Wellington
Help…. the Viking’s coming; at least Knud Erik Hilding-Hamann was at the Ministry of Science& Innovation.
The Danish Technical Institute’s head of its Centre for Technology Partnership, and is out togive some of the good oil on how Denmark’s gone about transforming itself into an innovation-ledcountry in the past 10 years. (See his speech and power point presentation
Whether, or how much, the DTI’s model is used as a guide as to how Industrial Research Ltdtransforms itself into an Advanced Technology Institute remains to be seen.
The 105 year old DTI has a different model to IRL, and of its €80.5m turnover last year, 34%was from consulting and development. Certification and testing’s 27%, training is 25% and otherservices 14%.
A question was later asked about the danger of DTI crowding out private sector consultants andadvice – something that Hilding-Hamann says is an issue, though somewhat avoided through thereview of performance contracts by the general and business public.
One area is have been growing however is R&D. Lately it has had a picked up a number ofcontracts from the European Research Centre – which rewards talented individuals and teams forexcellent science. (See
The DTI has grown from €10.3m R&D turnover in 2006 to €36.1m in 2010.
It is part of Denmark’s GTS network (roughly equivalent to NZ’s CRIs), which itself comesunder the Danish Innovation System – driven largely by its Innovation Council. This sets thecountry’s innovation and science strategy, currently focusing on globalisation.
One thing that DTI has to do (as does every GTS), is every three years put out a performancecontract – open to the public for a three month consultation. Though this was originally thoughtto be ‘extra work’, it fulfils a purpose of demonstrating actual value.
For future DTI projects and consultancy, it “shows what type of services we are expected todeliver and why companies should or will buy into that,” says Hilding-Hamann. “It’s thefoundation for a pipeline of services that are unique, not in the market, and that companies need todevelop competitiveness.”
Denmark’s often considered to be a bit like NZ, mainly because it had a strong primary industrybase to its economy, and is small.
One area it is completely different to NZ is in its manufacturing. The numbers involved may besimilar, though Denmark’s dropped 100,000 people in the sector in the past 10 years to 350,000.However, the interesting component is even though Denmark has struggled to retain home basedmanufacturing, its companies in total employ another 1.5million people around the world.
So DTI (and the GTS network) spends a lot of time and money developing the commercialisation ofresearch – really helping companies to do so – and audited in how well they succeed.
Talking to Knud after the presentation, he observed that Denmark has exactly the same challengeas New Zealand in growing small companies into large ones – surprise, surprise, they get bought byforeign owned companies as well.
However, it is also clear that Denmark has changed its culture and business thinking aboutsuccessfully implementing innovation. The Danish innovation system (slide 3 on the presentation) isa well-thought-out framework to turn an idea into income.
The inspiration and motivation for this culture change has started at the highest level ofgovernment. As Steven Joyce grapples with not only the science and innovation system, but alsoeconomic development and education changes to boost value-added products, it is the culture changeaspect that is key to how we reinvent ourselves.
Joyce’s role as prime innovator is as much about changing attitudes as it is about institutionsand systems – which, though unstated, is the real feature of the Danish transformation.