chris horn's blog

COMREG have posted my powerpoint slideset from this talk last tuesday,  here

The text below is from an invited talk I gave this morning to the COMREG (the Irish Communications Regulator) annual conference in Dublin.

It was deliberately a little provocative,  to catalyse discussion in the audience.

As part of the work for the Innovation Taskforce, I was interested to see a survey of all Irish technology related companies since the start of the decade.

I tweeted #itaskforce and asked whether anyone had seen one. Joe Drumgoole, a friend of long standing, was kind enough to share a list which he had put together, although his list is primarily ICT companies and excludes the life sciences. A few other people also kindly replied to my tweet with data for some specific companies.

The Irish Venture Capital Association have some excellent data on their web site on venture deals closed in Ireland, and update these on a quarterly basis since the start of 2008. Sadly however, they admitted to me this morning that the IVCA does not itself routinely collect exit data and valuations.

I have approached Enterprise Ireland to see whether they have comprehensive data, and are in discussions with them.

In the interim, I used Joe's data as a starting point and then did a web trawl myself. I also searched the CRO to find each company's start date, so that the age of the company at its exit could be found. My data and list are here as a .pdf file.

I reproduce below an invited keynote talk which I gave this morning at a seminar organised the Alimentary Pharmabiotic Centre in University College Cork, on the general topic of entrepreneurship and start-ups.

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Exactly twenty years ago, American Airlines and Hewlett-Packard Corporation took an initiative in the global software industry to interconnect distributed software applications. The initiative rapidly gained momentum, with all major software suppliers - with the sole exception of Microsoft - quickly joining. Yet by 1996, a small company from Ireland, IONA Technologies, was a widely recognised world leading supplier of products to interconnect distributed software applications, ahead of such major vendors as IBM, Oracle, HP, Microsoft, Digital and Sun. As a result, IONA had major customer contracts with companies such as Motorola, Boeing, Goldman Sachs, Lufthansa and Hong Kong Telecom. How can a relatively small player punch way above its weight ?

I was approached by John McGowan, former President of Engineers Ireland, back in 2007 and asked "Chris I know you're very busy right now, but what will you be doing in two years time ?". So, I signed up to be put into the pipeline of Presidents for Engineers Ireland, and last night my twelve months started. Martin Lowery (ex IDA and Coilte) will take over from me this time next year, with PJ Rudden (MC O'Sullivan, Bord Gais and now RPS) takes over from Martin in two years time.

I attach below the inaugural speech which I gave last night at the headquarters of Engineers Ireland. Apologies for the length! The main points are:

• Thanking my colleagues.
• Innovation now being Ireland's highest strategic priority: in my view, innovation is rather different from invention, and is also not limited to scientific and technology discovery.
• Regret that the national transition year scheme appears to be being diminished, since it will reduce discovery, innovation and team work with our young people.
• Engineers Ireland to take an initiative on the teaching of higher level mathematics, applied mathematics and pure sciences in our schools.
• Increasing Engineers Ireland's recent initiatives to assist unemployed Members.
• Opening up Engineers Ireland to a much broader membership:
• Opening up full membership of Engineers Ireland to ordinary bachelors degree (level 7) graduates of accredited engineering courses, in addition to honours bachelor degree (level 8) as at present;
• Opening up full membership of Engineers Ireland to level 7 and level 8 graduates from "cognate" courses in mathematics and sciences, provided that the individual is in practice working in an engineering discipline.
• Chartered Engineering status for graduates from 2013 will require masters (level 9) education, or demonstrated experience equivalent to masters level.
• Encouraging and frankly expecting most, if not all, faculty members of universities and institutes of technology to become Members of Engineers Ireland, and ideally Chartered Engineers.
• Engineering is an altruistic profession, serving society. Engineers have a duty to articulate concerns about the safety, health and welfare of society
• Engineers in Ireland today have concerns over infrastructure issues relating to water, broadband, roads maintenance, and strategic vulnerability of national electricity supplies and grid, amongst other issues.
• Activities in Ireland in any engineering discipline - such as civil, mechanical, electrical, bio-medical, software, petrochemical... - which impact, or could impact, the safety, health and welfare of individuals or society should be regulated so that approval is required by a Chartered Engineer. Engineers Ireland will push for regulation, and may in the short term initiate a voluntary disclosure and public register of projects which have been duly approved.
• Ireland has suffered severely from governance failures in various sectors. Engineers Ireland already has a strong code of ethics. There is currently no national embracing legislation for good faith reporting. Members who in good faith report concerns about their employer or client, or even another Member, concerning the safety, health and welfare of individuals or society, and who subsequently feel inadequate action was taken or even worse that they were sanctioned, can bring this to the attention of Engineers Ireland which will if necessary defend such a Member.

