New innovation strategy

Enterprise Minister Arlene Foster has encouraged more companies to innovate at the launch of the Executive’s Innovation Strategy. Foster noted that Northern Ireland is above the UK average for percentage spending on R&D but still the lowest ranked region for innovation.

“Quite simply, not enough of our companies are engaging in innovation,” she stated. The strategy aims to double the number of knowledge economy businesses by 2015 and also increase R&D expenditure from £624 million to at least £1.2 billion.

Three-quarters of R&D is undertaken by the private sector but the vast majority of this takes place in multi-nationals. The strategy emphasises that innovation is much more than R&D and includes changes to products and processes, the introduction of new business models, organisational changes and entering new markets.

To promote cultural change, the Executive will examine the feasibility of establishing an ‘innovation council’, develop a workstream for the new Public Sector Innovation Lab, and develop new “accelerator programmes” for social innovation. A foresight programme will identify new and emerging technologies and key future markets. An open data strategy is also proposed and the Executive will support the expansion of the Northern Ireland Science Park.