People, information and knowledge are the core drivers of the most successful and innovative companies, according to speakers at yesterday's annual National Innovation Conference in Dublin.

Knowledge management is emerging as the biggest growth area for businesses, said Mr Michael Smart, vice-president of Xerox, who argued that it now offered a greater competitive edge than land, labour or capital traditionally have.

His views were echoed by other speakers including Mr Martin Naughton, chairman of Glen Dimplex and Mr Cyril McGuire, president of Trintech. Each emphasised the importance of being involved in all their company's research and development activities by chairing monthly development meetings. Mr Naughton outlined how the addition of new products to the Glen Dimplex portfolio had become the "lifeblood" of the company which had sales of £560 million last year.

"When buying new companies, you can become a company junkie very easily. By retaining the small company culture, we extend this policy to new companies and, in our experience, new investments, products and acquisitions keep the workforce enthusiastic," said Mr Naughton.

Trintech, a global leader in securing card-based payment transactions, attributes a lot of its success to being the first to market with its products - a point stressed by all the speakers as central to innovation. "People remember who was first and they get a premium for being first," said Mr McGuire. Trintech recently secured $20 million (£13 million) in private financing, one of the largest single investments in an Irish software firm.

Mr McGuire outlined how Trintech had introduced an innovation ratio for measuring the contribution of new product development to overall revenues. By calculating target revenues for the company by 2000, the innovation ratio is the percentage of revenue which will be derived from new products. It found that 70 per cent of the target revenue for 2000 will come from products developed over the past three years.

Mr McGuire said the Government should act as a model innovator and introduce a high-tech corridor similar to that currently in operation in Singapore. "There has been a lot of talk about Ireland becoming an e-commerce hub but it is one thing to say it, and another thing to follow through on it," Mr McGuire added.