Catalyst is not only looking to create another 5000 high quality jobs, but also to add 1m sq ft of space with new buildings in Belfast and Derry/Londonderry.
According to Norman Apsley, Catalyst’s CEO, the rebranding reflects the Park’s catalytic impact on the development of technology and knowledge based start ups to highly evolved businesses.
“Catalyst is built upon the belief that, in Northern Ireland, we have a community of innovators. We provide the home, networks and empathy to support this talent and ambition to develop leading products and services. Our aim is to transform Northern Ireland into one of the most entrepreneurial knowledge economies in Europe,” he explained.
“Everyone talks about the need to grow the economy and drive our expertise and skills in technology as it is applied to every business sector. What we have done at Catalyst is to provide the right environment for that ambition to take hold and to prosper. Through our collaborative approach, we have developed significant and successful partnerships.”
The Northern Ireland Science Park was set up in 1999 on the site of the former Harland and Wolff shipyard; in 2004, ECIT – the Institute of Electronics, Communications and Information Technology, pictured – was set up as the park’s research anchor.
“ECIT was established in 2004 following funding from various parts of the Northern Ireland Department of the Economy, including InvestNI and was part of a bigger vision at that time, led by Queen’s University, to create a much stronger entrepreneurial and innovation environment than had previously been the case in this region,” explains ECIT’s director Professor John McCanny.
“The idea came from the US,” he continued. “We were strongly influenced by visits we’d paid to US universities such as Stanford and MIT, where we found innovation and research translation were an integral part of their overall agenda. Our aim was to take the research we were doing in Northern Ireland on advanced electronics and computer science research out of academia and to use it to promote wider economic growth. While we looked to the US to create a more entrepreneurial and innovative environment, it needed to be adapted to the culture in Northern Ireland.”
Over the past 12 years, ECIT has developed a successful model for university research translation which, according to Prof McCanny is ‘unique amongst most universities in the UK and indeed most other universities worldwide’. “What we provide is connectivity – that is the key to the site’s success.”
While research and innovation are related, Prof McCanny says they require people with ‘very different types of expertise’.
ECIT’s approach has been to overlay an academic research environment with an infrastructure that is more common in a high-technology company, but in a manner that does not compromise research quality or speculative ‘blue sky’ thinking.
This approach has involved the co-location of engineering staff, with strong industrial experience, and traditional academic research teams.
Prof McCanny explains: “The idea is that engineers can support industry engagement with small to medium size enterprises and facilitate new spin-out company creation.”
The original Northern Ireland Science Park was set targets, which have been exceeded. The park currently supports more than 2600 jobs, representing an average 30% per annum growth by tenant companies,there is 400,000 sq ft of workspace and private sector support and investment equating to £1m annually.
“This has been achieved in just 16 years by working closely, in particular, with both Universities (Queens and Ulster), as well as the political, public and private sectors,” says Apsley.
As a non-profit organisation, any financial surpluses generated by Catalyst are invested in growing the community of businesses, with its Connect programmes designed to bring together technology companies, start-ups, entrepreneurs and research from Queens University and ECIT/CSIT.
“We describe ECIT/CSIT as being a Global Innovation Hub,” says Prof McCanny. “If we want to succeed, companies need to engage with the US and Asia, where most of the early technology adopters are. You have to have a presence there and simply engage.
“Our approach to innovation and the commercialisation of technology in the UK has improved immeasurably over the past few years; it’s infinitely better than it was. Look at Cambridge, it’s an exemplar of a successful eco-system and we’ve looked to mirror that success in Northern Ireland.”
"To date, CSIT has created six spin outs. More importantly, it has played a central role in the past three years in helping to create, virtually from scratch, a new Cybersecurity business cluster here in Belfast." Prof John McCanny
There is a view in the UK, according to Prof McCanny, that innovation is the hard part, while commercialisation is seen as ‘the easy bit’.
“Commercialisation of new or disruptive technologies is hard; you’re looking for business opportunities in a market that doesn’t even exist. Look at Silicon Valley; many successful businesses there have been created by companies working with existing, but evolving, technologies – that ability to adapt and readapt is crucial.
“Being an entrepreneur is tough – so we get our most experienced people to volunteer their time, to share their experiences, contacts and collective intelligence to give advice to new entrepreneurs.”
ECIT’s business development managers work closely with agencies to attract foreign investment and, in 2009, ECIT received £30m from EPSRC, InnovateUK, InvestNI, industry and the EU.
“That money resulted in one of the UK’s first National Innovation and Knowledge Centres – the Centre for Secure Information Technologies, or CSIT, specialising in cybersecurity,” says Prof McCanny.
“CSIT is a combination of academic, engineering and business development staff, as well as post Doctoral researchers and PhD students,” explains Prof McCanny. “New funding from InnovateUK and from EPSRC has been put in place and, with this and other contributions in the coming years, is worth in the region of £38m.”
To date, CSIT has created six spin outs. “More importantly, it has played a central role in the past three years in helping to create, virtually from scratch, a new Cybersecurity business cluster here in Belfast,” explains Prof McCanny.
Amongst CSIT’s major research activities are: new methods to detect and prevent attacks from increasingly sophisticated forms of malware; new low cost methods for device authentication, seen as crucial as the IoT sees the rise of more low cost systems connected to the Internet; research to prevent attacks to critical infrastructure, such as electricity, water, gas and transport; and methods for performing analytics on information to detect unusual activity or events.
Northern Ireland is now home to a powerful network of researchers, experienced entrepreneurs, executives, investors, legal and ?nancial experts and ECIT/CSIT has given rise to the creation of more than 1000 high technology companies in the province.
“Our aim was to take promising ideas and research and commercialise them and I think we can be pleased with what we have achieved,” Prof McCanny concludes.
