Media Lab Europe - Swift’s Grand Academy
Read this and consider if MLE had more in common with Swift’s Grand Academy than a modern research institute.
For five years what passes for the Irish technology press was drinking Medialab Europe’s eclectic koolaid. Very few journalists covering technology in the Irish press spotted that the MLE was a waste of money. MLE provided them with the technological equivalent of a piece of paper with PTO written on both sides. It kept them amused and confused for five years. But surprisingly it was the Irish Times, once a diehard supporter of MLE that uncovered the horrible reality of MLE. It was there that excerpts from reports obtained under Freedom of Information Act requests revealed that MLE wasn’t just badly run - it was more badly run than anyone had expected.
A post on Bernie Goldbach’s blog neatly identified the key points from Jamie Smyth’s Irish Times articles. One of the most important points is that the finance and administration unit was young and inexperienced. This was often the single point of failure for many dot.bomb businesses and MLE was in so many ways the ultimate dot.bomb business.
MIT/Medialab did not apparently want to contribute any funds to help out Medialab Europe. Perhaps it realised that MLE was a doomed venture. A few years ago, Medialab Asia had crashed and burned in India where the Indian government had some different view to Medialab about research. The Irish government didn’t seem to think that it had received value for money with MLE either. They were a little slower in waking up to the reality that MLE was never going to be self-financing when it came to research. It was a pure sponsorship play of the kind that only worked well when there is a boom market.
The Irish government commissioned a report on MLE from consultant Dr. Tom Higgins. This report advised that MLE should be linked with universities. MLE’s own management got in on the act and in 2004 it prepared its own report - the grandly titled “MediaLab Europe: Strategic Plan May 2004″ which contained some choice words describing the environment at MLE. The one quote from the MLE management report about the “inmates running the asylum” is particulary ironic given that Nicholas Negroponte pointed to a supposed appreciation that the Irish had for madness being one of the main reasons for situating the MLE in Ireland. Higgins’ report pointed to MLE’s somewhat lacklustre research record and the fact that it had only obtained twelve patents in five years. MLE wanted the Irish government to supply 9 Million Euros to help it out but according to Higgins, the funding that MLE would require was in the region of 35 Million Euros. It would have been quite insane for the Irish government to have funded MLE without significant changes being made. And that seems to have been a problem for MIT/Medialab.
A rescue package was on the table for MLE. It involved funding and significant changes to MLE. The board would be reconstituted as would the management of MLE. An academic programme would be instituted where MIT would be involved in degree courses. Cash payments to MIT would be reexamined. Funding from the Irish government would be capped at 3 Million Euros per year and a change to the whole intellectual property model would be required.
But at the core of all this is the concept of research. Was MLE doing any? Probably. Was it of any use? Maybe. Was it directed research with clear aims and possible commericalisation. Evidently not!
Research means different things to different people. To technologists, scientists and researchers it means identifying problems and possible solutions. To entrepreneurs and business people it means marketable results. An article by Karlin Lillington in the UK’s Guardian newspaper hit upon the differences in expectations :
“This suggests a big problem was mismatched expectations between government and MIT. MLE, a commercialising research partner to fledgling Irish industry? Please. That veers away from the research ethos of Media Lab and points to a wilful ignorance by the Irish, as MLE’s role was always to be a European, not Irish, institution. ”
Well I guess that we Irish just weren’t ready for the soi-disant artistic and intellectual geniuses who ran MLE into the ground and produced hardly much more than a few gee-whiz demos to justify the massive waste of money. Some of the research did apparently work out and twelve patents were applied for during MLE’s five years of operation. Researchers in other Irish institutes that I’ve spoken to found it hard to contain their anger at the money that MLE was getting. These were people doing excellent and relevant research on meagre funds compared to the people in MLE.
The Irish government, faced with increasing questions over the money it had sunk into MLE had questions to answer and their bosses, the Irish electorate were a little concerned at such poor results. We were asking a more fundamental question rather than whether the institution was a European or Irish one. We wanted to know where the hell all the money went and we are not going to take some flashing lights demo as an answer.
