News
26 October 2011
The Innovation for Competitive Enterprises (ICE) programme has recruited it’s second cohort of 31 companies and will be working with these companies to enhance their innovation capability through the intensive twelve month ‘learning by doing’ programme.
The companies were brought together for a first Group Innovation Workshop which was held on October 26th 2011 in the Glenavon Hotel, Cookstown, Northern Ireland. The theme of this first Workshop was “Ideas in Business”, how to introduce creativity into the business, how to capture ideas from employees and customers and how to assess and evaluate new ideas before preparing the roadmap.
The Workshop was practical and interactive and there was an opportunity for the learnings to be put into practice through a Group exercise where some owner managers presented their own real business issues and others carried on “brainstorming”, idea creation and idea evaluation on the issues and offered potentials solutions. The solutions were also assessed through an ideas assessment toolkit.
The day closed with some real live case studies presented by Professor Dennis McKeag former Professor of Product Development at the University of Ulster. Professor McKeag has been helping international and local companies in Northern Ireland to improve their manufacturing processes and increase their bottom line for over 20 years and presented a case study from one of the companies he has worked with recently, Rapid Engineering Ltd.
Kieran Fegan ICE Programme Manager commented, ‘It is important to put processes in place to identify, capture or generate and effectively assess ideas so that those with potential can be implemented effectively’.
ICE which has received approximately €2.49 million of support under the EU’s INTERREG IVA Programme, with assistance from Scottish Enterprise is spearheaded by Dundalk Institute of Technology. Representing a truly collaborative approach Dundalk Institute of Technology is implementing the project alongside the University of Ulster, the University of Glasgow and Glasgow Caledonian, University. ICE is designed to enhance the innovation capacity of local businesses through an intensive twelve month ‘learning by doing’ programme. The three year project will enable 90 company participants to develop new business models, products and services.
For further information on ICE contact the Regional Development Centre at DkIT on Tel: 00353 42 9370425 or contact Kieran Fegan directly on 00353 87 417 4681.
Contact:
Kieran Fegan
ICE Programme Manager
Tel: 00353 87 417 4681
E-mail: kieran.fegan@dkit.ie
The ICE project is part-financed by the European Union's European Regional Development Fund through the INTERREG IVA Cross-border Programme managed by the Special EU Programmes Body with match financial assistance from Scottish Enterprise.