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Havok founder slams universities for being ‘afraid’
Sunday, March 08, 2009 By Gavin Daly
Havok founder Dr Steve Collins, who still lectures part time in computer science at TCD, said that people engaged in academia were ‘‘afraid to make mistakes’’ and were slow to facilitate the development of companies from research.

Speaking at a recent innovation event in Dublin, Collins urged would-be entrepreneurs to ‘‘avoid the academic environment’’ when setting up companies.

‘‘Universities don’t promote innovation,” said Collins, who co-founded Havok in 1998with fellow Trinity researcher Hugh Reynolds.

The company’s technology makes computer graphics more realistic, and has been used in more than 150 games, including the best-selling Halo series, as well as a number of films.

Despite government hopes of creating a ‘‘knowledge economy’’ based on research-led companies, Collins said there was a ‘‘chasm’’ between university based research and commercialising that research into companies.” Academia needs to work a lot harder’’ to help turn research into viable and valuable companies, he said.

In particular, he said that the process of licensing a technology from the university where it was initially developed was painfully slow, and could damage a company’s early prospects.

‘‘Licensing can take as long as raising funds - it can be nine months from start to finish,” said Collins.

This was partly because universities generally thought their research could become a company ‘‘worth billions’’ and were slow to agree a price for licensing research.

‘‘Value is a price agreed between a willing buyer and a willing seller, and universities are not willing sellers,” said Collins. He also said there were significant problems with funding early-stage, research based companies.

‘‘There is a ton of money going in from Science Foundation Ireland, and we are not getting the output. Something is going wrong,” he said.

While Collins acknowledged that Enterprise Ireland provided funds for proof-of concept projects and commercialising research, he said there was ‘‘still a defined, critical and hurtful gap’’ in funding. ‘‘We are all aware of the difficult funding environment, particularly if you are pre-revenue,” he said.

Collins also cautioned researchers about developing products or services without engaging with customers during the process.’ ‘Otherwise, you have spent two years of your life engineering stuff that no one has told you they needed,” he said.

He urged entrepreneurs to spend time and effort on hiring the right people.

‘‘The success or failure of any company is entirely based on people. The most important business process is the hiring process,” he said.

Giving a presentation to a BizSpark innovation event for start-up companies, Collins emphasised that he was expressing his personal views.

He left Havok at the end of 2005, and the company was bought by Intel, in one of the biggest buyouts of an Irish technology firm in recent years.

Collins is now involved in a second company called New Game Technologies with Reynolds. H e is also course director of the new masters’ course in Interactive Entertainment Technology at Trinity.

The current chief executive of Havok has also expressed concern about the academic system.

In an interview last month, David O’Meara said the company was considering setting up a development centre outside Ireland, because of the lack of talented software engineers in this country.

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