With the Irish Times’ FOIA requests and some decent journalism by Jamie Smyth, the Irish public and the world is finding out about MLE and Medialab in a way that would not have been possible had this been an enquiry into Medialab in the USA. The Comptroller and Auditor General confirmed in a reply to Labour Party Spokesperson on Communications, Deputy Tommy Broughan that he had completed a preliminary investigation into the collapse of MLE. The Dail’s (Irish Parliament) Public Accounts Committee is to investigate the collapse of MLE in April and a lot more may come out at this PAC hearings.
MIT got 14 Million Euros from the Irish government for the use of the Medialab brandname, management help and research help. The MLE was housed in a former hops storage for Guinness Brewery in Dublin. A common description of the lack of organisational skills is that someone “couldn’t even organise a piss-up in a brewery”. In the FOIA papers covered by the Irish Times, it was noted that MIT did not want to repay this money.
An e-mail quoted in the Irish Times was quite illuminating. In an e-mail sent in late 2004, Mr Higgins is irritated by the response of the founder of MIT/MediaLab, Nicholas Negroponte, to a set of proposals.
“Nicholas seems to have changed his mind - or not to have made it up. We could have lived with a few queries from Nicholas or even if he needed some clarification of points - but his response is so equivocal that it is impossible to discern a willing and enthusiastic partner working with us on a revised project or to have any confidence in MIT’s commitment to making it work.”
It sounds like Negroponte likes taking credit for success but can’t handle failure. That’s the one thing that distinguishes entrepreneurs from those who merely waffle about it. The entrepreneur handles failure by getting up and trying again.
An article by Brian Lavery in the New York Times quoted an e-mail interview with Nicholas Negroponte. Negroponte had hoped that MLE would become a “virus” for spurring research and that it would prompt reviews of legislation like bankruptcy rules that handicap entrepreneurs. Negroponte waffling about things he knows little or nothing about is not new. In fact bankruptcy legislation does not necessarily handicap entrepreneurs. It is quite the opposite in that it limits liability. One of the biggest problems that entrepreneurs in Ireland have is getting funding. Why - because global village idiot operations like MLE waste millions funding in funding the delusions of relevancy of people like Negroponte. However some good may come out of this. The Irish government is intent on replacing MLE with a real research operation. Could this be evidence of an entrepreneurial streak in the Irish government?
Tags: IrishBlogs , Medialab, MLE , Media Lab Europe , MIT
Written by John McCormac on February 26th, 2005 with
comments disabled.
Read more articles on Tech Commentary.
- [+] Digg: Feature this article
- [+] Del.icio.us: Bookmark this article
- [+] Furl: Bookmark this article
#1. April 6th, 2005, at 6:05 PM.
Some very good thoughts here from John McCormac about MLE. Only comment I would make is that it takes a pretty rare finance type or administrator to stand up against the lusty breezes of high profile business fantasies. They don’t really stand a chance. University and business school courses in accounting and finance often allow trainees to imagine that the logic of numbers speaks for itself in this world. Plus, the sort of people attracted to finance and accounting often don’t want to be trained in anything squishy like ‘interpersonal skills’ ‘managing power and influence’ and ‘how to counteract corporate bullxxxx’. That’s not to say that the MLE project could not have worked really well, just that as set up, it sounds like it was 5% substance and 95% fancy. Quite a common proportion in this world, but even so it is worth shooting for a teensiest more balanced sort of mix. But whatever the case, the onus I think, has to be on management and political leaders (ably prepared by the people who train them) to spot their own bullxxx, rather than expecting finance types to expose it. Easier said than done, given that both politics and management, being modernistic creations and infused with potent sorts of spin and more-or-less covert ideology, all too often reward specious activism rather than old-fashioned notions like the capacity to divine truth and achieve balance. Sounds a bit fusty to say this? OK… I’ll go home now to get unbalanced myself on a strong glass of gin. Thanks everyone for the info and opinions.