It’s no secret that Ireland has economic problems at the moment. But a national strategy to boost innovation and create a ‘smart economy’ aims to keep the country on a strong footing in science, technology and related enterprise and to offer an entrepreneur-friendly environment.

Plans to improve Ireland’s standing in science and its outputs are not new. Even before the height of the so-called Celtic Tiger years, during the 1990s Irish state agencies were investing in building up universities and institutes of research.

Then a decade ago, Science Foundation Ireland was set up to focus attention – and money – on basic research in life sciences and ICT because these were identified as two areas where Ireland had excellent potential.

Many of the world’s major healthcare companies and computer processing giants (such as Intel) were already present in Ireland thanks in part to favourable corporation tax breaks and the benefits of a well educated, English-speaking population in a physical gateway to Europe.

Against this backdrop, the first years of the century saw rapid change in the research landscape and output. Ireland started to soar up the rankings in scientific publications - particularly in nanotechnology and immunology – and the innovations and intellectual property started to roll out, helped by another state agency, Enterprise Ireland.

Here was 21st century Ireland: no longer on the world map just for literary and musical renown, but increasingly for innovation in science, technology and engineering.

This period saw the emergence of innovative, research-focused Irish companies such as Opsona Therapeutics, which is working with multinational pharmaceutical companies Pfizer and Merck to develop immune-targeted therapies arising from Irish research.

Irish company Sigmoid Pharma is also making strides, this time with trials of innovative drug delivery, and has ongoing collaborations not only with researchers at Irish universities, but also with clinicians in the UK and US.

Meanwhile investment into ICT research has generated IP from Irish universities that is leading to the creation of exciting companies such as HeyStaks, which offers a more effective approach to search the Internet.

The invigorated research sector also helped to attract further interest from international companies, and household names such as Microsoft, Google, Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline strengthened their operations in Ireland.

Today, the economic boom is over. But even before the worst of the financial problems hit, it was recognised that building further on the research investment could offer Ireland a potential lifeline through the crisis.

In 2008, the Irish Government formally announced its plans to build a ‘smart economy’ with a thriving enterprise sector, high-quality employment, secure energy supplies, an attractive environment, and first-class infrastructure.

To train the focus on what is needed to create this ecosystem, Ireland’s prime minister, An Taoiseach Brian Cowen T.D., appointed an Innovation Task Force in June 2009 to advance the development of Ireland as a global innovation hub.

The idea behind it is to make Ireland the best place in Europe where research and knowledge can be turned into products and services, where new companies can form and existing ones can expand and where research-intensive multinational companies can collaborate with each other and clusters of small companies.

So what did the Task Force highlight? Their recommendations included encouraging seed, angel and venture capital in Ireland, attracting overseas companies to set up or grow here, boosting the Irish education system, smarter use of intellectual property, new supports and incentives for enterprise and marketing ‘Innovation Ireland’.

Too often, such reports can lie gathering dust and have no impact, but already measures are being taken in Ireland that reflect the Task Force’s advice.

In July this year, Brian Cowen announced Innovation Fund Ireland, a €500 million initiative aimed at increasing the number and scale of innovation driven, and high-growth businesses in Ireland, offering support for early-stage companies and attracting greater venture capital into Ireland. This month saw the announcement of the first commitments from the initiative to two venture capital funds through DFJ, which invests in emerging technologies.

But what about the start of the innovation chain that leads to commercially exploitable technologies, where a key ingredient is excellent research?

The university sector in Ireland is actively working to further stimulate the research environment, with proposed incentives for students who study higher-level maths at school, and a continuing trend of collaborations between universities, institutes and industry.

One of the partnerships praised by the Innovation Task Force is the Innovation Alliance formed by Ireland’s two largest universities – University College Dublin and Trinity College Dublin – which has a strong focus on strengthening PhD-level training.

“The universities are consciously trying to build alliances by identifying areas of synergy,” says Professor Michael Gilchrist, Vice Principal for Research and Innovation in the College of Engineering Mathematical and Physical sciences at UCD.

