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WDC Welcomes Report of the Innovation Taskforce and calls for Innovation to Build on Regional Strengths
The Western Development Commission (WDC) has welcomed the publication of Innovation Ireland: Report of the Innovation Taskforce, the report of the Government Taskforce on positioning Ireland as an International Innovation Development Hub. It presents an important opportunity for the Western Region to build on its strengths and contribute to strengthening Ireland’s levels of innovation.
Speaking about the report, Lisa McAllister Chief Executive at the WDC said: “We welcome many of the Report’s recommendations, several of which are consistent with previous WDC recommendations. For example, early in 2009 we published Creative West, which identified the Region’s strength in the creative sector (employing 11,000 people in the Region) and its potential for future growth. We recommended mainstreaming creativity within primary and secondary school education as critical to growing the sector in the Region and nationally. The Innovation Taskforce has now set a fundamental principle as ‘An education system which fosters independent thinking, creativity and innovation . . .’ which the WDC feels is a very positive step towards growing this sector which holds so much potential for the Region.”
“The WDC strongly believes that the Western Region’s future entrepreneurs and innovators need to be nurtured and supported through the education system. We are particularly pleased to see the Innovation Taskforce acknowledge that ‘… artistic, culture and creative minds’ must be positioned at the centre of innovative businesses,” she added.
The Taskforce’s report also highlights the need for greater access to venture capital to support innovative activity. Since 2001 the WDC’s Investment Fund has invested almost €37m in venture capital in the Western Region, largely in highly innovative, knowledge-based indigenous businesses. “The WDC believes there is a strong need for continuing access to venture capital so that innovative businesses in the Western Region can continue to be at the heart of innovation in Ireland. The State has a central role in achieving this, especially in terms of early-stage seed capital investments required by highly innovative entrepreneurs,” said Ms McAllister.
In its submission last year to the Innovation Taskforce the WDC recommended that innovation policy and support should include targeting regional strengths and assets. The Western Region has advantages in areas such as life sciences, renewable energy and the creative industries. “Regional innovation centres, which build on such regional strengths, would allow the economic potential of these sectors to be fully realised, as well as increasing the Region’s contribution to national innovation levels,” she added.
Defining innovation as new ways of doing things, new ways of thinking, new products, new processes or new organisational structures, Pauline White, Policy Analyst with the WDC, cited a recent OECD report Regions Matter which emphasises the connection between the level of innovation in a region and its economic performance. She pointed out the substantial differences in the current innovative capacity of regions within Ireland and that this directly impacts on the level of development within regions. “Regions with weaker innovative capacity simply do not perform as well as other regions,” she said.
The WDC believes that if Ireland is to truly become the ‘Innovation Island’, then innovation policy and support needs to identify and build on regional strengths. The contribution which smaller centres and rural areas can make to national innovation objectives, and the critical role of innovation in the economic future of such areas, should also be considered in approaches to increasing innovation.
A December 2009 report from the WDC, Work in the West, highlighted the employment and economic challenges currently facing the Western Region. It highlighted the Region’s research and innovation capacity as a critical factor in tackling these challenges and creating jobs. “The Western Region’s human resource has improved hugely in recent years. We must work to retain this vital resource as, at the end of the day, people are the most critical input to innovation”, Ms White concluded.
Download the Creative West report here (PDF 1.9Mb) Download the Work in the West report here (PDF 5.2Mb)
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