INNOVATION OPINION:Invariably the creative spark is missing or is proposed then rejected by the conservatism that often seems to smother Irish business people, writes DICK AHLSTROM

HOW MANY have been watching The Apprenticeon TV3? Contestants battle it out for the opportunity to win a €100,000 job with businessman Bill Cullen of Penny Applesfame. If the programme shows one thing it's how far we will go for money.

Each week the hopefuls face into some task, setting up a sales presentation, redecorating a wreck of a house, selling ice cream on a sunny summer's day. The participants then troop back into Cullen's "boardroom", usually satisfied they had done a sterling job. Invariably though the quality of the performance is not what it seems and Cullen rapidly dismantles their contributions as grossly inadequate, before choosing one of the weakest performers to be "fired" from the programme.

Nominally the tasks have some business dimension to them: team working, getting more sales than the other group, or delivering a good presentation. The contestants come almost exclusively from a business background and so they recognise the requirement for these skills and immediately run to form, being the good salesman, being the good marketing person, giving a great business pitch.

Cullen knows the value of these skills as well and will take as a given that the person who finally wins will already have them. But he wants something extra from them and week in, week out the contestants repeatedly seem to miss this. He says it to them over and over, week-after-week but they never seem to get it.

He wants them to be creative when they pursue the tasks. He wants some fresh ideas, wants to see signs that they are thinking "outside the box".

Invariably this creative spark is missing or is proposed then rejected by the conservatism that often seems to smother Irish business people. It is safer to work to the same old programme, to avoid taking a chance or to try something new or innovative.

If the contestants we have watched on The Apprenticeare a representative sample of the Irish business community then we should really start worrying. We are desperate for innovation and creativity now the Celtic Tiger has lost its claws.

Look up the word creativity and you will see a variant for innovation. Look up innovation in the dictionary and you will see the word creativity. We need creativity and innovation if we are to find a way out of our current economic morass, we need our business people to find a better, more clever way of doing things.

In the current situation its pointless getting caught up in post-mortems on two decades of profligate spending by successive governments or the depredations of the banks as they scrambled to feast on the fatted calf delivered by property developers. We need to learn from this period and study it in detail later on. For now there are more immediate challenges.

Businesses must learn to exist in this new environment where margins are squeezed. They can't count on an economic tide to keep them afloat.

For all the damage to its reputation, business success makes a huge difference to us all. Success means more jobs and more wealth, but failure means growing unemployment.

A cleverer, more competitive approach to sales, marketing and the conduct of business will make Irish companies more successful. Failure to innovate at every level in these difficult times will keep the economy in the doldrums.

This is why Cullen's insistence on creativity is so appropriate at this time. Coming up with innovative ways of doing things will boost competitiveness and help companies to survive. New ideas and fresh approaches will help us get out of this mess and achieve it quicker than plodding along in the old familiar ways of the past.

People have lost confidence in the political classes but this doesn't mean that everything they say is wrong. The Government is constantly harping on about how innovation can help improve competitiveness and this in turn can increase wealth and jobs. The term innovation appears in the title of the national science strategy and is part of Conor Lenihan's moniker as Minister of State for Science, Technology and Innovation. We have an innovation task force preparing reports and the smart economy is all about creativity and innovation.

The term creativity usually tends to get boxed into matters related to the arts: a creative poet or creative music. But creativity simply means coming up with new ideas and is just as meaningful when applied to the arts as it is in business, science and commerce. Maybe we had better hire Cullen as a national consultant and send him out to pounce on those in business and Government who refuse to think outside the box. A good starting point might be the banks given the recent hiring decisions.