On long-term space expeditions the brains of approximately 35 per cent of astronauts gradually start swelling until, eventually, the optic nerve starts supressing the eyeball. Without the ability to manage this syndrome we can only dream about space trips to Mars, because most of the travellers would, most likely, arrive blind. Due to technological developments at Kaunas University of Technology (KTU) these cosmic dreams may become reality.
A group of scientists at the KTU Health Telematics Science Institute, under the leadership of the institute director professor Arminas Ragauskas, have developed technologies, which could be used to create innovative devices solving the condition. If there are no unforeseen obstacles, a NASA spacecraft will take the World’s first non-invasive ultrasound intracranial pressure meter for tests at the International Space Station in the near future.
The technology created at the Institute is applicable from sports to space medicine: it helps in diagnosing glaucoma with greater precision, for designing individual and precise methods of patients with neurological or brain injuries, lessening brain damage during various medical surgeries and high physical stress situations. Early diagnosis of medical disorders can help save the lives of millions of people.
The technology developed by KTU scientists is also an example of successful research commercialization. According to the projections of market consultants in the US and EU, the non-invasive intracranial pressure measurement device and cerebrovascular autoregulation monitoring technology upon entering the global market will open a new profitable niche.
With professor Arminas Ragauskas in the below interview we seek the answer to the question how such innovations are created.
Your experience shows that just as any other country, Lithuania has the ability to open a new billion-dollar global market niche. How is it done?
Radical innovation is an ultimate tool to open a new niches in the global market. Radical innovation ensures the greatest possible revenue from a new niche, because the innovator (the person or the company) becomes a natural monopolist, who has no competitors for a certain period of time.
There are no means of opening a new niche on the market other than radical innovation. You can only open a new niche by creating a product, a service, or a process, which does not exist in the world, and which creates additional value by solving an important problem for the consumers. Until competitors appear we are unique, therefore, the price of our technology is not affected by other players. It is determined solely by the consumers’ needs and their buying power.
You claim that popular thinking of economically successful innovations as of an exclusive result of new scientific research is wrong. What is the reality?
If a business tries to create something new, this means risk, expenses, and a high probability of economic failure. However, if a business reacts to the industry structure or political changes, to consumer behaviour or market development in a flexible manner while manipulating pre-existing productive knowledge to create innovations such a business will achieve commercial success. Innovations are more effective and better products, services, and business models than previously existed. Science does not solve scientific problems according to a plan, and it does not generate productive knowledge necessary for the implementation of innovative ideas on the spot. But it is also true that part of the knowledge generated through scientific research while solving great scientific problems is economically productive. The ability to integrate it is precisely how innovative technologies that can solve important problems for humanity are created – such as a way to cure cancer, or an environment-friendly way to extract shale gas.
Is the new Lithuanian generation capable of developing radical innovations?
I am an optimist, because I see young people with shining eyes around me. I have been reading lectures on innovative technologies to KTU Masters and PhD students for many years, and I am also one of the lecturers of the Technology Entrepreneurship module. I have no doubt that time will come when first year students would suggest some excellent ideas for innovation.
How do these innovative ideas come about and how are they implemented?
When I started working more with US companies I became motivated to understand how innovation – more advanced products and processes – are born. On the desk of every other manager I saw the same books by Peter Drucker. This man had an extremely deep understanding of social processes: he didn’t engage in futurology, he merely analysed, and in doing so predicted a multitude of global economic and political events. It turned out that fate had endowed me with the works of the most widely acknowledged business guru in the US. After that I began to explore US business philosophy and innovation methodology.
It is important not to wait for inspiration whilst generating ideas detached from reality, but to search for changes in your environment – inside your company, your yard, your city, or your state – for which there is still no answer. That is your chance.
Change always provides an opportunity to do something better, and it is the flexible reaction to change that creates innovation. Countless ideas die if they fail to improve on what was done previously. However, if you adapt to changes by advancing social or technological systems, your victory is almost guaranteed. Changes happen every moment, you merely need to open your eyes to notice them.
How does innovation come to you personally?
When you are a scientist and an inventor, there is always a problem in front of you – a scientific problem i.e., an unanswered question. According to Socrates, the more you learn, the more you realise how little you know. It is often the case for me personally that the answer to a scientific or a technological problem that I have been working on for two or three years, emerges out of the subconscious usually when I am dead tired in the middle of the night, unable to fall asleep. The how is not important though, what is important, is that through work, thinking, and through significant effort and concentration the answers do come.
First published on http://www.nwindmag.eu/nwind-eng/
