Net Results:Last week I attended a very interesting National Forum on Europe event in Dublin Castle, which considered the notion of creating a knowledge economy in Ireland. The title was Research and the Knowledge Economy: the European Dimension, writes  Karlin Lillington

Before your eyes glaze over at that overused and underdefined phrase, let me reassure you that difficulties in discerning what the term means were also discussed, including the need to have a better idea of what the State is aiming for.

I sat in on some of the working group discussions and heard two brief keynotes by the Minister for Enterprise Trade and Employment, Micheál Martin, and Prof Frank Gannon, director general designate of Science Foundation Ireland (SFI).

The floor was then thrown open to comments from invited observers and the Minister and Prof Gannon responded.

The level of productive discussion and insight was very impressive and constructive. I came away with a feeling that such events should be held regularly and independently, with the same sort of formula: no heavy imposition of goals but with an open ear from the Government and the participants.

They all need to be listening, not just talking at each other.

The forum has held a number of such events on various topics that relate to Ireland and the EU. It describes its raison d'etre as "not to advocate or promote a particular course of action. It is to be a politically neutral public space within which political views and analyses of all shades can be put forward on the EU, and on Ireland in the EU".

Such is the respect for the forum, or perhaps the urgency of the topic, and more likely both, that it managed to draw an impressive list of top-level participants from education, research, semi-State agencies and Government.

The forum is chaired by the always formidable and impressive Senator Maurice Hayes, which helps give it the appropriate gravitas as well.

I often think the brevity of such events enables great productivity. If working groups are well managed, they don't get bogged down in detail or snag on a more forceful personality's views.

Here, everyone knew that they only had 90 minutes to hash out their chosen topic amongst the three working group sessions - on strategy and priorities, infrastructure, and building research capacity.

That meant that members avoided layers of detail, while boiling opinions down into a series of concise perspectives that were more productive than having a sprawling working group go away for several weeks and return.

The sessions reminded me of a series of three-minute "elevator pitches" favoured by venture capitalists when considering an investment in a company - concentrated, shotgun statements about the who, where, when, what and why. The largest working group session, and the one that I attended, was about strategy and priorities, which was stimulating in its broad consideration of a difficult topic, and ably chaired by Nora Owen.

Research, academic, Government and some industry angles were proffered. In general, the need for making PhDs more responsive to getting doctorates into industry rather than remaining in academia, to better link industry and academia and to make Ireland a welcoming research environment for foreigners while encouraging Irish students into research, were all discussed.

While it is useful to pass along the summaries of the working groups to Ministers and bodies like SFI, I think that the real value of last week's sessions was that it brought so many key people together. It was clear that some of them had never spoken to their counterparts in other sectors before.

Many of the perspectives offered will have nudged participants out of any dangerous assumptions on how others think, or complacency about what could be or needs to be done at Irish and EU levels to promote a vibrant research environment.

I hope someone will aim to reproduce regular roundtables on the same general topic for feedback to Government although I would like to see greater industry representation in the future as there was a lot of talk about what industry does or doesn't think. The forum has posted a podcast of the plenary session, including summaries and responses at http://forumoneuropepodcast.org/index.php?id=15

Karlin Lillington's blog is at www.techno-culture.com