SCIENCE:According to Dr Charles Leadbeater, collaboration is the only way for Ireland's pharmachem sector to grow.

Ireland must be smart, fast and flexible if it hopes to further develop its pharmachem sector. And this must be done in the context of networking into the global market for talent, intellectual property, research discoveries and finance.

So suggests international authority on innovation and creativity, Dr Charles Leadbeater. Developing Ireland's pharmachem sector will be a challenge given intense global competition, he argues. "What will really matter is whether you can develop collaborations," Leadbeater says.

An adviser to former British prime minister Tony Blair, consultant to governments and companies and a successful author, Leadbeater comes to Ireland later this month to deliver a keynote address at the Pharmatex conference in Cork. The three-day conference and exhibition will explore issues related to the international pharmachem sector but will look in particular at how Ireland can grow this key sector of our economy.

The industry is huge, accounting for €37.5 billion worth of exports in 2004, 44.7 per cent of everything we shipped abroad during that year. It employs more than 24,000 people, about half of them third-level graduates, and delivers something approaching €1 billion in tax revenues to the Government. And yet there are fears that all this could be lost if we fail to build on what we have already achieved.

Current thinking argues that we must develop a powerful research capacity as a way to "bed down" the big companies that have already set up here - 16 the world's top 20 - and to attract newcomers.

Leadbeater believes however that it does not all come down to throwing money at the issue. "All around the world there is a huge problem with life science and pharmaceutical research," he told Innovation last week. The number of "blockbuster" drugs, those that will earn billions for their developers, are in decline despite the huge international investment in research.

Meanwhile, much smaller companies in the biotech area are conducting niche research and making valuable discoveries, but these minnow companies are risky ventures with only limited prospects for success. "And yet it is an area that is going to become very important," Leadbeater says.

Ireland can take one of two paths if it wants to develop its pharmachem sector, he believes. We can attempt to spend our way into the research space where discoveries are made or we can play smart and learn how to make the most of collaboration.

The former is probably beyond our spending capacity. India has ramped up its research spending by 500 per cent, even if from a low base, Leadbeater points out. Singapore has spent billions to develop its research capacity and countries like China are using their powerhouse economies to build research activity.

"All over the world people are investing. The key is whether you can find ways of doing it that will give you a competitive advantage," he states. "It will not be enough to have biotech institutes or new equipment. It is how you do it and how you collaborate."

While the biggest research spending countries may be able to perform well in isolation, at least for a time, smaller research entities like Ireland will have to play smart and connect with others. The collaborations he speaks of are not just the existing academic-industrial links, but are much wider. They could be with other players in a single country or international linkages. The goal is to assemble a group including finance, research expertise, management skills and the related talent sets needed to make discoveries and deliver them to the market.

Working with others helps to circumvent the now international competition involved in attracting talent. Countries like Ireland will definitely need its own labs and research peers and suitable government policies that will make others want to collaborate with us, but all of the necessary pieces needed to conduct and commercialise pharmachem research will not have to be located on this island. "These aren't new strategies," he says.

"The attraction of Ireland is that as a relatively small place it is really easy to get people together," he says.

It just depends on whether the people with the skills and the expertise can be connected. "Ireland's research culture could matter a lot," he adds.