A birds’ eye view of the set-up inside the Innovation Showcase

The National Innovation Showcase is part of a drive by the Irish Government to open up the innovation, research and development infrastructure to business.

The event is the brainchild of Enterprise Ireland and is being held in close cooperation with IDA Ireland and Science Foundation Ireland.

Over 1,700 people attended the Innovation Showcase on Tuesday 2nd December 2014 in the Convention Centre, Dublin.

The aim of the event was to give companies in Ireland an introduction to State supports to increase the level of collaboration between industry and State-supported entities. 

The key attraction of the event was that it made it as easy as possible for the intended target audiences to find all the information they need, in one location, on one day, to engage in some form of collaborative research.

Every support from a €5,000 innovation voucher right up to engaging in a pan-European, multi million euro collaboration in Horizon 2020 was on show with the relevant programme managers of each support available to provide expert advice to attendees.

Members of the venture capital and investment community also had the opportunity to see the work going on in the wider research and technology system, something which is vital to ensure that early-stage start-ups with their roots in State-funded research continue to attract investment.

Highlights of the innovation showcase

• 65 State supported entities promoting innovation in one location on one day
• 38 Research Centres, Technology Centres, national institutes and facilities of scale on display together for the first time
• First directory of all Research Centres and Technology centres of scale
• Trending 2nd on Twitter in Ireland, just behind Christmas!
• National media coverage – Morning Ireland, Six One News and Irish Times
• Unprecedented web traffic for a set-piece event
• Horizon 2020 participation was highly successful with many relevant meetings producing good leads for future applications
• Big Ideas 2014 was THE most successful one to date
• Feedback from attendees was overwhelmingly positive

The Big Ideas – investor ready start-ups event
Enterprise Ireland has run the Big Ideas event since 2009 and it was agreed that incorporating it into the Innovation Showcase would be an opportunity to open the event up to a wider audience of potential business partners, industry advisors and potential investors.
In a shift from previous years, the 2014 Big Ideas focussed on spin-out companies from State-funded research only. 13 participants were selected from the spin-out pipeline by Enterprise Ireland commercialisation specialists.

More than 50 formal one-to-one meetings were arranged with investors at the Big Ideas Investor Hub/Meeting zone.