Creating Innovation

In the wake of Bertie resignation there has been much along the lines that Bertie wasted the Boom a mantra that the opposition have been touting out for years. Now there is indeed some validity to that. For one thing the way we invested in housing and not in innovation was disappointing. One of the biggest indications of innovation is the amount of patents filed. Ireland ranks 28th over all in terms of the number of patents filed with the US patent office. Although we have improved in the last 5 years we have jumped to 25th. Now to be fair taking patents as a whole is a bit wrong due to population difference. Taking population into account we are 23rd for patents filled over the last 5 years. Not exactly what we need if we are to become the Knowledge economy we want.

There is of course issue of scale so comparing our selves to Japan or the US is a bit silly. The examples we need to look at are countries that are within our own population bracket. Say under 8 million. This gives us.

So the obvious nation to look at is Finland. Israel may be of some use but the effect of military spending probably renders it less useful of an example.

So lets look at the growth of Patents in both countries.

As you can see there is little evidence of anything in that growth. Neither country has grown massively compared to the other.This is an interesting result. David McWilliams often mentions the Fins and their response to the collapse to their property boom back in the early 90s. Where the government invested heavily in Science and Math bring new innovation to the country leading it to where it is today. However looking at the above graph. If Ireland has started where they had in 1994 we would not be far off them right now. (In fact Ireland’s number of Patents grew by 328% while Finland’s rose by 276%.) So really although as David says they invested in Maths and Science in the early 90s there is no evidence yet (well patent based evidence) that this lead to an increase in growth of innovation out of the ordinary.

Of course this kind of innovation takes time to grow you don’t just build silicon valley overnight and perhaps the fruits of Finland’s investment is yet to show. But it hasn’t shown just yet in innovation of patents so maybe David might want to look for examples elsewhere. Indeed we have to ask why are we so far behind in the first place. What drives innovation is their a cultural thing here, Look at some of the bottom countries in Europe Portugal, Spain, Italy Ireland and the top countries Finland, Switzerland, Denmark, Germany is it the old protestant catholic work ethic thing or left wing politics? Or is it something else. Before we embark on the solution we need to know the problem.

However one thing it does show that Ireland while we might be growing innovation at a decent rate we need to realise we have to catch up we are behind running at the same speed gets you nowhere. We are currently ahead of Portugal, Spain, Italy and Greece of the Euro 15 patents per million so at least we are not the worst.