Branson, Ryan family honoured at Luminary awards

Richard Branson and the Ryan family have been honoured at this year’s Innovation Luminary Awards in Dublin.

The founder of the Virgin Group was awarded in the ‘Innovation & Entrepreneurship’ category, whilst the Ryan family, the household that started low cost Irish airline Ryanair, won the ‘Serial Entrepreneurship’ prize.

Presenting the awards at Dublin City Hall, and attended by Horizon 2020 Projects, Professor Martin Curley, vice-president of Intel Corporation and director of Intel Labs Europe, described the evening as “the world cup of innovation” and outlined how innovation was “vitally important”.

“According to the US Department of Commerce,” Curley told an audience of business people, entrepreneurs and academics, “over 75% of GDP growth in the United States since World War II was due to technological innovation”. He added that it was “important to celebrate achievement” and “find role models for innovation”.

Also presenting the awards was Bror Salmelin, adviser for innovation systems at the European Commission, who challenged attendees to “dare to do something different”, citing the importance of “inspiration” and “creating courage”.

Other Luminary Award winners included Henry Chesbrough, executive director at the Center for Open Innovation at the University of California, Berkeley, in the category of ‘Open Innovation’; social entrepreneur Bill Drayton for ‘Social Innovation’; and a posthumous award to Veli-Pekka Niitamo, father of the European Living Lab movement, in the ‘Innovation Catalyst’ category.

The winners will be enrolled into the Innovation Luminary Academy and will have stewardship for the selection of future Innovation Luminaires. The awards ceremony took place on the eve of the Open Innovation 2.0 conference, taking place at The Convention Centre Dublin today.