The Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern T.D. today officially opened the National Productivity Centre at the IMI Campus in Sandyford, Dublin.
The €2m Centre is collaboration between the Irish Management Institute (IMI) and Microsoft and has been developed to allow CEOs, Secretary Generals and their senior management teams to understand how they can address their competitiveness challenges by improving overall levels of productivity. The NPC, supported by Dell, eircom, Fujitsu Siemens and HP draws on the knowledge, insight and experience of experts from across the private and public sectors.
Speaking at the official opening event, the Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern T.D. said: "The productivity debate and the need to have a productivity mindset and culture embedded in both public and private sector organisations is probably more important now than at any time in our recent economic history. Nationally we have to get large and small companies alike to champion productivity as the new competitiveness imperative, not least in the expanding services sector on which our economy is increasingly reliant. While the scale of the challenge is not to be underestimated, I have every confidence that this new National Productivity Centre will play no small part in helping us meet it successfully."
Microsoft and the IMI have come together to create the National Productivity Centre to provide a practical response to addressing the issue of improving Ireland’s productivity. Their respective expertise in the areas of technology innovation and executive education brings together a range of solutions that will benefit every Irish-based organisation seeking to address their competitiveness issues. Executives will be hosted at the NPC, where they will get insight into how the combination of ICT, management capability and innovation can drive success.
The National Productivity Centre provides visiting executives with a hands on interactive experience. It includes international best practice and draws on the expertise of a number of leading economic commentators and management practitioners based in Ireland and internationally. The session will also provide real-world sector-specific case studies on how companies around the world are addressing the issue of productivity.
Dr. Phil Nolan, Chairman, the Irish Management Institute, commenting at the official opening said: “Keeping Ireland in the premier league of economies requires interventions such as the NPC to reality-check where we are at. In the same way that having a well-educated workforce was a magic formula for Ireland in the last century, now we need to have a highly productive workforce to be able to compete. The NPC will be an important building block in that work and fits in well with the IMI’s mission over the past 50 years to ensure Ireland has access to executive education to keep us at the forefront of global best practice.”
Speaking at the launch, Joe Macri, MD, Microsoft Ireland said: “The recognition from business leaders and policy makers that enhanced productivity holds the key to Ireland’s future economic success drove us to partner with the IMI to develop the National Productivity Centre. According to research from McKinsey and the London School of Economics the combination of improving technology, management capability and innovation can yield productivity improvements of up to 20%. That’s why bringing together the expertise of both organisations delivers real insight on how to address productivity and gives executives from the private and public sector the opportunity to explore how these kinds of solutions can be applied to their own organisations.”
The National Productivity Centre draws on the expertise and experience of experts and organisations from Ireland and around the world. Its focus is on bringing together this knowledge in the three areas that will have the most positive impact on organisational productivity, namely:
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ICT: Technology can help businesses to increase productivity through improved collaboration and business insight
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Management Capability: Improving management skills is central to increasing productivity
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Innovation: Innovation is central to productivity – but it’s the combination of technological innovation and business innovation that delivers the greatest returns
The development of the NPC follows on from the commissioning of an economic report into the area of Productivity by Microsoft in May 2005. This report was written by economist Paul Tansey and published to coincide with the celebrations of Microsoft’s 20th anniversary in Ireland.
Since the publication of that report the theme of productivity has been climbing up the national agenda with further reports on the topic published by Forfas and the National Competitiveness Council amongst others.