“So rather than one individual university, you put these two – UCD and Trinity – together, and you have 50 per cent of the PhD students in the country. Then you get a sense of scale.”

State agencies in Ireland are also strengthening their collaborations, and the Innovation Task Force report is having its influence, according to Dr Diarmuid O’Brien, executive director of the Centre for Research on Adaptive Nanostructures and Nanodevices in Trinity. The Centre carries out fundamental research into materials – an area where Ireland now ranks 8th globally - and it has collaborative links with Intel, Hewlett-Packard and several other international and indigenous companies.

“There is no question that the process of developing the report and its subsequent launch have influenced the broader research environment and how research and centres are funded,” says Dr O’Brien, offering the example of a scheme to place commercialisation development managers in research centres.

“This scheme is enabling significantly more focus to be placed on not just the protection of intellectual property put also its exploitation.”

Enterprise Ireland has also been strengthening the technology transfer operations at Irish universities and technology institutes, and investing in programmes to guide early-stage and high-potential companies towards the market.

So the supports are being put in place to develop this innovation ecosystem in Ireland that can not only generate its own ideas and exploit their commercial potential, but also engage on a global scale by attracting enterprise and exporting the fruits of innovation.

However there’s one more required ingredient: time. As one respondent put it, you cannot turn innovation on and off like a tap.

It’s a sentiment echoed by Dr Ena Prosser from Irish-based life-science-focused venture capital fund Fountain Healthcare Partners, who says the changes needed to generate a ‘pro-entrepreneur’ environment can be subtle but effective, and do not happen overnight.

“A change in emphasis of policy takes some period of time to translate…This is not an Irish perspective, it is the reality of innovation policy,” she says. A high level group is now overseeing the implementation of the Innovation Taskforce Report and with early achievements including the €500m Innovation Fund Ireland, the future appears positive.

A freshly-minted Engineering graduate with entrepreneurial dreams. A start-up with global ambitions. A high-tech company ready to land in the United States. What do all these situations have in common? They all belong to the M31 galaxy.

M31 is the code name for the Andromeda galaxy, but it is also the name of a venture incubator based in Padova, Italy, which sees itself as a galaxy of technology stars. Established in 2006, M31 is a different type of venture incubator: part incubator, part seed fund, and part operational advisor.

M31 inaugurates a new approach to entrepreneurship that aims at transforming innovative technologies by young researchers into successful companies. In essence, M31 helps young entrepreneurs trying to implement their entrepreneurial idea by supporting them in the most difficult phase: from idea to company. M31’s offering goes well beyond that of a traditional incubator: it doesn’t simply provide office space, it also provides shared services such as administration, HR management, product development, and general management. In so doing, it drastically decreases the costs and risks associated with starting up a company, which frequently prove unsustainable for a start-up. You could say that M31 applies the principles of “company engineering” in order to balance start-up risks with growth opportunities, with the goal of creating global companies. In addition, it works side-by-side with the CEOs of its portfolio companies in an executive coaching role.

M31 was established to fill a gap: too many brilliant Italian researchers with a business idea need to go abroad to raise funds. And it was established with the ambitious goal of creating an ecosystem that supports innovation and the creation of new ventures, by working with the best universities and research labs.

The key word to understand M31 is “business development”: while most incubators don’t go beyond the launch phase, M31 works alongside its portfolio companies to generate new business, thereby ensuring their success. “Without the support of the M31 management team we would have never been able to negotiate a number of agreements with strategic international partners,” says Giuliano Barbaro, CEO of CenterVue, the first portfolio company of M31.

How does M31 discover all these innovative technologies? Its deal flow stems from a very active network of entrepreneurs and researchers, and from an intense collaboration with Universities and research labs. Its founder and CEO, Ruggero Frezza, was a Professor of Engineering at the University of Padova for almost twenty years, and still cultivates tight relationships with the Italian and international academic worlds. In fact, the M31 portfolio companies include start-ups founded not only by researchers from the University of Padova, but also from other Universities such as the Università di Verona, the Politecnico di Milano, Drexel University of Philadelphia, the Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna in Pisa. And the list of prestigious institutes of higher education gravitating around the M31 orbit grows by the day.

