Innovation Conference

COMMERCIAL PROFILE - INTERTRADE IRELAND:  Speakers at the 2010 Innovation Conference will explore research on innovation networks and the role multinationals play in the development of these networks

IT IS GENERALLY recognised that innovation will play a key role in sustaining economic renewal on the island of Ireland and next week sees InterTradeIreland’s 2010 Innovation Conference take place at the William Jefferson Clinton Auditorium in UCD. The objective of the conference is to provide a view from leading stakeholders and academic experts on the benefits and successes of collaborative networks as drivers and facilitators of innovation.

The first day of the conference on Monday next will focus on the theme of Building Collaborative Networks for Innovation in a Knowledge Economy. It will blend contemporary thinking on collaborative networks with lessons learnt from key stakeholders. Day two will focus on Academic Reflections and Future Challenges and will bring together academic researchers from around Ireland and internationally.

These speakers will explore current research on the topic of innovation networks including the role that multinational companies have to play in the development of such networks. Prof Woody Powell, Stanford University, California, will be the keynote speaker at both days of the conference. His addresses will draw upon his research on the processes through which knowledge is transferred across organisations and the role that networks have in facilitating or hindering innovation. “Innovation has a critical role to play in the economic recovery on the island of Ireland,” says InterTradeIreland strategy and policy director Aidan Gough.

“We held our all-island economic forum in Belfast recently and we had leading economists from a number of different countries there. They were all agreed that the only way for developed countries to grow their economies is through innovation. And it is even more important for relatively small economies like ours to develop their innovation ecosystem.” At the heart of this innovation ecosystem are the various formal and informal networks that underpin collaboration between companies, research institutes and other stakeholders.

“We talk about the three ‘Cs’ in relation to innovation,” Gough points out. “These are creativity, connectivity and commercialisation. The second of these relates to networks and the role they play in the process.” One example of such a collaborative effort is the All-Island Software Network which was facilitated by InterTradeIreland. This involved a small group of companies in the telecommunications software area. “They each had different skills and technologies which complemented one another,” says Gough.

“On their own they could only provide point solutions to customers; together they can offer strategic solutions. We enabled them to participate in the 3GSM Conference in Barcelona last year – something which none of them could have done on their own – and they generated £4.5 million worth of sales from it.” According to Powell such networks are an essential feature of the innovation process. “We don’t learn new ideas or different practices from our closest friends,” he explains.

“They’re our friends precisely because we share so many values and beliefs with them. We learn about novel things from acquaintances, or weak ties in the sociological parlance, that is, friends of friends. People who are connected across different networks become more familiar with alternative ways of thinking and behaving, and this in turn gives them more options to select from and synthesise.

“People and organisations that are linked across different networks see bridges where others see islands,” he continues. “Thus the advantages of networks in the innovation process are many. Those positioned across multiple networks are serving as a bridge between two different groups and have a number of advantages. People and organisations that are connected through multiple networks are most likely to combine productive elements from different groups into novel ideas and practices.”

Possibly the best-known innovation networks in the world are those which evolved in the high-tech clusters of Silicon Valley, Boston and San Diego in the US, but why haven’t such clusters developed here? “Our research is focused on the life sciences and we have looked at areas that were rich in endowments and resources in the late 1970s and early 1980s and tried to discern why so few regions developed robust biotech clusters,” says Powell.

“Our answer is very straightforward. In a small number of regions local organisations acted as anchor tenants, fostering openness and transparency and encouraging exploration. In unsuccessful regions, the anchor tenants acted as 800-pound gorillas, insisting that they follow existing rules of the game and bow to the most powerful organisations, practices and wishes. In those clusters where biotechnology took off, a process we call transposition occurred in which skills and status in one realm, such as science, were transferred into commercial activity, and skills in finance were repurposed to fund science.

In successful clusters we saw a thorough mixing of people and ideas across the world of the university, the financial community and the business community.” He believes that Ireland can become a home to high-tech clusters but not necessarily by mimicking the US. “I think the most important lesson is that countries should avoid copying others, because the windows of opportunity for development are very different across countries and the relevant skills and resources quite different, too. It would be a terrible mistake for countries today to say they want to be like Silicon Valley.

It would make much more sense to try to look at places with a comparable set of resources and similar stage of development and see what they have done right or wrong. I think almost all successful clusters are relatively unique. The commonalities are found in their failures, that is, the places where clusters do not develop look much more similar than the successful cases.” InterTradeIreland will continue to play its role through initiatives such as the Innovation Conference and the All-island Innovation Programme which aims to promote and encourage innovation across the island of Ireland.

It is organised by InterTradeIreland, Queen’s University Belfast, NovaUCD and the Centre for Innovation and Structural Change, NUI Galway. “Everything we do is about connectivity,” Aidan Gough notes. “By our very nature as a cross-border body we are involved in connecting people. More than 90 per cent of our budget is spent on developing innovative capacity and capability in companies throughout the island of  Ireland.”