IBEC: Ireland must encourage innovation

Ireland needs to encourage innovation rather than rely on the comfort zone left by the Celtic Tiger boom years, it was claimed today.

With experts at the Economist Intelligence Unit in London warning a failure to innovate was one of the top three risks to business, IBEC chiefs called on firms to use their creativity to bring new products to the marketplace.

Michael O’Neill, director of the IBEC’s Irish Medical Devices Association, said a radical shift in thinking was needed to ensure future economic prosperity.

“Ireland needs to get out of the dangerous comfort zone in which it is and switch to being an economy of innovation,” he said.

“Other countries are now following variations of the formula that worked so well for Ireland. So, we need to make another qualitative leap forward. We enjoy our present success because of decisions we made several decades ago.”

The EUI global survey of 500 business chiefs showed almost 60% of executives cited advances in technology as the single most critical force changing the global marketplace over the next three years.

And it revealed one third of those questioned identified a failure to innovate as one of the top three risks facing their companies over the next three years.

Sharon Higgins, IMDA director, said around 22,000 good quality jobs in Ireland’s vibrant medical technology sector depended on the industry’s ability to continuously and relentlessly adapt and generate new products.

Exports from the sector are also in excess of €4bn per annum.

“The products that will be manufactured in 5 years time are in most cases still a mere pipe-dream,” Ms Higgins said.

“Companies in Ireland can play a central and starring role in developing these new products and bringing them to the marketplace only if the industry works together to fully develop our inherent creativity and remain at all times open to novel concepts.

“Innovation is key to developing products for the next generation. We can’t be complacent, to stand still is to die.”