As a result, a freshly-minted graduate with a business idea may knock on the M31 door, or the opposite may happen: M31 may intuit the market potential of a technology that, without its support, would remain underutilized for years to come.

These ideas are then jointly processed and transformed into a viable business plan. Often defined as “technology transfer,” the M31 model is actually much more. It is an approach to entrepreneurship that’s relatively unusual in Italy: it bets capital on innovative ideas, it incubates and nurtures those ideas by transferring managerial skills, and then launches them on the market for a profit.

Because the truth is that innovative technologies are not in short supply in Italy; what’s missing is an entrepreneurial spirit focused on converting those business ideas into sales and profits. That is the most significant contribution M31 intends to give to the country, as M31 aims to become a leading actor on the Italian innovation scene. In fact, all of the M31 initiatives support the collaboration between various players to benefit the Italian entrepreneurial universe.

M31 USA was established to fill another gap. All too often, Italian high-tech companies will literally sit on a treasure chest of innovative technologies that could –and should – conquer the world, but that instead remain in the workshop due to the costs and risks associated with expanding globally. Founded in 2010 in Santa Clara, California – in the heart of Silicon Valley – M31USA intends to support Italian and European high-tech companies in their global expansion journey.

Its offering is attractive not only for M31 portfolio companies, but also for other high tech companies ready to launch a US strategy. For them, M31 USA will unlock the doors to the US market by offering a full range of strategic and operational services: from developing a US market strategy, to ensuring marketing execution, to providing office space and shared services, and much more.

For all those managers eager to get a close glimpse of high-tech giants like Cisco, HP, Yahoo! And Google, M31USA offers a so-called Innovation Tour that will allow them to find out more about the “Silicon Valley way of doing business” and borrow the relevant professional practices. And University and research Labs can leverage M31USA to make sure their students complete their education with some training-on-the-job as well as with additional classes from local universities.

The presence of an office in Silicon Valley will prove helpful to M31 also in terms of fundraising and exit strategies for Italian and European start-ups. If a company has a global market, then perhaps it also needs international sources of funding. And it can ask M31 for support with US-based investors.

Just as M31 helps researchers in the difficult passage from idea to start-up, M31USA wants to help entrepreneurs in the first difficult steps of their expansion journey. It sees itself as a partner that can speed up global expansion while minimizing the risks.

Yet, M31 strongly believes that the road to technology incubation won’t be a one-way street. In fact, M31 USA won’t limit itself to helping European companies land in the US; rather, it will also help US and global companies discover emerging technologies in Italy. If there is no shortage of innovative technologies – as mentioned before - the real problem is that the rest of the world is not aware of this side of Italy. M31 wants to be among the first ones to tell the captivating story entitled “Italian-style High-tech.” And, it wants to help US firms scout for tech partners and suppliers in Italy.

While there is a strong appetite for such partners, a general sense of biased ignorance about the Italian high-tech offering prevails in the US. The work of M31USA will help demystify the myth of Old Europe and clarify the real technologic potential of the so-called Belpaese.

M31 can now count on the support of TT Venture, the first Italian venture capital fund entirely devoted to technology transfer. Sponsored by Fondazione Cariplo and Acri, and with another eight banking institutions as its Limited Partners, TTVenture gained a seat on the board of M31 thanks to an injection of fresh capital and fresh insights.

From idea to start-up, from start-up to successful global company: this is the story of M31 – a galaxy ready for discovery.

The International Network for SMEs (INSME) aims to promote the internationalisation of the national innovation systems and to encourage and facilitate transnational cooperation among innovation stakeholders worldwide, with a view to fostering SMEs access to existing knowledge.