The full text follows:

A couple of weeks ago on the last Saturday of March, the Irish Times, a popular broadsheet here in Ireland, included a full paper reproduction of the 4 pages of its very first edition, from 150 years ago and launched on the 28th March 1859. It is a fascinating read, not least because the entire front page is given over to advertisements. I also found the style of writing captivating - archaic but nevertheless highly articulate. The editorial contains the opening paragraph:

"The appearance of another Journal in the field on Irish politics demands a brief explanation from its projectors. It will be asked - Where is the room for this new competitor for public favour ? Is there any definite set of opinions which is not already represented in the Irish Press ? From the silly Radicalism of the Phoenix Club to the dense Toryism of the Orange lodge, what doctrine lacks an exponent, what party an organ ? If no deficiency be felt, is the multiplication of newspapers a good, per se, that the proprietors of the Irish Times think fit to add one voice more the existing Babel ?"

The editor, Laurence Knox - who personally signed the inaugural edition - goes on to justify the appearance of the new newspaper as a voice independent of politics or partisismship. Reminiscent of Deng's famous assertion a century later - "No matter if it is a white cat or a black cat; as long as it can catch mice, it is a good cat" - Knox goes on to assert "Every year sees a larger and larger proportion of our population indifferent to the manoeuvres of faction...They are anxious for good government, but care little in whose hands the government may be placed".

The contemporary Irish Times commentator Fintan O'Toole recently wrote an excellent assessment of the then national context in which the Irish Times was launched. He believes that Knox's aspirations were perhaps a heroic denial of the political climate, but that from the lengthy perspective of 150 years later, Knox was perhaps not as naive as first imagined.

Ironically the same issue of the Irish Times (on 28th March 2009) also contained a topical assessment of the newspaper industry, from the paper's America based correspondent Denis Staunton. He discussed Maryland's Senator Ben Cardin's initiative to use tax policy to try and save what is left of the US newspaper industry. Cardin is of the view that it is in the US national interest, for good governance and for democracy, that at least some newspapers survive.

Devoting the entire front page to advertising may have worked well in 1859, but with advertising revenue now under immense pressure and readers migrating to free global news sources on the internet, something has to change. Web based newspaper subscriptions in general have not been particularly successful. Web based advertising is a challenging model for newspapers, in the face of Google.

What can be the future of the Irish Times, and newspapers like it ? Perhaps tongue in cheek, last January I responded to a request from the Irish Times for some crystal ball gazing - what was the company to watch in 2009 - by identifying the Irish Times itself! Will the Irish Times, and newspapers worldwide like it, survive in its current form by January 2010 ?

In my view, there are three major aspects of the essential content of a newspaper: reporting, investigation, and commentary.

The role of reporting news and events would seem well fulfilled by the density of the web itself. Timely notification of events can be reported almost by anyone: the use of Twitter by Jim Hanran, an ordinary member of the public, to first report on the crash landing of US Airways 1549 in the Hudson is an obvious example. What therefore does the traditional news reporter bring to the web ? The general answer should surely be honesty: readers are generally attracted to reputable reporting, despite occasional reporters such as The News York Times' Jayson Blair. Honesty on the web is always difficult to certify, but other web based systems leverage reputable participation - eBay auctions come to mind, perhaps also Wikipedia's consensus mechanism. However honest and reputable reporting on the web certainly is not the sole domain of newspaper reporters.

What about investigative reporting ? Most democracies can point to occasions when an investigative reporter brought malpractice to light. The Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein's exposure of the Watergate scandal is possiby the most renowned. Here in Ireland we still mourn the Sunday Independent's Veronica Guerin, assassinated for her investigative reporting of drug trafficking.

Investigative reporting surely serves the public good. Will our democracies come under threat if there is no longer a business model for newspapers to exploit, and thus no money for investigative reporting ? This thinking seems to overlook the integrity of most members of the public: ethical employees can be appalled by what they see in their organisations, and can and do speak out. Sherron Watkins at Enron blew the whistle on her employer's malpractice. In Ireland, James Gogarty's whistleblowing led to the Mahon tribunal to investigate payments to corrupt politicians. With the internet, whistleblowers can quickly bring concerns to global public attention - India now has several public web sites (eg corruption in india, and whistleblowers) devoted to whistleblowing, particularly following the murder of Sri Satyendra Dubey. Democracy and accountability is probably best supported by well considered whistleblowing processes, which both protect a valid whistleblower but also protect an organisation from inaccurate allegations. Democracy need not rely on the finances of newspapers to underwrite investigative reporters.

