Innovation for New Growth

IRELAND SECURED AN important portfolio in the European Commission when Maire Geoghegan-Quinn was allocated the research and innovation portfolio in Brussels. The EUR 53bn budget she will oversee is central to providing high quality jobs and prosperity to Europe. The EU wants to build smart economies. Ireland needs to pull out of the tailspin that resulted from a risky overdependence on property. I sit a few metres from several programme specialists involved in developing and delivering academic courses to students who are interested in learning about active homes and passive homes. These green tech specialisms are well suited to builders who want to diversify beyond the construction industry. I work directly with creative multimedia students who want to produce more content in shorter time frames than earlier graduates. That's happening in Tipperary Institute, accelerated by a change to semesterised teaching schedules and our use of pocket media services such as Qik. We also produce items such as the encoded graphic at left. You need a phone equipped with a Microsoft Tag Reader if you want to watch what happens to this quilt-like image.

I'm following discussions on LinkedIn about innovation in Ireland. College professors teach "innovation is a new way of doing something" or "new stuff that is made useful". It may refer to incremental and emergent or radical and revolutionary changes in thinking, products, processes, or organizations. If it's done well, innovation leads to increased productivity and that is the fundamental source of increasing wealth in an economy. A full page in the Irish Times today makes the point that innovation will be needed to drive the Irish economy out of its current rut. The editor and business writers believe innovation leads to increasing productivity, and that belief is why the Irish government is most likely to continue seeding research budgets.

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