6. February 25th, 2005, at 3:19 PM.

You mentioned that MLE “still managed to wow the journalists covering technology in the Irish media.”… too true! on my site, i quoted an article at electricnews saying that a wireless network project for MLE got 50K. i was corrected in a few hours by a researcher involved in the project, who said they got no where near that funding, and in his few encounters with the press- facts were consistently and greatly distorted.

everyone was high on big money- or the thought of big money.

that aside, i’d question DG’s notion of ‘money hungry entreprenuer-types’ in an empty room who have no concept of technology coming up with anything better than derivative drivel with snazzy catch phrases.

there needs to be more thought put into what drives innovation and invention. and how to foster this from the ground up, from primary education on up to post-graduate levels. your comment that this kind of innovation is ‘deeply embedded’ is more on the mark, i think.

John McCormac
#7. February 26th, 2005, at 12:10 AM.

Inaccuracy is only one of the problems with the Irish press Heather,
electricnews.net generally recycles press releases because it hasn’t the staff numbers to do real journalism. Most researchers have never been trained how to handle press enquiries either. When a technology journalist tries to get a story from a researcher, the chances of the journalist getting things wrong are high. Most technology journalists have no background in technology.

Actually DG’s point of putting money-hungry entrepreneurs in a room is a good one. Often they don’t need to have a knowledge of technology - what they have to be able to do is to identify a problem and solve it by supplying a solution at the right cost to the market. The MLE management and researchers were not entrepreneurs. The one thing that entrepreneurial researchers keep in mind when developing stuff is the market. For most researchers, everything begins and ends with their research. Of course the entrepreneurs without a technological clue could come up with derivative drivel and a bunch of snazzy catch phrases but that misses something important about entrepreneurs: Entrepreneurs tend to think in terms of problem solving and markets - it is always possible to get the technological help to implement an idea.

Fostering innovation and invention is difficult. The sad reality is that the academic system is designed to perpetuate mediocrity - to give all students the same level of education whether they can handle it or not. Naturally inventive and entrepreneurial people are often marginalised because they don’t conform. As for third level, unless they find their niche, many truly innovative and entrepreneurial people would have dropped out of their courses half way through.

There is a very interesting Enterprise Ireland backed scheme (EPP) to convert graduates working industry to entrepreneurs. The one for the South East is the SEEPP. The course lectures and help provided are very useful. It has had some success.

Entrepreneurs and innovators tend to look at things differently to other people. An entrepreneur sees opportunity and the innovator sees the opportunity to create or make things better. Sometimes the same attributes can be found in one person but more often it is a group of people who get together to build a successful business.