Commentary, opinion and analysis is perhaps where great newspapers add most value, separate the significant from the trivial, and correlate patterns to extract observations. But there appears no inherent reason why articulate observation should just be the preserve of a newspaper: the online community and bloggers can equally serve society at large.

Clay Shirky recently blogged that the current business model of newspapers seems doomed, and replacement models have yet - if ever - to appear. Jeff Jarvis argued back in 2005 that saving newspapers is not the same as saving newspaper jobs. Perhaps it really is time to confront the unthinkable: the newspaper, as we know it, may be doomed.

Does the internet really signify the demise of the newspaper ?

Most newspapers do serve the public good. Senator Ben Cardin's Newspaper Revitalisation Act would enable US newspapers, if they so chose, to become not-for-profit organisations, thus benefitting from tax exempt advertising and subscription revenue. Members of the public could make tax deductible contributions to their favourite newspapers. I understand that public service broadcasting is similarly tax exempt in the US. Using the tax code in this way may be an approach, but I do wonder how effective newspapers may be able to operate if they come to rely on regular voluntary donations from their reading public to cover their costs of distribution and of professional staffing.

Are there any other different business models for those online newspapers which do serve the public good ? In Ireland, we have a national license which every TV set owner is supposed to pay to the Government, which in turn is used to support public service broadcasting. Could there be an online tax for public service newspapers ? Perhaps a Government could impose a tax on all internet service providers nationally, since they represent the national access points by the public to the internet: then directly, or via a neutral third party agency - use the money collected to allocate to online public service newspapers. An interesting thought perhaps, but I'm unsure the economics would really work: would internet users really accept what would amount to a personal daily tax of several euros just to support online newspapers ?

Some have given thought to a micropayment model for individual newspaper contributions. This would presumably operate something akin to iTunes: individual newspaper articles could be disaggregated - like tracks from a music CD - and made individually readable and paid for. But a musical track is a marketing teaser to promote itself: if you hear a piece of music and like it, you'll want to hear it again (and perhaps again and again) and so may be tempted to buy it from an online store. A newspaper article is typically by contrast a singular experience: having read it, you are unlikely in most cases to seek to read that particular article again.

As I reflected on the demise of the newspaper, I also reminded myself that a newspaper is a mirror held up to reflect society and the world to the eyes of its readership. It informs its readers about what is happening, and tells them something about themselves and their community, in the terms and ways to which they relate. If newspapers were to disappear due to the impact of the internet on their business model, what could be done on the internet to replace these lost mirrors on society and the world ?

In a newspaper, a selected few contribute articles and news, with feedback from ordinary members of the public filtered through the letters to the editor page. In the internet world, everyone can openly contribute. We can read posts and comments and blogs and emails and tweets from anyone. We can use Google to try and find interesting items, but even then it is easy to get lost in the morass, and perhaps miss what we ourselves find particularly interesting and significant. The specific newspapers we buy by contrast in general do a good job in only presenting articles which we ourselves find interesting and significant, filtering out the mundane, and presenting information and comment which in general match our own particular ethos and values. Any online replacement of a newspaper is going to have to do something similar.

In my view, wiki technology already provides the basis. A wiki is a web site in which not only can anyone read its content, but anyone can also edit the content, as result of Ward Cunningham's work in the 1990. At first this sounds extraordinary - what prevents somebody from editing accurate content and defacing it ? In fact, the answer is nothing, and defacement happens - however, the wiki keeps a record of who edited what, and what was the previous version (and the previous version to that and so on). Anarchists and political pundits can quickly be identified by the community of like-minded readers, isolated from the wiki so that the wiki refuses to accept any further edits from these rogues, and the maverick changes made by these fraudsters are quickly unwound.

The consequence is that the community of bona-fide contributors work together to make the wiki better and better, capturing the best inputs from everyone, and discarding the weaker edits. The system becomes Darwinian - in the view of a specific community, the best survives for that community, and the weakest is dropped. A wiki thus captures the "wisdom of a crowd" - the collective wisdom of a particular community of readers and contributors.

Social networking sites - such as Facebook, LinkedIn and others facilitate loosely coupled communities to evolve. Communities of people with common interests can quickly emerge.

