Cambridge start-ups prove UK's got innovation

A button-sized sensor with a sense of smell, an 'iPod for movies', software that lets you type with your breath. With products like these - all real and from Cambridge-based start-ups - who could claim the UK technology world is lacking in innovation?

Yet the perception persists, written about recently with regard to telcos and discussed at the silicon.com CIO Forum in September.

It's a notion the entrepreneurs exhibiting products this week at Cambridge's St John's Innovation Centre, which provides both accommodation and business support for developing companies, were keen to dispel.

Sixteen young companies showed off their wares while academics debated the role universities play in bringing about 'out of the box' thinking.

In regards to developing innovation, Professor Andy Hopper, head of the computer laboratory at University of Cambridge, said: "It's all about people. People are very creative. Flexibility is key [to bringing that out]."

The role of universities, he added, is to support research and create "good people". One problem is the increased pressure on university computer science and physics departments to churn out successful start-ups. That, he said, coupled with a trend to measure departments' performance, is not good for innovation.

So, in this age of consolidation and big business, what's the best way to nurture start-ups?

Walter Herriott, managing director of St John's Innovation Centre, said: "We need better quality early funding" that sustains a young company through development so it doesn't have to sell itself too early to a large company which may stifle its product development.

"The other issue is quality of management," he continued. "People starting technology companies tend to have technical backgrounds... We need to offer training programmes to help with their business skills."

He stressed this is a particular problem in the UK, where getting a technical education precluded taking courses in business or management, unlike other countries such as the US.

Both interesting new uses of technology and well-developed commercial plans, however, were in evidence at the exhibition.

The button-sized sensors come from Owlstone, founded by a Cambridge University researcher and two PhD students. They've used nanotechnology to create mini sensors that can 'smell' chemicals and could be used by the military to sniff out explosives, by health care providers to detect cancer or diabetes from a patient's breath, or by businesses to tell when a fire has started but before it creates substantial amounts of smoke.

Like many successes, the technology is not entirely new but Owlstone's hoping its version will catch on because it's much cheaper and smaller than comparable products.

The 'iPod for movies' is not available yet but the technology to create such a device has been developed by Light Blue Optics, a spin-off of the Cambridge University Department of Engineering. The company has come up with a small video projector - the size of a pack of cigarettes - that uses lasers and holograms instead of light bulbs and projection lenses to create the image.

Light Blue aims to have the projector installed in laptops and PDAs over the next two years and to build a dedicated iPod-like device that will allow people to watch movies wherever they have a wall to project them onto.

Finally, the input software comes from Dasher, another Cambridge University spin-off. It allows you to use your mouse or breath to navigate through a complex maze of letters on a computer screen and so string together words and phrases. It's also free, funded by a charity, and is receiving lots of interest from groups representing the physically disabled.