DUBLIN CITY COUNCIL:Dublin's main stakeholders have plans to turn the city and its hinterland into a centre of innovation, research and entrepreneurship that will attact investment and create employment
WHO SPEAKS for Dublin? The four local authorities? The enterprise boards? The business community? Or none of the above? Until recently, the short answer was: Dublin had no voice. It meant that much of the planning and investment went to the regions, says Michael Stubbs, assistant city manager with Dublin City Council.“Dublin was suffering because of this policy at government level,” he says.
So Dublin City Council and the Dublin Chamber of Commerce expressed their concerns to the Government and it was decided to create a network of leaders from the local authorities, universities, business groups and the not-for-profit sector.
“We talked about the global and national importance of the city region and the need for it to be recognised, invested in and marketed,” he says.
They decided to benchmark Dublin against other cities as listed in a report by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) entitled Competitive Cities in the Global Economy. It says successful cities attract talented, young, highly skilled workers; are centres of innovation and entrepreneurship; and are competitive locations for global and regional headquarters. New products are developed and commercialised in cities because universities are close to research and production facilities and more than 80 per cent of patents are filed in such regions.
“In other words, cities not countries compete against each other for investment, and Dublin is Ireland’s only internationally competitive city region,” says Stubbs. “Dublin needed to be afforded the recognition by the Government and the state agencies of the role it has to play in the national economy.”
So in 2008 IDA Ireland and Enterprise Ireland were brought into the newly formed Creative Dublin Alliance, which is managed by the Economic Development Unit of Dublin City Council. It operates as a clearing house for ideas.
“It’s about creating a new economy for the city, generating confidence in what the city is about and, ultimately, job creation. This all comes from strong leadership, smart people and a smart city,” says Stubbs.
Alliance members take their ideas to monthly meetings. If they are accepted, the appropriate sub-groups collaborate on them. The alliance doesn’t manage or work on projects: it monitors them and ensures they are adequately resourced to reach a successful conclusion. The individual partners have responsibility for the projects. “The role of the alliance is to identify challenges and issues of citywide significance that can most effectively be dealt with through the synergies created within the group,” says Stubbs. “We want to help grow the region’s economy and secure its reputation internationally.”
Its aim is to use creative solutions such as next month’s Innovation Dublin festival. This will provide entrepreneurs, students, researchers, artists, large corporations and others with opportunities to discuss, promote and celebrate innovation at hundreds of events throughout the capital.
Other major projects include: Designing Dublin, a design-led initiative that engages individuals through collaboration and entrepreneurship to find solutions to Dublin’s future challenges; UniverCities, an initiative to align teaching and research programmes in universities to assist in managing and planning for the future of the city; and Innovation Alliance, a Trinity-UCD project to develop innovation in the colleges, along with education and research, with identified outputs in job creation and enterprise.
Another key project has the quirky title: What’s Dublin for? Discovering our City’s Potential. Its aim is to deliver a focused rethink about what the future vision of Dublin should be, what it offers as a city, what it could offer in the future, and the basis of its value, its uniqueness and identity.
“This is an identity project,” Stubbs says. “It’s not about branding the city. It’s about finding out what people think of their city and then deciding on what the future vision for the city should be.
“UCD and DIT came together on the first phase of the project, which is the research and discovery phase. The researchers interviewed people from all walks of life and went to various events and out onto the streets to find out what people thought of Dublin and what they wanted it to be.”
The idea is to find out what is so special about the city, says Steve Payne, a consultant of the Brand Union, which is advising the project working group. “We want to find out what we can create, learn or do that is so valuable that Dublin’s businesses, institutions and citizens will want to remain, that will attract investors, visitors and talent, that will make commentators and influencers recommend the city to others.”
The first phase is now almost complete and, as part of Innovation Dublin 2010, an exhibition will be held at the Dublin City Council offices on Wood Quay to share the project findings to date and to encourage input.
The exhibition will be interactive, with a call to action to encourage visitors to engage with public social media sites, which will continue to the end of the year.
The project will then proceed to its second phase, which involves engagement and consultations with key stakeholders to agree recommendations and an action plan. This will be followed by two further phases involving the design and implementation of the action plan.
“We have several other exciting projects that are part of our economic action plan for the city region,” says Stubbs. “For example, we have the Greenway, or An Slí Glas, planned for the corridor between Dublin Airport and the city centre, more or less along the route of Metro North. The vision for this project is to create an internationally recognised green economic zone where ... the green economy will be promoted.
“There are lots of exciting projects in the pipeline now that we have a unified voice of the city region.”
* For more, see innovationdublin.ie
Ireland can catch up with innovators
GIVEN THE central role many people believe innovation will play in Ireland’s economic recovery, it is appropriate that Máire Geoghegan-Quinn, our member of the European Commission, holds the brief for research, innovation and science. And she is convinced that innovation will have a highly significant part to play in Ireland’s future.
“In the medium term, it is countries such as Ireland – open economies with a strong export potential and a strong knowledge-base – that have the most to gain from innovation in general and from the commission’s Innovation Union action plan in particular,” she says.
“It cannot solve Irelands current banking and fiscal difficulties. But if you look at the commissions checklist of the defining characteristics of successful national research and innovation systems, Ireland ticks many of the boxes. And it has a coherent national strategy to tick more of them.
“Irelands current strong innovation performance and future potential are among the reasons why the commission – and other international institutions like the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development – have confidence in Irelands medium-term prospects and growth potential.”
Ireland’s recent record regarding innovation is also standing the country in good stead. “Ireland remains a very attractive destination for foreign direct investment,” she says.
“One of the reasons for that is that tough measures taken to deal with the crisis are increasing competitiveness but, equally importantly, Irelands record in innovation and in investing in the knowledge economy is good.
“Its graduates were rated the most employable in Europe earlier this year by a commission study, for example. Total public and private investment in research and development has grown steadily, by about a third as a proportion of GDP since 2002, even though it remains below the EU average. The commission is working with the Irish government to set a national target under the current Europe 2020 process, for which the overall target for Europe as a whole is 3 per cent of GDP. The Irish government intends to set an ambitious target and I welcome that.”
The country still has some way to go before making it into Europe’s premier league when it comes to innovation. “Ireland has potential to catch up with the leaders, but this will not happen inevitably or overnight – it will be a medium-term process and will depend on both a clear political strategy – the follow up to the report of the governments Innovation Task Force can provide that – and on the dynamism of Irish science and enterprise,” she says.
Enterprise is exhibiting that dynamism already, according to the commissioner. “I see examples every time I visit Ireland,” she says. Under the seventh EU Framework Programme for research and technological development, 575 proposals involving Irish partners had been approved for funding by last spring.
“Those proposals involved 713 successful Irish applicants, set to receive about €173 million in EU financial contributions,” she says.
“Ireland ranks seventh among EU member states in terms of applicants success rate as a proportion of the number of applications. What is more, 182 of the 713 successful applicants, accounting for over €45 million, are SMEs. This is well above average and is a very positive sign.”
