OPINION:There is dubious long term value in Ireland redesigning successful products or duplicating successful operations from abroad
THIS WEEK, the Department of the Taoiseach published the composition and terms of reference of its Innovation Taskforce, first announced last March concurrently with the TCD-UCD Innovation Alliance.
The taskforce, of which I am honoured to be an invited member, has been given at most six months to present strong recommendations to the Taoiseach and his Government on implementing a smart economy.
In my view, our economy can only be rebuilt by earning revenue from overseas. Our tourism industry is one vital foundation. A second is innovation: bringing new products, services, and business processes to the global market.
Innovation is different from scientific discovery of what already exists, from entrepreneurial exploitation of ideas, and from inventive creation of interesting concepts. Innovation is the holistic combination of research and discovery, with invention of novel ideas and within the context of an insightful understanding of market opportunities, together with an entrepreneurial capability and commercial object.
Innovation requires careful engineering of pragmatic solutions: attractively designed, safe to use and commercially viable, with high barriers to entry for competitors, but low barriers to adoption for global customers.
Innovation implies being smart.
A smart economy is not one that reinvents mousetraps, or cheaply builds ones designed overseas. There is dubious long term value in Ireland redesigning successful products or duplicating successful operations from abroad.
There's little point in taking on other projects out there which may have more substantial state and commercial funding, lower cost of labour, similar or even more advantageous tax rates, and similar or better infrastructure.
Ireland needs to strategically assert control of its future, and not be tactically subject to vagaries of the international race to the bottom for the most cost-effective commercial locations. It needs to clearly identify commercial niches for which there is not yet a solution anywhere - global market opportunities - for which we can play to our natural strengths, and for which we are sufficiently smart to engineer innovative solutions.
Just as our natural resources provide a firm foundation for our tourism industry, so can those resources lay a foundation for a smart and innovative economy. Renewable energy sources, our relatively underused electromagnetic spectrum, our agricultural and marine competencies and our creative heritage are some of the strengths which Ireland has over other economies. We need a smart society, with a well trained workforce, and intelligent talent. We also need to renew our commitment to a high skilled economy. We need a smart, innovative, creative and inclusive society.
We need to reduce the risk of failure of investment in innovation. We need the critical mass and momentum which results from teamwork. We should pool research and development in a way that offers safer returns on what is speculative investment. We need to clearly articulate a collaborative intellectual property policy.
We need to challenge the numerous enterprise structures, institutions and agencies which we have inherited. Innovation requires a holistic approach which no single State body now embraces. A zero-based analysis would start with a blank sheet of paper and design the optimal enterprise structure for an efficient, complete, and pragmatic process to foster the entire life cycle of successful innovation: we must then move our complex web of interrelated State structures to this desirable optimum.
At a time of cutbacks, we need to make choices. We need to carve away the fat and accumulated surplus without simultaneously killing our nation's vital organs. It is strategically indolent and economically incompetent to make slashing swathes across our entire national body. We should decide to reduce or completely eliminate State investment in some areas. We can use some of the funds to increase our investments into those chosen initiatives which can sustainably drive growth and recovery.
A smart economy is innovative, insightful, and decisive. I look forward to the inaugural Innovation Taskforce meeting this month.
Chris Horn is one of the newly appointed members of the Innovation Taskforce
