Innovation Dublin is an annual festival highlighting and promoting innovation across the city.

The primary focus of Innovation Dublin is to raise public awareness of the innovation and creativity that is happening on a daily basis in Dublin, to inspire and stimulate innovation and creativity and to encourage networking opportunities.

The success of the festival has been largely due to the many business and organisations that have shown their passion for innovation and organised event.

Dublin City Council’s Economic Development Unit (EDU) provides the programme co-ordination and promotional activity for the Innovation Dublin Festival, supported by a working group made up of representatives from the member organisations of the Creative Dublin Alliance across Dublin’s academia, local government and business sectors. As well as organising events in their own right, each partner leverages their constituent members and communities to promote wider involvement in the festival.

In 2009, the first Innovation Dublin festival was held over seven days. The programme included over 465 events organised across the City region by 54 partner organisations. In 2010, Innovation Dublin was expanded to 12 days. 394 high-quality events were held in over 77 venues throughout the city, with 117 organisations participating.

During 2010, Innovation Dublin became part of a European Funded project (INTERREG IVB NWE) called Inspiring Open Innovation Team (IOIT). As a result, a group from Dublin (made up of Dublin City Council’s Economic Development Unit, UCD and the National College of Ireland’s Centre for Research and Innovation) is partnering with eight cities in the north west of Europe to develop open innovation models through transnational collaboration, to maximise European level synergies and development potential in the knowledge economy.

We are currently evaluating the 2011 Innovation Dublin Festival which ran from 17th October – 18th November.