Is it not possible to think of online newspapers evolving to become social newsworking ? A (potentially large) group of people with common interests and ethos could share their reflections on society and the world at large using technology derived from the current generation of wiki support and of social networking. Different social newsworks would of course emerge, reflecting the diverse opinions across societies. Each social newswork would combine - as today's paper based newspapers do - reporting of news and events, including of an investigative nature, with analysis and comment. But unlike a newspaper of today, a social newswork can reflect the wisdom of an entire community of like-minded individuals, rather than just of its editor, its staff and its contributors to its letters pages.

Social newsworking as a concept is not novel. Apart from user contributed newsites such as Reddit and Digg, one of the most interesting from the my perspective is Newsvine. Anyone can write articles, and discuss items submitted by anyone, including by professional journalists, but unlike a wiki cannot update in place previously submitted text. But in my view and as I understand it, Newsvine just aggregates and links articles together, but does not merge and synthesise. Some newspapers - such as The Washington Post and The New York Times - also actively link to internet articles outside of their own web site, and thus attempt to aggregate: but there is no merge and synthesis.

Wikinews is another social newsworking site, and does allow users to edit and update the text of others, just as for Wikipedia encyclopedia entries. However Wikinews itself aspires to offer a neutral perspective, and to be even handed.

My own view is that social newsworking can only succeed if each site in fact does not try to be even handed and neutral, but instead biased towards the ethos and philosophy of its community! Misinformation and sensationalism arguably thrive on sites such as Digg and Reddit because anyone can post, and anyone or small group can contrive to vote specific postings up or down the popularity charts. On the other hand, wiki technology could be used by a group of like minded individuals to ensure that only postings which match their ethos survive the evolutionary editing process. Rather than trying to be all things to all people and thus neutral - such as wikinews - it is probably more pragmatic to instead focus a social newsworking site around a community of like minded people who can reinforce their particular beliefs. After all, in my view, that's what our current newspapers already try to do.

A social newsworking site can of course be a free service to its community. However, an online community of like minded souls is more likely to be a successful opportunity for targeted advertisements, which raises the possibility of an effective and focussed business model. Perhaps the advertisements themselves could even become wiki based, and thus allow the content of an advertisement itself to be updated and edited by the community of its consumers. A social newsworking site could, in my view, have a viable business model if so desired, despite competition from majors such as Google or even Craigslist.

Laurence Knox, the first editor of the Irish Times, saw in 1859 - perhaps pretentiously - that his newspaper would represent a particular section of Irish society, distinguishing itself from others sets of opinions already available in the Irish press, and perhaps severely limiting his market (!):

"On intention, in short, is to make the Irish Times a first rate Irish newspaper, complete in its details, sagacious and consistent in its policy, and faithfully reflecting the opinions of the most independent, intelligent, and truly progressive portion of Irish society."

Social newsworking has the intriguing possibility to combine focussed audiences with a wider democratic reflection on the presentation and analysis of news, than can today's newspapers which are hampered by advertising based and subscription business models and in almost all cases, their shareholder returns to their owners.

The Times Higher Education/QS World University Rankings, published in last October, showed Trinity College Dublin breaking into the global top 50 universities, ranked at 49 - up from 53. TCD became the first Irish third-level institution to make it into the elite global top-50 group. The rankings also delivered very good news for University College Dublin (UCD), now ranked 108 worldwide, and up from 177 last year.

Last wednesday, both universities announced an intention to further enhance their world class positioning, by integrating together their fourth level (ie postgraduate) activities, and merging the activities of their respective technology licensing offices into a single unit. The text of the press release is here.

The most significant aspect of the announcement, in my view, is the focus on innovation as an equal core part of their mission as universities alongside both research and education. They have set themselves an ambitious target of creating at least 300 new companies of scale, and of high value, by 2019. They will jointly offer new facilities for pre-competitive research and design, prototyping and process innovation - to help harness and commercialise new ideas, knowledge and inventions. They also promise to prioritise the establishment of a wider support framework of educational, legal, financial, technical, management and marketing capabilities and support needed to set good new business ideas on their way.

I strongly believe that an overall national policy objective should primarily be fostering dynamic young companies based in Ireland. While I believe that foreign multinational investments into Ireland have served us extremely well over the last forty years or so, I fervently believe that sustainable wealth and employment should be based on a vigorous breeding ground of young companies. Perhaps in the past, there has been an over-dependence on relatively rapid creation of employment by major multinational investment, and a sense that our indigenous companies were "not playing at Croker". There was a sense perhaps that the multinationals were the "A" team, and the indigenous technology companies were just a "cottage industry".

