[kictanet] Innovation & Patents

Thu Jan 30 07:40:52 EAT 2014

Barrack, Listers
As a country, we can make a simple start by creating POST-DOCTORAL FELLOW posts in the universities.

Sent from Samsung Mobile

-------- Original message --------
From: Barrack Otieno <otieno.barrack at gmail.com> 
Date:  
To: ngethe.kariuki2007 at yahoo.co.uk 
Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <kictanet at lists.kictanet.or.ke> 
Subject: Re: [kictanet] Innovation & Patents 

Interesting discussion, reminds me of a conversation i had with a leading academic in which hee candidly assessed our Universities. In his Opinion it appears research in our Universities died during the struggle for multiparty ism. This is something we have to consciously address as a nation, politics is more funded than research, the future is scary. I agree with the various points highlighted and pray that the technocrats reading through this can help make a difference.

Best Regards

On Wed, Jan 29, 2014 at 8:29 AM, Phares Kariuki <pkariuki at gmail.com> wrote:
We have a government that doesn't invest in knowledge but wants to build a knowledge economy. :-)

Sent from my mobile device, excuse brevity

On 29 Jan 2014, at 08:25, Ngigi Waithaka <ngigi at at.co.ke> wrote:

Phillip,

That's the biggest difference between US & Kenya. US wants to be an innovator, Kenya on the other hand would wish to be the biggest consumer of technology in the region; basically we are this *huge* market. Our largest 'technology' businesses are basically just brokers for foreign technology into our market.

US is that kid in the top percentile who still wants to do more, while we are that kid in the bottom percentile who thinks spending an extra hour every day to catch up is just too much work :-)

Until the day we'll spend the Ksh 850B targeted for building Konza into research & development and not building offices for multinationals, we are going to settle rather comfortably into that bottom percentile.

Leadership!

Regards
Waithaka Ngigi
A1.iO

On Wed, Jan 29, 2014 at 7:28 AM, Philip Adar <philip.adar at gmail.com> wrote:
Listers,
Maybe as Kenyan's we have nothing to gain from the US President State of the Union Address. But, I happened to listen at a time we were discussing about innovations and patents.

Below, find a 2-paragraph extract from the 2014 State of the union address, which in my view; shows us why and how USA still remains the leading innovative nation on earth.  

"We also have the chance, right now, to beat other countries in the race for the next wave of high-tech manufacturing jobs. My administration has launched two hubs for high-tech manufacturing in Raleigh and Youngstown, where we’ve connected businesses to
research universities that can help America lead the world in advanced technologies. Tonight, I’m announcing we’ll launch six more this year. Bipartisan bills in both houses could double the number of these hubs and the jobs they create. So get those bills to my desk and put more Americans back to work."

"We know that the nation that goes all-in on innovation today will own the global economy tomorrow. This is an edge America cannot surrender. Federally-funded research helped lead to the ideas and inventions behind Google and smartphones. That’s why Congress should undo the damage done by last year’s cuts to basic research so we can unleash the next great American discovery – whether it’s vaccines that stay ahead of drug-resistant bacteria, or paper-thin material that’s stronger than steel. And let’s pass a patent reform bill that allows our businesses to stay focused on innovation, not costly, needless litigation."

I cannot remember, at anytime in history where our top leadership in Kenya has given any specific focus and commitment to supporting government sponsored research at a national level??

On Mon, Jan 27, 2014 at 6:43 AM, Philip Adar <philip.adar at gmail.com> wrote:
Attached, I go back to some statistics (and documented studies) of a few years back (at least by then I was in active research and I knew for sure that the reported statistics was reasonably accurate to what was the experience in many countries; Kenya included).   

There are three main conclusions in the report: The first is that innovation makes a significant contribution to economic growth of a country (I want to assume that this is why the so-called top economies dominate the top contributors to registered patents in the recently published statistics I shared). The second is that there are significant spillovers between countries, firms, and industries, and to a lesser extent from government-funded research (I have not been able to qualify if the our Government has had any specific focus areas for research with a targeted budget to spend). Third, that these spillovers tend to be localized, with foreign economies gaining significantly less from domestic innovation than other domestic firms. 

This suggests that although technological ‘catch-up’ may act to equalise productivity across countries (as we have seen with decades of "off-shore manufacturing" in China, aiding the Chinese re-verse engineering innovation), the process is likely to be slow and uncertain, and require substantial domestic innovative effort...

Well, that granted; my worry continues to be the lost potential our country is subjected to due to "little focus to new invention" ; (thank you Ken for subjecting yourself to the effort of explaining to us the difference between invention and innovation!).

