Call for all-island innovation strategy

IRELAND NEEDS to develop an all-island innovation “ecosystem” which would facilitate greater collaboration between North and South, according to InterTrade Ireland, the body responsible for encouraging North-South economic co-operation.

Speaking ahead of a major conference on innovation which is to take place on Monday and Tuesday next at University College Dublin, InterTrade Ireland’s director of strategy, Aidan Gough, said an all-island innovation ecosystem would be the most effective and efficient use of resources for both regions.

“Both Northern Ireland and the Republic have identified innovation as key to future growth. Both face similar challenges and are taking similar responses. It makes sense to collaborate.”

One possible model for such a system, according to Mr Gough, is the Nordic model. This has seen the four Nordic countries integrate their national innovation policies to the mutual benefit of each of the countries. The organisation believes such a model would be particularly beneficial to Ireland due to the small size of the economies North and South.

“We are a small country and will need to pool all our intellectual, academic, business networks and funding resources if we are to maximise our potential, particularly in the field of innovation,” Mr Gough will tell next week’s conference.

According to InterTrade Ireland, collaboration to date has meant the island has successfully attracted research funding from a wide range of sources, such as the European FP7 fund – the EU’s main source of funding for research – and the US-Ireland RD Partnership. It believes open access to research infrastructure could form a key strand of such a collaborative model.

The need to develop high-tech innovation clusters as a way of building capacity and supporting innovation will also be a central theme of the conference.