Since 2005 the 3-day INSME Annual Meeting has represented the most important international event in the life of the INSME Network-, since it gives to the INSME global multi-stakeholder community of innovation players (the INSME association gathers 79 Member organisations in 32 countries in 5 continents) a unique opportunity for smart cross border networking and for building up and developing international business partnerships, while meeting peers from the public and private sectors coming from different geographical regions.

Each year the INSME Annual Meeting gathers about 200-250 people that share the same priority: how to make innovation happen in SMEs.

This common goal can be achieved in different ways and by using several tools, according to the chosen public policy mix and the public-private partnership models, which may vary according to the specific approach on SME support policy and on Innovation policy.

For this reason, the location of the INSME Annual Meeting changes every time, moving around the globe across continents, thus giving an overview on how SME Innovation related issues are tackled also under different country specific perspectives, i.e. benefiting from the local experience of our co-hosting members and partners. Cultural diversity is for us an added value and acts as a stimulus for increasing knowledge creation and knowledge transfer within our Community.

The Annual Meeting is certainly the right place to take stock of the main Network achievements, to increase knowledge sharing among the INSME Members, learning from other Members’ experiences and from their case studies, also with a view to encouraging and accelerating cross border cooperation activities on a voluntary basis among them. But it is much more than this: for all innovation stakeholders and practitioners, including policymakers, international organisations, academic experts, business intermediaries, and knowledge networks, it represents the ideal venue to meet the right players, to discuss the right topics and potentially to identify the right talents, partners, clients, sponsors, investors for their activity. It is a remarkable worldwide window for Members and innovation actors to market their projects and ideas, reaching the appropriate professional audience. It is about a meeting of minds with a “brain cross-fertilization” effect.

Each year we select a main theme for the INSME International Conference, taking into consideration both priorities within our Network, proposals arising from the members and the main issues that are hot on the SME, Innovation and Competitiveness policy international agenda.

This is why we are very pleased to announce that, after several years of gatherings outside Europe (in Uruguay, China, UAE and Brazil) the 2011 INSME event will take place in Helsinki, in cooperation with EPROCA – European Proclusters Association.

We are particularly glad that this time we are back in Europe, partnering with an international innovation network that is sharing our efforts to bring added value information and services to innovation intermediaries to the benefit of SMEs, in order to help them narrow the knowledge gap by fostering transnational collaborations.

Why the 7th INSME Annual Meeting in Finland? Finland is globally recognized to be among the most innovative countries, already investing 3.7% of its GDP in R&D. Its performance in terms of R&D and innovation indicators is outstanding, not just within the EU but on a worldwide scale. We are eager to learn about the reasons behind the successful country economic model put in place in this relatively small EU country. We will have a chance to understand if the “Finnish secret” and the virtuous investments made by both the public and private sectors to turn Finland into an innovation champion can be replicated elsewhere and inspire others. For us, Finland is also the best link to reach the Baltic region and the Nordic Council at the same time as well as to more easily attract in our Community the neighbour Russian stakeholders. Meeting some of the main Finnish and Nordic innovation stakeholders will enrich our vision and our portfolio of good practices.

Finland reminds at once hi-tech, ICT large companies and big private research centers, performing VC investments in knowledge-based start-ups, and the open innovation model. But Finland is much more than this, when it comes to doing business. It is also about design, creativeness, clusters, innovative thinking, intellectual capital, social innovation.

The INSME Annual Meeting in the 2012 World Design Capital will provide us with a comprehensive insight into the Finnish national innovation system and into its own way to make innovation happen in SMEs. The Conference will also be an occasion for stimulating an open international debate on the innovation economy, involving many lecturers and experts from outside the European scenario. Don’t miss this opportunity!

Mark your calendar on 23rd -26th May 2011, Stock House, Helsinki: "Competitiveness, Culture and Cross-Border Co-operation: Assisting SMEs to Grow, Innovate and Reach International Markets"

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If you have ever been interested in startups or meeting the startup community in your area, then Startup Weekend is the place for you!

