About us

Our core focus of CISC is providing multidisciplinary insights into innovative change whereby CISC is an umbrella research institute, offering a common ground where researchers from different disciplines and backgrounds can meet, debate and research. Innovation happens at cross-over points whereby CISC provides a forum for the formal and informal interactions necessary to enable an interdisciplinary community of researchers to flourish. The exchange of ideas and the challenging of knowledge generate an intellectual energy and a spirit of enquiry. This collaborative environment fosters new approaches and the synergy generated aligns best practice in innovation research with current policy, business and management practice thinking. These new approaches and insights are disseminated and shared with a wide variety of national and international stakeholders.

Since its inception, academics, researchers and PhD students, from many different disciplines, based in NUI Galway and at collaborating institutes in Ireland and abroad, have combined to create the vibrant research institute that is CISC. By taking a cross-disciplinary approach to research and through the development and delivery of education and training, particularly to PhD students, CISC has developed a distinguished record in scholarship and research in innovation and structural change. A core objective of CISC is knowledge transfer and through knowledge dissemination events to other academics and to key stakeholders in business and in the public sector, CISC shares the new knowledge created and encourages further innovation and creativity.

CISC is constantly evolving, welcoming the involvement of new members and new disciplines and also providing a platform for unique collaborations with a wider innovation community in Ireland, especially at public policy levels. As all organisations work to adapt to constantly changing and increasingly complex operating environments, there is a need for innovative thinking across the board: from public policy to organisational structures, from business processes to social inclusion, from technology to legal issues. Whatever the issue, CISC provides the environment for alternative thinking, opening up new avenues for exploration and ultimately striving to help release the potential of individuals, organisations or even whole regions.

Priority Research Areas at CISC

Research projects fall into five priority research areas:

1. Innovation Systems

The main goals of this priority area are to investigate the theoretical and operational aspects of innovation and structural change in Ireland, to analyse, measure and evaluate knowledge flows and other linkages within national and regional innovation systems as part of a programme of collaborative, interdisciplinary research, to identify the implications of this research for the framing of science, technology and innovation policy in Ireland and more widely, and to provide training for young and emerging researchers.

2. Industry clustering

The goals of this area are to develop a better understanding of the characteristics and performance of industry clusters as a newly identified source of competitive advantage in the global economy, to construct primary data sources for research in Ireland using longitudinal survey and case study approaches, with the potential for international comparative analysis, and to build expertise in collaboration with international researchers which is incorporated into undergraduate and postgraduate teaching programmes.

3. Internationally traded services

The goals of this area are to apply the new economic geography to an analysis of the spatial pattern of foreign direct investment in internationally traded services (ITS) in Ireland, to assess the ’embeddedness’ of ITS investment in the local economy and the role of indigenous firms in supply chain activity, outsourcing and penetration of global markets, to identify the public policy implications relating to spatial strategy, and to pursue new teaching and learning initiatives on the theme of the information economy.

4. Inter-organisational systems.

The goals of this area are to investigate the salient operational features of inter-firm networks and collaborative relationships, including those with a regional dimension, to determine the extent to which ’inter-organisational systems’ incorporating new information technologies facilitate the growth of flexible inter-firm networks and provide a platform for value-added partnerships, and to devise feedback loops between research and teaching so that course materials and delivery are informed by best practice in the area.

5. High performance work systems.

The goals of this priority research area are to examine the strategies and characteristics of high performance workplaces and their diffusion through organisational learning and social partnership, to assess the degree to which innovation and effectiveness are impeded by a growing ’representation gap’ at workplace level, to generate new sources of primary data, leading to an all-Ireland Workplace Employee Relations Survey, and to contribute to an emerging research and teaching focus in the management of human resources.

The HEA PRTLI funding of euro 2.8 million awarded to CISC in 2002 allows for the recruitment of a team of five Postdoctoral Research Fellows and twelve PhD students in both NUI Galway and in the partner institutions, UCD and DCU. to support projects in this areas. CISC is building on this substantial platform and has sourced other funding opportunities, including two projects funded by the Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences (IRCHSS), partnerships with CIMRU in the eNableSMEs project funded by Enterprise Ireland, involvement as Ireland’s representative as designated by Forfás in two OECD Technology Innovation Policy research programmes and the exploration of EU FP6 funding opportunities with a range of international partners and linkages.

Research projects at CISC are underpinned by an evolving research training programme and in turn inform teaching initiative at undergraduate and postgraduate levels in the University and in the M.Sc. in Technology Management of the Atlantic University Alliance.

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