What price do you put on knowledge?

The Scotsman has pretty good coverage of the science and technology scene "north of the border". For example, today's issue has an interesting piece sparked off by a life sciences industry conference in Edinburgh last week.

 

The author, Douglas Friedli, quotes Sue Foden, a former investment director at the venture capital firm Merlin Biosciences. Foden was talking about the valuation of life science companies. "According to Foden's analysis," says Friedli, "the system usually leaves company founders and early-stage investors with a poor return on their perseverance." He then quotes her as saying: "The present model doesn't necessarily work for anybody. Valuation of early stage technology is largely educated guesswork. Maybe cash related to the success of intellectual property development would be more rewarding for efforts."

 

This piece came in the week that QinetiQ went public, with lots of huffing and puffing, from the ever obtuse and splenetic John Humphrys on Radio 4's Today programme, for example. When "Qinetiq started on the road towards going public – which means, of course, leaving the public sector for the private sector – the understanding of what you could do with the physical sciences that sit behind the business's portfolio was even poorer than it was for the life sciences that interest Foden. But that is not the point that sticks out in the mind of  someone who has observed defence R&D as it gradually emerged from behind the Official Secrets Act.

 

Any journalist trying to deal with QinetiQ as it escaped from the Ministry of Defence had problems. Talking to the world about what the company got up to was not a priority. All that has changed. Realising that the company is of little value of the world does not know what it does on the technology front. QinetiQ has gone so far that it now stands out as one of the few British companies that makes a reasonable fist of "technical PR".

Just look at the company's web site. Even the home page screams out message in its title "QinetiQ science and technology that makes a difference". And the pages are replete with technology stuff, not the financial wheeling and dealing that so many "technology" companies prefer to tout. Maybe it is because the people who run QinetiQ, including some of those most excoriated for profiting from the privatisation, started off as technologists rather than accountants or MBAs.

 

Whether or not is is a good idea to sell off all public R&D, especially that behind defence, is a different issue. It may or may not be a good idea. But unlike an earlier privatisation, that of the UK Atomic Energy Authority, QinetiQ does seem to see the point of doing research and turning it into technology that people want to buy.