The EU's new Commissioner for Research, Innovation and Science, Máire Geoghegan-Quinn, has encouraged Ireland's inventors to play a bigger role in turning ideas into jobs.
Speaking at NUI Galway, she said all of Europe had to become better at capitalising on its inventions.
Ms Geoghegan Quinn - in her first public address in Ireland since she became the EU's new commissioner with responsibility for science and innovations - cited the example of the hugely successful MP3 player.
She told a gathering of more than 250 students and scientists at NUIG that the technology behind the MP3 was invented in Europe but it was in America that it was commercialised so successfully.
This must change, she said, and inventors here in Ireland and across Europe should be at the forefront of bringing bright new ideas to the market.
Commissioner Geoghegan-Quinn said more of the EU's 4,000 third-level institutions should be collaborating with industry. She welcomed the new alliance created between NUI Galway and the University of Limerick, with its emphasis on linkages to the biomedical devices industry.
