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Generally it is said of innovation that it emerges from the classic triangle of Administration, University and Business. We might say, perhaps in most cases, that it may have that “triangular” shape at the base, but we must not forget that at the apex are the people who launch that innovation and make its development possible.
It is difficult to differentiate between the situation of Spanish or Catalan inventors in figures, since we are in the same boat. Along broad lines, we might say that the figures show 20 patents per million people, which account for 0.53% of patents in Europe, and that only 3% of the innovations patented see the light of day.
A glance at the events that show innovations and new patents in the country, for example the International Ideas and Inventions Fair, ATIC 09, in Vilanova i la Geltrú in June 2009 (formerly the GALÀCTICA Fair), shows us that, compared with three years ago, there are a decreasing number of private inventors who patent, and in the last two years that number has fallen drastically owing to the high price of patents, their maintenance and, of course, the general economic situation.
If we approach the issue from the world of business, we find that over 90% of the companies in the country do not register any patent or utility model, according to data from the Survey on Business Strategies done by the Public Company Foundation and the Ministry of Industry and Energy. Given these figures, Catalonia and therefore Spain are in the last place but two for applications for European patents per million inhabitants, ahead of only Greece and Portugal, and far behind more developed countries.
But if we turn to history, we are in a country of inventors, which shows that the roots are very good. For example:
- Juan de la Cierva. Inventor of the autogyro (precursor of the helicopter)
- Narcís Monturiol. Catalan engineer. He built a submarine equipped with a steam engine
- Isaac Peral. Spanish engineer and sailor. He designed an electrically propelled submarine
- Manuel Jalón/Emilio Bellvis. Inventors of the mop
- Jaume Ferrán y Clúa. Catalan doctor and bacteriologist. First cholera vaccine (1885)
- Santiago Ramón y Cajal. He discovered neurones and their function in the nervous system
- Alejandro Goicoechea Omar. Inventor of the TALGO
- Severo Ochoa. Synthesis of RNA. Nobel Prize for Medicine 1959
We can describe inventors in a nutshell
Inventors are used to Living in Discomfort, since the unknown is always Uncomfortable:
- Innovating is managing “Uncertainty”
- In “Uncertainty” opportunities are generated
They are always at the starting line:
- Knowledge always generates a need for more knowledge
- A new victory shows us the next target
- New knowledge generates ignorance
They act as a filter for knowledge:
- They are not “replicants”
- The uniformity of knowledge kills excellence
- The application of knowledge generates different knowledge
They apply knowledge in a balanced way:
- Humanist and transversal minds
- Developers of a new professional practice
They have an absolute need to work with and relate to other people:
- They coexist within an innovation “ecosystem”
- They work and relate through networks
When I talk about all this, it is in the first person because I am an inventor and proud of it; I also have a doctorate in Biomedical Engineering. I hold over 19 patents and I have personally endured the pilgrimage from the idea to the product. One of my first inventions was the most attractive to the media; like many others it emerged from contemplation of an everyday need: I set to work to create a device that would serve to interpret a baby’s crying, with a purpose, to “understand and attend” the child appropriately for his or her proper emotional development in the first year of life. The product of my own investigation and cooperation with the Polytechnic University of Catalonia, where I am a lecturer and researcher, was the “Why Cry”, an analyser which classifies the reason the baby is crying in real time in five categories: hunger, tiredness, stress, boredom and discomfort, symbolised by five icons.
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