INSIGHT
Education and Innovation
Damien English, Minister for Skills, Research and Innovation
Nuturing a startup culture
Minister Damien English believes that for Ireland to continue its economic recovery, startups need to be
nurtured, entrepreneurial skills need to be taught and business expertise needs to be easy to access.
W
hy does Ireland need
startups? Because it
has been recognised
that two-thirds of all
new jobs are created in the first
three to four years of a startup. If
we want Ireland to continue with
its economic recovery, we need to
nurture these startups and we need
to get our researchers and scientists
thinking like entrepreneurs.
One of the ways that we are
hoping to help this along is through
Knowledge Transfer Ireland. KTI
is the first stop for entrepreneurs
to work with the academic
community to develop research
and commercialise it. We have a lot
of agencies involved – Enterprise
Ireland, IDA, IRCA – and we are
pulling all these agencies together
to provide a roadmap for how
businesses can plug into that
research community.
We are hosting our second
annual Innovation Showcase in the
Convention Centre, Dublin on the
8th of December, involving all our
research partners at the Showcase.
Everything will be laid out for
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budding entrepreneurs so they
can come in and see exactly which
research centre around the country
they can belong to. We are looking
to get smaller companies partnered
with larger companies and we’re
targeting over 1,000 companies
a year to become engaged with
Research & Development (R&D).
But we also need to develop
that spirit of entrepreneurship at
an earlier stage – in primary and
secondary school – in order to
develop that culture of startups
and encourage people to think and
act like entrepreneurs throughout
their entire life. The Government is
devising an education strategy to
teach these skills, as we believe it’s
important that our education system
is enterprise focused on all levels.
My role in Government is to
bring together the Business and
Education sectors to ensure that
Ireland’s educational system
provides our young people with
the skills they need to succeed and
business needs to compete. As
Minister with special responsibility
for Skills, Research and Innovation I
am responsible for driving Ireland’s
Research and Innovation strategy
and our Skills strategy.
Talent is the key to Ireland’s
success; we have one of the
youngest populations in Europe and
a very good educational system.
Properly understood, our investment
in science and research is all about
developing a pool of highly talented
researchers with the skills to do
excellent research to add to the
sum of human knowledge and drive
business and social innovation.
In developing a culture of
entrepreneurship in Ireland as
part of advancing the national
entrepreneurship eco-system,
education is central. Our new
education and entrepreneurship
strategy will have a closer
engagement between our education
and enterprise than ever before.
Third level education plays a
critical role in driving research and
innovation and in producing and
equipping entrepreneurs with the
skills they need to succeed. We are
seeing an increase in the number
of campus companies and spinouts
from third level. I would like to see a
lot more, and I am confident we will
see more in the near future.
I am further encouraged by
Ireland’s ability to become a
global start-up hub through the
launch of GEN Ireland, part of
GEN Global. Ireland will benefit
from membership of global
entrepreneurship networks, and the
Innovation is smart
people backed up
with smart money.
It’s about getting
stakeholders from
all over industry to
work together
GEN Magazine Ireland
29/11/2015 6:57 p.m.