To ask the Minister of Enterprise, Trade and Investment to detail the cross-departmental strategies designed to increase communication with HEI, FEC and University students regarding the importance of innovation, in which her Department is involved.

The Northern Ireland Executive’s recently published Innovation Strategy highlights the importance of increasing innovation across all sectors of the economy. The Innovation Strategy emphasises the important role that universities and further education colleges have to play in helping transform our economy into one that is truly knowledge based. My Department therefore works very closely with the Department for Employment and Learning and other stakeholders including the Universities, Colleges NI, and the Northern Ireland Science Park to reinforce the importance of innovation and entrepreneurship and identifying new ways of strengthening the culture of innovation across the education system.

Underpinning the Innovation Strategy is the need for much better collaboration and commercialisation of research so that we can drive innovation, productivity and growth. Through Invest NI, a range of programmes including the Proof of Concept, Innovation Vouchers and Knowledge Transfer Partnerships, are in place to accelerate the commercialisation of new ideas and research.