In fact, I think that's absolutely right: the indigenous technology sector in Ireland has been pretty much a cottage industry, and long may it continue to be so. We need many many more "cottages". In my view, the indigenous technology sector in Silicon Valley is also in effect a cottage industry. A vibrant community of innovative small companies, each with a relatively short life-cycle, but with re-cycling of its engineers and business leaders, is actually the foundation of Silicon Valley.

If the TCD-UCD partnership is to succeed, I believe it should do so by creating many small innovative companies. I hope most of them don't last too long: a few years each, and certainly less than a decade each. Most of these companies should exit and be bought out, and then both the human capital and financial capital re-cycled into replacement new ventures. By re-cycling, competence, expertise, wisdom, capability, and wealth are all nurtured and grown. A few of these companies may perhaps emerge to become global champions, but fostering global champions should not in itself, in my view, be a primary national strategy. Rather global champions are a by-product of a successful innovation environment.

Its perhaps ironic that an Irish Green Party Minister is in Silicon Valley this week and currently positioning Ireland as the potential Silicon Valley of Europe: I wonder does he agree with me that re-cycling (not of materials, but of human and fiscal capital) is at the core of the Valley's success.

Technology advances, and so a company founded on one exciting new technical development has only a limited window in time to be successful: it - the people and the capital behind it - should then move on. A company which overgrows itself can find itself limited in its strategic options: too small to be a sustainable global top ten player, but too big to be easily acquired.

Stating that our national technology enterprise policy should be akin to a vibrant cottage industry is probably heresy to some! But I believe that it is precisely because of the large number of small, relatively short lived, companies in Silicon Valley that giants of the Valley like HP, Oracle, Google, eBay and Cisco have emerged. These larger companies have emerged for a number of reasons: there are bounteous estate of dynamic young companies to acquire; R&D can be augmented by acquisition; emerging markets can be pump-primed by dynamic young start ups; experienced human capital can be sourced who have lived through at least one successful business expansion; and seed and investment capital can demonstrably work.

One danger inherent in the TCD-UCD announcement is the public perception that innovation is primarily the outcome of University led research. Ordinary mere mortals - not the elite fourth level and PhD types - might not expected to produce new companies of value. There is a further danger that there may be a public perception that a major - no, the major - reason for tax payers funding the universities is precisely to create new companies and new employment.

On the contrary, I believe that in principal anyone can be innovative. In my view, the primary source for innovation is intelligent insight into a market opportunity. Thus innovation is primarily (not solely of course) led by market intelligence: a deep understanding of a market opportunity that in general leads to an evolution from where the market already is today, rather than a complete revolution. In general, revolutionary new ideas take considerable marketing investment and muscle to become successful; incremental step forwards from what the market already understands are in general easier to introduce and commercialise.

Being successful in the global marketplace requires a careful holistic orchestration of various activities: market and opportunity analysis; technology assembly and integration; field testing and early, reference, customers; go-to-market capability and channel reach; funding; and leadership. I refer to this orchestration as an "innovation score", in the same sense that a musical score synchronises concurrent orchestral activities into an overall harmonious effect.

The technology underpinning innovation need not always be developed in Ireland: innovation scoring requires technology assembly and integration, identifying and selecting the correct technologies, regardless of their global origin. Tax payer funded Irish based science may as a result not be exploited in Ireland: equally, successful young Irish companies should not limit their source of technology to Irish based science. Most of all, a successful innovation may simply bring together pieces of technology which already exist, but which have never been put together before in such an innovative way.

At a recent event in the Science Gallery, a composite map of the world was shown at night. It clearly shows the industrialised world against the darkness of the third world.

The presenters, the Lebone group (pronounced "le-bone-nay"), met as undergraduate engineers at Harvard University. They observed that the coupling of two existing technologies - microbial fuel cells and standard high efficient light emitting devices (LEDs) - could provide light in rural Africa. The same technology can also be used to re-charge mobile phones. Their product is used by simply inserting two wires into rotting compost or dung, and the microbes bio-electrochemically generate small amounts of direct current which is then used to power highly efficient LEDs, or to re-charge mobiles. The product has been field-tested in Tanzania over several months, and the project is now supported by the World Bank.

