News about Spanish nanotech always catches our eye, as much for rarity value as anything else, so we are always happy to be able to report positive events.
In this case it is Laura Lechuga’s work on cantilever arrays for biodetection. The fact that Dr Lechuga is part of an EU funded project isn’t really news the Spanish economy at times seems to be entirely funded by the European Commission – what really cuaght our eye was the conjunction of the words ‘commercialisation’ and ‘spin off ‘ with ‘Spanish.’
In common with much of has come to be known as ‘old Europe‘ there is an all pervasive attitude that scientists should do science, as that is what they are paid to do, and have as little to do with business as possible. Indeed in much of ‘old Europe’ researchers were, until recently, banned from taking external work, effectively cutting off any contact with the world outside the ivory tower.
It’s a small step, but also gives us an opportunity to highlight some of the problems facing European entrepreneurs.
A major issue unique to Spain is the low mobility of researchers. In general, it is difficult to find a tenured position unless you stay exactly where you are. Many professors are loathe to give a permanent position to anyone who hasnt performed their PhD and post doc in their department, so many researchers spend their entire career in the same institution (those that dont, not only have problems finding positions, but also run foul of the refusal of some old European countries to formally recognise academic degrees awarded abroad – MIT? Never heard of it amigo).
Of course ‘old Europe’ is changing, companies can now be set up in weeks rather than months, but if you have a permanent position for life is there any incentive to jump into the private sector?
If that were not sufficient reason to keep you chained to your lab, then the lack of funding opportunities for small companies and the aversion of many European banks to lend money further raises the barriers to commercialising technologies. What can be accomplished with a phone call in the UK or US takes repeated ‘in person’ visits in Spain, and mountains of paperwork.
Finally, once the company gets up and running, employment costs in terms of employers to social security, taxes and a host of other contributions to various government coffers can easily more than double an employees net wage, so while Spain is still a low wage economy by northern European standards, total employment costs are now becoming similar.
While we acknowledge that we are painting with a broad brush, and business attitudes vary widely across the continent, and would not claim that it is impossible to set up a business in ‘old Europe’ we would always question whether there are more attractive locations. There certainly are, and it is no coincidence that “The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century” by Thomas L. Friedman is a permanent fixture in the US bestseller lists, and should be required reading for European policy makers. It is worth emphasising that it is not just manufacturing that is moving east, but also innovation. Now it starts to get serious.
Here at Cientifica we always try to practice what we preach, and we recently passed the threshold of having more of our employees in Asia than in Europe, and more in London than Madrid.
Given that our Asian operations allow us to access an almost bottomless pool of highly skilled people at a fraction of the price, with the added bonus of higher productivity, we cannot see this eastward trend abating.