A recent report from Science Foundation Ireland shows some tangible fruition of our National aspiration to become an innovation economy. Science Foundation Ireland’s 2009 annual report showed that research links between industry and academia in Ireland grew by 25pc last year.
184 multinationals and 165 SMEs were linked to academic teams by Science Foundation Ireland, with 29 research centres and 3,225 researchers in higher education institutions supported.
This has all been achieved off a very low base – considering that we were (to quote Minister for Science, Technology and Innovation, Conor Lenihan TD) “a level below Bangladesh”. While we are now in the top twenty of global scientfic rankings.
In the post bubble wasteland, Ireland has been looking enviously at the Israeli model of a cohesive approach to seeding innovative companies with revenue and expertise. Over the past 60 years Israel has achieved a fifty-fold economic growth, much of it fuelled by technology start-ups funded by venture capitalists. Small businesses and start ups in Ireland largely remain starved of the funding aspect that is vital to such growth, however the new innovation fund (launched by An Taoiseach, Brian Cowen) will offer matching revenue of €250m as an incentive to an inflow of vital Venture Captial revenue. The hope is that this fund will mirror the economic aspect of the Israeli model, while we continue to build collaboration and partnership between Ireland’s scientific research and enterprise communities