This example shows how an innovative, pragmatic solution was derived by understanding a market problem (off-the-grid power generation throughout much of the third world), identifying existing technologies (microbial fuel cells and new generation LEDs) invented and researched elsewhere, bringing these technologies together into a new product, field testing and then initiating a new business venture. The successful innovation score did not require extensive scientific research to be carried out by the innovators.

Technology can come from latent and unexploited intellectual property within major corporations. As just one example, Hewlett Packard has just closed their second global call for their Innovation Research Programme, in which they requested proposals from innovators outside of HP anywhere on the planet, to license specific intellectual property from HP in areas such as analytics, cloud computing, intelligent infrastructure, digital commercial print and so on. This enables HP to test new emerging technology markets via young dynamic partner companies.

In the current global economic climate, it is not unusual for major corporations to in effect out-source their R&D. Acquiring young companies who are each proving that a new innovation is successful in an early stage market, but which do not have the global channel reach, may be a less expensive way to enhance their product portfolio and innovate, than funding internal R&D and product teams. As a further consequence, internal R&D and product development teams have increasing difficulty getting internal budget, increasing the possibility of spin-outs from the corporation, and increasing the possibility of licensing intellectual property out of the corporation. HP has completed 116 acquisitions in its life time: it is now actively licensing intellectual property out of HP.

An insightful understanding of the current state of a market can come from emerging global industry standards, particularly when there is end user pull. IONA Technologies was successful precisely because we personally participated in such an initiative. For a time IONA was able finesse the global industry by using global end user feedback and experience of IONA products to improve these standards, creating global industry leadership and a "catch-up" game for other global vendors.

I've probably written enough in this blog article. In summary, I very much welcome the TCD-UCD link up, and fervently hope that it results in more commercial research being attracted. But I also fervently hope that we can create a small company culture, with reasonably frequent re-cycling of human and financial capital, and from which a small number of larger companies may eventually emerge. I also fervently hope that we can foster "innovation scores" in which anyone with insight, skill and sheer determination can build a great company, whether or not they happened to gain a PhD from UCD-TCD (or anywhere else).

Dell finally announced yesterday that they are winding up their manufacturing operations in Limerick, and instead focussing their European manufacturing investments in Lodz, Poland.

Dell has been a major employer in Ireland, responsible for 5% of GNP according to one estimate. The immediate loss of jobs in the Limerick plant will be 1,900; and with estimates of consequences for a further 1,500 jobs which in firms which directly supply the plant, and a further 7,000 jobs in other industries at risk.

Although the demise of Dell's manufacturing was not a surprise, I was frankly surprised and disappointed by aspects of the way the announcement was made. Dell quite rightly insisted that they would tell their own staff first before anyone else. However I believe it was unprofessional and pusillanimous of Michael Dell, the Dell CEO, not to make the announcement in person himself in Limerick in front of his own staff. He instead sent his VP Operations, EMEA. Michael has been the beneficiary not only of professional work by his own manufacturing staff in Limerick, but also personally of the plaudits by the local community on his several visits to Limerick over the years, not least an honorary degree from the University of Limerick. He was a gentleman enough to receive these accolades, but not man enough to deliver his savage news in person to his own staff.

I was also astonished that the Minister for the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment (DETE) and co-incidently also the Tanaiste (Vice Prime Minister), Mary Coughlan chose not to appear in person in Limerick. Instead she relied on the local Limerick Minister, the Minister of Defence Willie O'Dea, to be present. In my recollection, previous Ministers of DETE have usually been on hand at the times of major job losses. In fact, as a result of her absence and residence in Dublin Mary Coughlan may have sent the Irish public a not so subtle message: maybe she does not support Willie O'Dea in Limerick and his statements about the future prospects with Dell.

Mary Coughlan is apparently due to travel with the Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Brian Cowen to Japan next week to lead a trade delegation from the Irish business community. The timing of this trip could probably not be worse relative to the Dell announcement and the general poor economic condition. One can only hope that Brian Cowen and Mary Coughlan will return to Ireland with very major significant positive news of substantial Japanese investment and business contracts: presumably that is why they are still travelling despite the rapidly deteriorating domestic economic situation and the anxious Irish public.

I said in my opening statement above "finally announced". I think there was a strong fear for some time - maybe even two years or longer - that Dell would stop its Irish manufacturing sooner or later. That being said, I personally do believe the stated Dell corporate position that the decision was only made within the last week, despite some Irish media accusations to the contrary. In a public company, such major announcements are generally material, from the legal perspective, to the public investor community. Public announcement of a major decision thus usually follows immediately after the decision itself: otherwise there is a danger of leaks and the strong possibility of criminal "insider trading". The actual decision was therefore in fact almost certainly only made very recently.

