Innovation and Rural Knowledge Communities: Learning from the Irish Revival

This paper asserts that the present innovation strategy pursued by the State, namely concentrating substantial resources to science and technology R&D, in the natural sciences, information technology and engineering, underestimates the contribution of the social sciences and humanities to the goal of achieving a knowledge society. This ignores, for example, how environmental and cultural values play a central role in the quality of life and well-being in communities. There is far more potential, in particular, to obtain an invigorated rural Ireland if the ideas that inspired the Irish Revival or Renaissance in the thirty or so years prior to the foundation of the State are central to the creativity agenda.