Knowledge: The Key to Economic Transformation

This Thursday represents a significant moment in the development of a Knowledge Economy here in Northern Ireland, when the inaugural ‘Northern Ireland Knowledge Economy Index – Baseline Report’ is published. This is an important step in establishing exactly where we are in our aspirations to become a Knowledge Economy and importantly will benchmark us against other comparable regions in the UK and further afield.

It represents a significant piece of work for the Northern Ireland Science Park, underpinned by extensive research and analysis by Oxford Economics and delivered in partnership with Northern Bank.  It will analyse exactly what we mean by a knowledge economy and define the various metrics against which we need to measure our performance. It is at one level an exercise in the philosophy of Socrates – ‘Knowing Thyself’, giving an honest assessment of where we are across key metrics, be they good or bad, so we know where we need to improve. More importantly it will spell out the scale of the opportunity that faces us as an economic region, if we can collectively up our game and raise our ambitions. It will be used to set targets across all the main metrics for the next 5, 10, 15 and 20 years and become the focus for all those involved in the knowledge sector.

Without wishing to jump the gun, the report is clear that the opportunities for the Northern Ireland economy are huge, with tens of thousands of new jobs – both directly and indirectly – on offer if we could become the leading region in the UK for knowledge intensive business. While this is an ambitious target it is entirely realistic and grounded. It will demand both public policy reform and private sector input and energy like never before, but it most definitely can be done.

If we need any evidence that this type of economic transformation is possible we will be joined on Thursday at Stormont Castle, when we launch the report, by someone who has been at the forefront of a similar transformation in San Diego. Once labelled America’s “Bust” City it is now one of the world’s most successful knowledge economies. Mary Walshok, co-founder of CONNECT, San Diego, will share with us the experience of the US city region which has a population of 1.3 million and which faced losing 100,000 jobs following a sustained period of economic decline and an overreliance on its failing military and aerospace industries. A sustained and collaborative effort by the private, education and public sectors transformed the economy through facilitating the convergence of scientific invention, entrepreneurship and smart capital. Today the knowledge economy represents 11.2% of the economy’s employment and generates a full quarter of the region’s wages.

We should copy their ambition. We are already modelling the San Diego experience here under the NISP CONNECT programme. If we can continue to build momentum and improve the public policy environment this could have a transformative effect on the Northern Ireland economy; increasing employment (directly in terms of high end technology jobs and indirectly through support and service jobs) , wages and reducing the dependency on the public sector. Traditionally our aspirations here have been low, happy to be among the average or simply to not be at the bottom. As San Diego’s experience shows, this is a time to be more ambitious and to set our sights much higher. We have the talent, we have the will and we now need to harness both to deliver a step change in our collective economic fortunes.

For anyone who wants to put a shoulder to the wheel, you will be able to get a copy of the report from our website after Thursday – www.nispconnect.org. Even better, feel free to join us for a debate about the Report on Thursday evening at the Science Park – 5pm-7.45pm.