BELFAST BRIEFING:THERE IS an American film that tells the tale of a struggling Iowa farmer who gets cryptic messages urging him to build a baseball stadium in his best cornfield.
It is a crazy concept and one he is ridiculed for, but the farmer decides to follow his heart and, in true Hollywood style, there is a happy ending to his quest.
The film, Field of Dreams, is primarily about America's love of baseball, but one of the reasons why it became a big hit was because it is much more than a story about a farmer and a field.
It is about having a dream and making this dream come true - against all the odds.
This week Northern Ireland is staging its own version of the Field of Dreams, and close to 100 Americans are flying in to the North to play key roles in the drama.
They will be representing more than 80 leading US companies at the three-day US-NI Investment Conference, which begins tomorrow evening.
The conference is designed to showcase the new investment climate which exists against the backdrop of peace in the North.
Corporate America will be given a taste of what the North can offer, with the delegates hearing about the investment opportunities that now exist.
The importance of the conference cannot be underestimated. Northern Ireland's economy is heavily dependent on the public sector - more than 30 per cent of the workforce get their pay cheques from the Government.
This ratio cannot be maintained much longer, because there simply isn't the money to do so. The British government is cutting back on the level of public money earmarked for Northern Ireland, so the North desperately needs to create jobs in the private sector to keep its economy afloat.
The North's devolved Government wants to create 6,500 jobs between 2008 and 2011. The only way it is going to achieve this ambitious target is if it can convince new foreign investors to move to the North and create added value jobs.
The US has traditionally been the largest foreign direct investor in the North. Latest research shows 30 tradable service and 62 non-tradable investments came to Northern Ireland from the US between 2002 and 2007. These investments created 4,057 jobs.
According to Invest Northern Ireland, the regional economic development agency, once firms come to the North, they tend to reinvest. Its provisional annual results for 2007-2008 show it secured £692 million (€880 million) in new investment commitments from companies already operating in the North.
It also managed to win 20 new and 14 inward expansion projects.
Invest NI says these new inward investment projects have the potential to create 2,732 jobs, which in turn would deliver more than £94 million in salaries. This is exactly the kind of investment that Northern Ireland needs; the only problem is it needs a whole lot more of it than it is managing to attract.
The US-NI Investment Conference presents the North with a rare opportunity to set out its "field of dreams" to new investors, despite the economic turmoil gripping the US.
According to Invest NI, Northern Ireland offers US investors an ideal location because it is close to market, cost competitive, culturally compatible and has a skilled, young workforce. The subliminal message to corporate America is: come and build in our cornfields and we will help make you a success.
It is one of the worst times to try to persuade US companies to consider investing in Northern Ireland. But this is not a conference about short-term gains - it is about long-term stakes. The North's politicians do not expect any overnight results.
There will be major celebrations if by Friday a new investment announcement emerges, but no one is under any illusions that, if there are results from this conference, it could be at least 18 to 24 months before they materialise.
Economy Minister Nigel Dodds and his team have already pulled off a master stroke by securing almost 100 top executives to attend the conference. Almost 600 invitations were dispatched to chief executives and senior executives - they only expected 30 to 40 confirmations, so they have already won on that score.
The conference will ultimately be judged on what it delivers.
It has attracted a presidential delegation comprising the mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg, the US ambassador to Britain, Robert Tuttle, and the US ambassador to Ireland, Thomas Foley, in addition to the chief executive of 3ParInc, David Scott, and Catherine Burke, a senior vice-president of Allstate Insurance Company.
According to Dodds, the conference represents the largest number of senior businesspeople to visit the North at any one time.
So hello corporate America - come and take a look at this field of dreams, and see if you can help make those dreams a reality.