Nevertheless, there was indeed a fear and suspicion for some considerable time that Dell would stop its Irish manufacturing. It is surprising therefore that our Government appears to have poorly handled the announcement. There was plenty of time to prepare a well considered contingency plan, and immediately initiate it. Indeed, I suspect that such a plan was almost certainly prepared by agencies such as the IDA, Forfas and Enterprise Ireland - they are staffed by competent professionals. Perhaps the apparent mismanagement of the consequences of the announcement by the Cabinet and Ministers is symptomatic of a much deeper issue: the Cabinet is overcome by the tsunami of bad economic news, does not know what agencies and advisors to work with or even trust, and is frankly paralysed and frozen in the headlights of the media and of public anxiety.

A senior civil servant today commented to me that it is amazing to consider the turn around in Prime Minister Brown's performance and public perception in the UK. From a period just last July, when he faced a back benchers revolt and the opposition leader David Cameron looked to be the inevitable victor, Brown has executed a stunning turnaround and is now neck and neck with Cameron, if not ahead.

Prime Minister Brown is performing. He is taking visible and urgent actions and steps, and has set out a direction to lead his people...

Looking ahead here in Ireland, it is very clear that we cannot rely on manufacturing activities to sustain our economy. We do have very valuable operations continuing here, not least in IBM, Intel, Apple and HP. The challenge is whether we can nurture our own cohort of Irish companies to leverage such multinationals as a global distribution channel. Are there products and services which we can supply to these companies regardless of where they happen to currently position their own manufacturing operations (hopefully yes in Ireland, but not guaranteed to continue to be so) ? What new products and services can we build, offer, license to them that add value regardless of where they happen to have their operations ?

The answers of course include both new innovations and more efficiently produced current products and services. But amongst the answers is also the strong possibility of building businesses by sublicensing results from the multinationals themselves, with early and nascent markets - I wrote about this in an earlier article.

Our enterprise strategy must evolve - quickly - in Ireland. We need to focus increasingly hard on innovation in Ireland, and building our own companies by exploiting the opportunities which the presence of the multinationals here create.

The doomsday is that Ireland deteriorates to become a domestically traded services economy: services sold within Ireland to support the goods and services we import.

We do not need to "up-skill" so much as "core-skill". "Upskilling" is nice political camouflage, but frankly a shallow aspiration. We instead need to ensure that we have a strong foundation in the core skills - not the "up" skills whatever they are - which are necessary for innovation, insight, and the development of a true indigenous enterprise culture.

A few weeks ago I posted a link to an article which I had written for the Irish Times Innovation monthly magazine.

I'm becoming an occasional columnist for it, and another article appears here in today's edition. The spelling mistake in the title of the online version is their mistake, not mine!

Happy New Year , and thanks for watching my blog..

On the morning that today's Irish Times announced that our health service minister is seeking a further 900Meuro reduction in the 14,000Meuro health budget, our deputy prime minster ("Tanaiste") Mary Coghlan announced a further 45Meuro investment in three large national science research centres.

I'm waiting for the reaction from certain public chat-show hosts on our national media: "how is it morally justifiable to spend 45Meuro when it would appear that the crisis in our accident and emergency units in our hospitals is about to severely deepen ?"

Let's see. 45Meuro would buy 560 return flights to Florida on the Government Gulfstream for the Minister of Health and her colleagues; or almost 5,000 return first class transatlantic airtrips for the CEO of a major Irish agency - funded by the taxpayer; or over a 1,000,000 pay-per-view private in-hotel movies for the executives of a major Irish agency - funded by the taxpayer; or 90,000 gifts (glass barometers) for a serving senior Minister - from taxpayers funds. And, as an afterthought perhaps, the investment is worth 228,000 attendances at accident and emergency units in Irish hospitals; or 69,000 in-patient bed days at Irish hospitals; or about just 35% of the cost of a failed and written-off national payroll system for our health service.

The 45Meuro invested today in world class scientific research is a serious moral choice. We can invest in science, or we can partially reduce cut backs in our public services. The consequential responsibility on our science research leaders is onerous. The three centres receiving funding today have already demonstrated impactful advances not just on the standard of scientific research in Ireland, but also to the potential economic and social benefits to Ireland - and indeed humanity at large.

