A letter to the minister on 19th May elicited no response, presumably not worthy?

1. The judging process will be in three stages. The first between the end of April and end June will deliver 20 entries for further consideration. The second in July / August narrows that to five and the final stage selects two from the five. The evaluation and juding process is being overseen by David Byrne (ex EU Comissioner) In the first stage he will have a panel of subject matter experts in the various category areas identified to best understand the merits of the proposals and they will be supported by executives selected specifically for the project from the large audit and management consulting firms. For the second and third stages a panel of judges is currently being finalised that will include national and international figures of standing in the areas of creativity, business and social innovation. WE expect to annouce those judges before the end of thios month. The judging process is independent of the Steering Group and none of the material submitted is being shared outside the judge panels

2. There is no political involvement with the competition.

3. Four of the seven Directors listed in the documentation originally submitted to register the company were agents of the legal advisors which established the company An Smaoineamh Mor. They have no active role now that it is being established. The three active Directors from those listed are Laurence Crowley, Martin Murphy and Eugene McCague who are being joined by Austin Hogan who is the full time Director for the project. Mssrs. Crowley and Murphy commented widely to and were quoted by the media at and around the launch event on Feb 17 and will continue to do so along with others involved in the Steering group (Ferdinand Von Prondinsky, Ann Marie Shaw and myself) and the chair of the judges, Mr Byrne.

I’m not trying to avoid the issue but I’m not sure that we can progress it much further through this forum – and that is not a criticism; Simon’s post has been very helpful to challenge. DM?

Happy to post back then for information of others and further discussion.

Understood and if there is any confusion over my questions, that is down to poor explanation on my part.

Sorry if this is getting a little boring: By saying that YCYC expects that there won’t be much IP in a winning bid, I would ask you to consider the following scenario: what if a submission comes from somebody with an idea that turns out to contain patentable IP (the submitter may not even identify it as such to begin with)? With such a broad brief and especially if it is a very early stage idea, this is not entirely impossible.

Regardless of motivation (such questions are largely irrelevant) I think that you are on to a very good thing here in principle, but my thought is that the lack of what might be regarded as equitable arrangements for IP represents some risk for an inventor submitting an idea. It would represent very little risk to YCYC to put such arrangements in place and would, in my view at least, increase the chances of an interesting idea popping up. The terms I describe above would allow an inventor to be significantly involved in the maturation of the idea, and would allow YCYC the right to licence IP to whomever they chose should the successful inventor wish to exit once the competition is complete (though I can’t imagine that the type of person who comes up with a truly transformational idea would easily just walk away from it).

YCYC in either case gets a substantial equity share in any resultant enterprise as they are fronting the capital (amongst other things) to make it happen, and equity is where the long term potential is, not licensing.

Lets be honest, there is always a chance that you have a ‘right idea, wrong person’ situation and as it stands, YCYC is completely protected from this. But since the assessment includes an interview stage, this is already somewhat de-risked.

I am of course assuming that the winning proposal will be executed as some form of business venture, and it may not be.

just a few questions
1. Who gets to view the completed list of all the submitted ideas (political/business community/public)?

2. Is there any political involvement directly or indirectly with the competition?

3. There are seven directors of the company An Smaoineamh Mor. Have there been any public interviews or statements given by the directors outlining the motives for establishing An Smaoineamh Mor and YCYC?

Thanks