Address by Minister Noel Treacy at the 7th Forfas National Innovation Conference regarding "The Total Innovation Process - from Creativity to Profit", on Thursday 4th October 2001 at 8.30am

It gives me great pleasure to welcome you all to the Seventh National Innovation Conference, organised by Forfás, and in association with the Sunday Business Post. I would like to extend a sincere cead mile failte to the three distinguished speakers who are here with us today.

This Conference provides an opportunity for enterprises to share their views with those charged with both policy formulation and implementation and this year, you have selected a stimulating topic - creativity - around which to base your discussions.

Creativity is increasingly seen as something that needs to be nurtured throughout industry and society in general and to have significant educational, organisational and personal dimensions. We are at a point in Ireland today where we must begin to seriously assess the combined role of creativity and innovation and their potential impact on our future industrial development.

I speak to you today in a climate of change, a time of turbulence and uncertainty. This is affecting our economy and has consequences for our industrial policy. We in Government know that now is the time to think and this is your opportunity to contribute to that thinking process. This year's Innovation Conference, more than any year before, must be an inspirational event and one to which we can look for guidance. It should contribute to a thinking process on innovation that will lead to policy, action and progress.

Industrial cycles come and go but riding the highs and weathering the lows is not the real challenge. That lies in anticipating the next crest, an art not perfected by many and made all the more difficult in times of adversity. We are facing adversity at the moment and some might regard it as the end of an era, but there are others who see this as an opportune moment to start a new phase in Ireland's industrial development.

This is a time for people who relish a new challenge and can harness the motivation, the opportunity and the resources - to emerge with another world beating industrial policy. It is a time for people who are not afraid to embrace innovation, creativity and knowledge in the pursuit of excellence.

We must leverage these talents to develop an intellectual infrastructure that can lead the world, embracing not only our rich vein of creative and academic excellence but also our most recent flagship projects such as Media Lab Europe, the Digital Hub and Science Foundation Ireland. "Build it and they will come" must be our motto in providing world-beating capability in knowledge-centred innovation. Demand will come this time not from a technology sector seeking cost-effective production capability but from a global business community seeking to leverage the knowledge economy for competitive advantage.

Science Foundation Ireland has made major progress since its establishment last year. Awards of over Ir£55 million (€70 million) have been made to 12 eminent Principal Investigators and their teams to conduct world-class research in Ireland in the fields of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) and Biotechnology.

These awards will provide a major stimulus to basic research in these areas in Ireland. The objective of the Foundation is to ensure that Ireland develops a reputation for excellence in basic research acknowledged as being among the highest in the world. I know that Dr. Bill Harris, the newly appointed Director General of the Foundation is more than equal to the challenge ahead.

Today's conference gives the industrial community and others present the opportunity to listen to and absorb the thoughts of champions in this field, to prioritise the role of creativity in their own organisations and to feed proposals for policy change direct to Government. Ideas are the currency of the future and a way in which every citizen and business can contribute. In trying to come to terms with living in a knowledge economy, countries around the world are facing what some might call uncertainty and what others might call a green field situation.

With a little imagination, and a more intrinsic commitment to innovation and creativity, ours can be a field of dreams which can be realised.

In conclusion, I would like to sincerely thank all of the Speakers and workshop leaders for giving of their valuable time to address this Conference. I would also like to thank all of the participants for coming here today to take part in these discussions. Finally, I want to thank Mr. John Travers, Chief Executive of Forfás, the members of the conference steering group and the staff at Forfás for organising this conference once again.