Startup Weekend is a 54 hour startup event that provides the networking, resources, and incentives for individuals and teams to go from idea to launch. Get connected with local developers, innovators and entrepreneurs. Build Community. Start Companies. No Talk. All Action.

A typical event begins at 5pm on a Friday evening, participants have a chance to meet each other, then at 7pm pitches begin. Anyone with an idea is allowed 90 seconds to pitch it. Ideas can be anything from a new iPhone app, to a new fundraising platform to a new web based game or location based service. Since most events happen in large conference rooms at corporate offices, co-working spaces, or universities the bulk of the ideas are tech focused but still need non-technical people to help round out the teams and to create business plans, marketing strategies, and prepare press releases.

Once all of the ideas have been pitched on Friday voting takes place, the ideas are narrowed down to the top 20%. Once everyone has had a chance to vote on the ideas they liked the most, the participants break into teams around the ideas chosen and begin to build a prototype of their idea all day Saturday and into Sunday. On Sunday evening the teams are given 5 minutes to present their project to a panel of judges, often including prominent local entrepreneurs, VC’s and angel investors.

So Who Attends an Event?

-Entrepreneurs

-Innovators

-Lawyers

-Students

-Developers

-Marketing pros

-Business Development folks

-Investors

-VC’s

In just three short years the event has grown to 103 cities spanning 29 countries and continues to expand rapidly. The goal of the organization is to educate entrepreneurs around the world by working hands on creating new startups, networking, introducing founders to other co-founders, and helping to build a stronger community of people passionate about startups in each location. Especially as of recently, there have been some interesting stories and projects coming out of Startup Weekend.

We educate, inspire, connect and accelerate entrepreneurs in local communities around the world.

A few examples of Startup Weekend companies:

Twit-pay - Looking for a simple and effective solution for Twitter fundraising? Learn more about Twitpay's RT2Give™, a simple turnkey solution that combines the simplicity of mobile giving with the power of Twitter. Available soon for select non-profits. (Raised $1,000,000)

Foodspotting – An iPhone application that allows users to take a picture of their food and to rate other dishes. When you’re looking for the best ribs or the best slice of key lime pie this app lets you check out dishes in advacen and share the ones you love with friends. (Raised $250,000)

Skribit - We all know how much writer's block stinks. You want to produce original, quality content for your devoted readers but you're all out of ideas. Skribit helps you get suggestions for blog posts from your readers and the Skribit community.

Startup Weekend has begun to implement their process to foster peace through innovation and collaboration. From July 14-16th, 2010 the team at Startup Weekend organized an event in Tel-Aviv that brought 30 Palestinians together with 130 Israelis at the Perez Center for Peace in Jaffa, Israel to build startups for 54 hours. Startup Weekend went out and gathered support from the government of Israel as well as from corporate sponsors to allow the Palestinians to enter Israel and covered their transportation, food, and lodging for the 54 hour event.

In the fall Startup Weekend is planning on doing an event in Haiti in an effort to bring entrepreneurs together to start new businesses within Haiti’s borders.

The events are open to anyone interested in the local entrepreneurial community and puts them in a setting where anything is possible. In the past 2 years, 500+ startups have started, 16,000+ entrepreneurs have been inspired, teams have even started to generate revenue during the 54hr event! Others have even gone on to direct angel and VC investment. None of these stats take into account the amazing networking, ongoing professional relationships, and amazing experience that happens at every event.

Startup Weekend is a Non-Profit in Seattle, WA powered by local communities and managed by Clint Nelsen, Marc Nager and Franck Nouyrigat.

★ Representation in 103 cities and 29 countries

★Millions of dollars have been invested in Startup Weekend companies

★ 16,000+ past attendees in just 3 years

★ 500+ New Ventures

★ 36% Still active

★ 10% funded or generating revenues

★ 85% still keep in touch with someone they met at the event

★ Primary demographic age 25 - 35

★ 66% Full-time employed, 25% unemployed

★ 20% Have attended more than one Startup Weekend

★ 95% would attend again