Back in 1906, Don Miguel de Unamuno put these words into the mouth of Román in his essay “The Portico of the Temple”: “Let them invent, then, and we shall take advantage of their inventions. For I trust and hope that you are as convinced as I am that electric light shines as brightly here as it does where it was invented.”
Those were other times, and today we cannot afford such a luxury. We live in a world of technology, of capturing and handling information. In a society that hands over its data in exchange for technology services or social networks. If you are not among those who own that technology, you are among those controlled by it. Our relevance as a society and our freedom as individuals are quite literally at stake. Let us review how we are doing at home and how we compare with others abroad.
We create little. We have two brands among the hundred most valuable: Zara and Movistar (Source: Marca España). Movistar might be classed as a technology company. In 2015 it was granted 135 patents and applied for 31 more. The CSIC (Spain’s National Research Council) applied for 47 patents and was the largest applicant in Spain. Those, then, are our leaders. While we were doing that, others such as IBM registered 8,088 patents in 2016, Samsung 5,518, Apple 2,102, Amazon 1,662… The accompanying table shows the patents registered in the United States in 2015 and 2016 (Source: IFI Claims Patent Services). I think the figures speak for themselves. Spain is not leading the world of technology, and its biggest flagships are moving at a pace dozens of times slower than the global leaders.
We do not generate critical mass. A patent seeks to protect an invention. It therefore reflects the capacity to contribute things that are new and potentially wanted by others, which is why one wishes to protect them with a patent. If someone wants to use our patented invention, they need our permission and must pay royalties. A patent does not always translate into profit. The CSIC is Spain’s largest generator of patents. Yet, according to BBVA, 50% of the royalties the institution has received over the past decade derive from a single patent registered in 1989 (Margarita Salas and her discovery of the Phi29 DNA polymerase protein, essential for copying DNA samples). Critical mass is fundamental. If we know that only a few patents will succeed, and on top of that we produce dozens of times fewer than the leaders, the chances of setting global trends border not on the slim but on the miraculous.
We do not defend what we create. Patents are often like concrete blocks. Once one is laid, another can be placed on top, enlarging the building. A patent, once known, creates an opportunity for further development. If the patent was created in Spain, it would be logical for development opportunities to arise in Spain as well. Yet 22% of Spain’s most outstanding scientific research was “appropriated” by other countries (above all by companies) to develop their own patents. The United States generates more patents from Spanish science than Spain itself (Source: BBVA Innovation Center). Need I say more?
Talent is not lacking; infrastructure is. Spain has talent, but talent without the right infrastructure can come to nothing, or to isolated individual miracles. To name a few fields and a few geniuses: in sport (Seve, Nadal, Alonso), in art (Picasso, Dalí, Goya, Velázquez), in letters and philosophy (Cervantes, Lope, Ortega y Gasset, Unamuno, Machado), and even in science (Margarita Salas, Ramón y Cajal, Severo Ochoa, Gregorio Marañón). Yet an uncomfortably high proportion of them succeeded in spite of their surroundings, without organised support and, in many cases, without resources. Many had to go abroad to develop their work and win the recognition they were denied at home. Without the right infrastructure, the transfer of research results to society does not happen, or happens badly. Brazil creates twice as many patents as Spain with half the budgetary effort (Source: BBVA Innovation Center).
We do not invest enough. R&D spending in Spain in 2014 (Source: Cotec Foundation Report) came to €12,821 million, almost 13% less than in 2008.
The public sector finances 45% of total R&D investment. Our R&D investment effort as a country is half the OECD average. Countries such as Korea, Japan, Germany and the US invest considerably more than the OECD average. Spain has only 3.4 researchers working in industry per thousand employees. The EU28 average is 5.1, and countries such as Germany and France reach 6.1 and 8.7 respectively. The gap keeps widening.
In short, we create little, we do not generate critical mass, we do not defend what we create, we lack infrastructure and we invest less than we should. Against this backdrop, what can we do? The answer is not easy, but we must find a way. If we do not wish to resign ourselves to irrelevance, we have no other choice.
Many prominent voices argue for different ways of avoiding irrelevance. One of them advocates creating development hubs in the style of Silicon Valley. We discussed this before, highlighting the interesting analysis on the subject by Deloitte University Press entitled “How to innovate the Silicon Valley way”. Spain cannot lead in every sector, but it can select a few in which it can, and build “Spanish Silicon Valleys” around them.
I have recently noticed a number of initiatives at some universities and higher-education centres. They have set up units specialising in the “Transfer of Research Results”. They explore ways of moving efficiently from theory to practice; from research to application. In the US this is already in place, generating development hubs (Silicon Valley, for instance) within the sphere of influence of great universities (Stanford, CalTech), large companies and sources of funding (venture capital).
The challenge in Spain is to replicate this starting from what we have: no relevant university, no relevant company, and the State providing almost half of the funding. Spain is different. In this, too. In Germany almost 90% of business R&D spending is carried out by large companies. In Spain it is SMEs that account for almost half of the total invested. In 2014, 46.3% of that effort was made by companies with fewer than 250 employees. That is not good news. A company with 10,000 employees has more critical mass for many things, research included, than one with 250. That is how Germany and France do it. Large Spanish companies do not. That is why these research-transfer units matter. They could be the means of helping SMEs obtain resources and transfer the results of their research, so that the profits can be reinvested in further research, and their success can serve as a magnet for new initiatives.
Article published on 9 May 2017 in: 
