North-west outpaces other regions for innovation, according to European Commission ranking
The analysis found that the northern and western region of Ireland generated strong performances this year in areas such as collaboration among innovative SMEs, participation rates in third-level education, broadband connections, studies published in international scientific papers, and cloud computing at enterprises.
That's according to John Daly, the economist at the Northern and Western Regional Assembly (NWRA), which is tasked with supporting economic development in the counties of Galway, Mayo, Roscommon, Sligo, Leitrim, Donegal, Cavan and Monaghan. The NWRA is one of three regional assemblies in Ireland and is also the managing authority for the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) in these counties.
The scoreboard shows the region's innovation score 'outperforms the likes of the Stuttgart, Catalonia, Prague and Dusseldorf regions,' Mr Daly said. He said one of the main drivers in innovation improvement in the north-west was the opening in 2022 of Atlantic Technological University (ATU), which brought together the former IT Sligo, Letterkenny IT and Galway Mayo IT.
ATU 'gave scale to those institutes and enabled them to act as one,' he said. 'The likes of ATU and the University of Galway are rural by nature but now they have more capacity to better link in with neighbouring SMEs, which are increasingly collaborating with each other. It means there's more investment and focus on providing a skills base for the region, and ATU has a remit to undertake more research with private industry.'
Every two years, the Commission analyses innovation indicators and categorises each European region into 'innovation leaders', which have the highest score, 'strong innovators', 'moderate innovators' and 'emerging innovators'.
The most innovative region in Europe was Stockholm in Sweden. Ireland's only innovation leader is the eastern and midland region, which includes the greater Dublin area. It ranked 28th of the 241 regions examined, acting as Ireland's only 'innovation leader'. However, the northern and western region is just three places short of becoming an innovation leader, Mr Daly said.
The results, he said, highlight the importance of growing innovation systems outside of the greater Dublin area.
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