NUI Galway has launched the Lucerna Project Report on Capability Transformation and Competitiveness as part of a one-day Symposium with contributions from industry, policy-makers and academics. The symposium included a keynote address by Professor Michael Best of the University of Cambridge and the University of Massachusetts, the Senior Advisor on the Lucerna project. The report is based on a new industry database developed over three years at the Centre for Innovation and Structural Change (CISC), NUI Galway. The Lucerna database consists of company and product-related information, which allows for a deeper understanding of technological change and industrial development in Ireland. It represents a systematic approach to identify key industrial clusters that are creating a competitive position for Ireland and consists of business demographics for key technology-based clusters in Ireland. The database allows for the examination of technological activities, the specification of technology-related clusters and most importantly, emerging technologies and technology management capabilities. The database and report is a key project of CISC, it will enable policy makers and academics to answer key questions on the genesis and sustainability of Irish indigenous industry. The project is funded under the EU's Marie Curie Transfer of Knowledge program and reflects a partnership between NUI Galway and the University of Massachusetts, USA. The database details firms and the products they make – single or multiple – and the sectors they operate in. Many firms, particularly large ones, operate in more than one sector. Companies that straddle industry boundaries are most important in understanding industrial change and renewal as firms transition into new industries and products. Lucerna includes rapidly growing companies, those in transition and foreign Multi-National Company (MNC's) subsidiaries that drive industrial growth and, as such, are the carriers, developers and consolidators of regionally distinctive technological capabilities. The report suggests that from a capabilities perspective, Ireland has assimilated certain technological, manufacturing and managerial capabilities primarily from the presence of multinationals and supported by HEI investment that can be the drivers of renewed economic growth. Speaking at the launch of the report, CEO of Enterprise Ireland Frank Ryan said: "The increasing complexity and diversity of business requires new thinking around data and information capture. I congratulate the project team on the substantial work that they have achieved so far and I look forward to further iterations and other sectors being added to the analysis". Paul Ryan, CISC Principal Investigator on the project, said: "The Lucerna project research focuses attention on the real economy, that part that makes up the tax base and the wealth-creation. It puts the business enterprise at the heart of the innovation story. Successful firms have distinctive capabilities. These can be grouped across localised firms into distinctive regional capabilities. The Lucerna project focuses on the identification of the origins and development of such capabilities in high-tech firms in Ireland. These can be the foundations on which to build the road to recovery for the real economy". CISC is an inter-disciplinary research institute, based at J.E. Cairnes Business School of Business & Economic at NUI Galway, focused on building an internationally-recognised programme of research and education on innovation processes and policies that are fundamental to the development of a knowledge-based economy. -Ends-