If I was to advise: until we shall have realized close to 50% (or there about) of our annual university admissions as post-graduate students; then our efforts to be an inventive/innovative society may still be elusive. Entrepreneurs (the likes of Bill Gates or Steve Jobs, or Andrew Vitabi/Irwin Jacobs etc) only succeed in an environment thriving with brains willing to rise-up for the challenge! 

Struggling to create another  replica of facebook or google or M-PESA; may not deliver much challenge to our children's thought process..... 

Once done, can always be done!

Regards
Philip 

On Sun, Jan 26, 2014 at 3:32 PM, Phares Kariuki <pkariuki at gmail.com> wrote:
People innovate, just that we have a weak IP framework (which people like CIPIT at Strathmore University are working to resolve). 

To quote the many times abused aphorism, "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence". Just because there are no patents coming out of Africa it does not mean that Africans are not innovating. Many times IP from Africa is registered abroad e.g. M-Pesa is implemented in Kenya, but the IP is resident in the UK, granted the team that worked on it was British, but it's an example of a product built in Africa but whose IP is resident in the UK (possibly rightly so, I'm not debating the ethics of having the IP resident there, just pointing out that it's hailed as an African innovation but the IP isn't resident here). In other cases, people don't bother patenting the innovation that they come up with, simply because of the amount of time it takes to acquire rights or simply costs of the same. 

On Sat, Jan 25, 2014 at 5:11 PM, Ken Okong'o <ken_okongo at yahoo.com> wrote:
Philip, I think there’s a fundamento difference between an innovator and an inventor. I’d say invention is the creation of a new product or introduction of a new process while innovation naturally happens when one improves on or makes a significant contribution to something that has already been invented. 
For instance, while Steve Jobs was an innovator, Thomas Edison was an inventor. The latter’s was novel idea without precedent.
Overall, technology is an aggregation of all existing inventions and innovations. Because of this u will also realize from the stats you shared that economies that invest much on the inventive talents become potential sources of innovation and new technologies. However, the measure of the level of patented inventions available for innovation is just one indicator that can serve as a measure of inventive output.  

From: Philip Adar <philip.adar at gmail.com>
To: ken_okongo at yahoo.com 
Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <kictanet at lists.kictanet.or.ke> 
Sent: Saturday, 25 January 2014, 14:52
Subject: Re: [kictanet] Innovation & Patents

@Ali, I would want to believe that Innovation/Patents means much more than programming or Software. I thought it should start from abstract ideas, something not seen before or not done before...

On Sat, Jan 25, 2014 at 12:38 PM, Ali Hussein <ali at hussein.me.ke> wrote:
Adam

The answer to that is not a simple one.

America has realized that innovation and patents don't only reside in inventing and creating. In the recent past process innovation has gained a lot of attention simply because America is loosing some of its competitive edge by outsourcing production entirely to Asia. This of course has other implications like China being able to copy and produce products as good or even better than the west can. I think that's possible one of the reasons that some American companies are talking production back to the Homeland.

I suspect this is both an intellectual, business and political question that will dog us for years to come. 

The other issue about patents/innovation is what role this has in a world that is increasingly 'Opensource'. So patent registration may not be the only barometer to gauge how innovative a company/country is. We may want to aggregate more sources.

Ali Hussein

+254 0770 906375 / 0713 601113

"I fear the day technology will surpass human interaction. The world will have a generation of idiots".  ~ Albert Einstein

Sent from my iPad

On Jan 25, 2014, at 7:59 AM, Adam Nelson <adam at varud.com> wrote:

Apple: Designed in California, Built in China

Kenya can follow either path but innovation/prototyping have almost nothing to do with mass production when it comes to the tech industry. That's why it's mind numbing to hear all this talk of creating thousands of jobs through manufacturing.

Kenya is in a position to follow California with high value innovation careers but instead the government appears to be focused on following China with low-value mass labor.

The irony is that the low-value mass labor of electronics production in Asia is already being displaced by robots so by the time the infrastructure is here, the industry will have already moved on beyond mass labor anyway.

--
Kili - Cloud for Africa: kili.io
Musings: twitter.com/varud
More Musings: varud.com
About Adam: www.linkedin.com/in/adamcnelson

On Sat, Jan 25, 2014 at 1:20 AM, Philip Adar <philip.adar at gmail.com> wrote:
Listers,

I am not sure if the attached statistics report is accurate, but it seems no new patents are coming up anywhere in Africa apart from South Africa?

One would wonder, are we building technology parks so that we can start inventing or should it be the inventions that should drive the development of technology parks?

--
Regards

Philip Adar

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