Dr Fergus Shanahan's APC team have already produced world class leadership in the understanding, and the consequential application of, of the complex microbiology and pharmabiotics of the human intestine. The global benefits of pro-biotic food additives are largely due to their outstanding work.

One of the potential benefits of nanotechnology research is the highly targetted delivery of drug payloads to any specific part of the body. Today's delivery of drugs in the human body is akin to the military carpet bombing of world war two: one can appreciate the benefits if we could deliver drugs within the body as clinically as today's military smart weapon delivery systems. The CRANN team, hosted at TCD by John Boland, have much opportunity here and it is perhaps surprising that SFI have apparently not yet focussed more on the biomedical opportunities of nanotechnology research.

Dr Stefan Decker and his team at the DERI project (disclosure: I am on the technical advisory board) in Galway are focussed on enabling computers to really understand the deep complexity of human languages and nuances. If computers can learn to understand the semantics of human communication, then one of the many outcomes can be not just better web search engines, but better web based harmonisation engines which can reconcile what you already know with what you might not know. The opportunities to advance human understanding - by leveraging what is already known by across both today's, but also yesterday's, humanity, rather than forgetting or re-discovering what is in fact already known elsewhere or previously in history - are breathtaking.

But there are also other major centres in Ireland. Declaring a personal interest as the Chair of its governance board, the CTVR centre is globally unique in exploiting a great untapped natural resource, which we are extremely fortunate to have here in Ireland: the airwaves - the 'electro-magnetic spectrum' - which are unsaturated in Ireland, and thus a wonderful opportunity for very advanced new communication technologies. The BDI centre is researching very rapid diagnosis and self-test of medical conditions by non-invasive (e.g. saliva, sweat, blood pinpricks) sampling. The REMEDI centre is researching advanced stem cell research from adult humans.

All of this research, conducted in Ireland, is incredibly impressive. Furthermore, Irish scientific diaspora have returned, and Ireland is acting as a magnet for other nationals to undertake world class research here. The quality, and quantity, of high profile, globally widely-cited scientific papers, and of patents, has increased dramatically.

For me, one of the most exciting consequences has been the proliferation of cross-disciplinary and inter-institutional research amongst our young researchers and principal investigators, despite perhaps our long standing traditional hostility and open competition that all too often has hitherto corrupted some of the more established and senior talent in our universities (as I wrote here). There are clear opportunities for further collaboration between the universities in Ireland supported at the highest level.

But I remain concerned.

I remain concerned, because in my own view, the Irish state agencies - and in particular Science Foundation Ireland - have insufficiently focussed on the opportunity to translate world class research undertaken in Ireland into innovative products and services for the global market. In my view, Science Foundation Ireland is myopically focussed on Science: but what we also need - perhaps need even more - is a focus on Engineering. Ireland needs to take the most interesting scientific results globally available to engineer innovative new products and services for the world market.

I was surprised and concerned, for example, to learn that SFI reputedly believes that the work at REMEDI is overly focussed on commercial exploitation and industry linkage, rather than as SFI reputedly believes what is more nationally strategic basic research: this seems to me to in fact be the antithesis of what the small open Irish economy, with limited financial resources by global standards, actually needs. I am surprised and disappointed, that SFI does not have, and a senior executive has actually told me that it does not see the need for, a national showcase or centre for the outstanding scientific results which its sponsored researchers have already produced, and which are available for uptake by national and multi-national industry at large. I am surprised and disappointed that SFI sees no role in outreach to the Irish public to explain the importance of science in incidents like last week's national dioxin crisis, through a vehicle such as the Science Gallery (again a disclosure: for which I am chair). I am surprised and disappointed that SFI seems to think it can be just a shipyard launching ships, rather than an admiral not only building ships, but leading a complementary and mutually re-enforcing cohesive fleet to take on the world.

45Meuro is a lot of accident and emergency bed spaces. I absolutely know that the research teams receiving this funding feel the awesome national responsibility of the Irish taxpayer watching over them. But I am concerned that SFI is currently missing a much bigger picture than it currently seems able to see.

Earlier this week,  I had an article published in the monthly Innovation supplement of the Irish Times newspaper.

I remember once in Trinity when I was an engineering student having a long and isolated evening trying to argue a case that there is beautiful art in software programming – and in all engineering disciplines – with a skeptical but distinguished professor of history and fellow humanities students. I explained that software can be incredibly wonderful architected, but of course only the cognoscente – ie software developers, but not mere mortals – can appreciate so. But on the other hand most mere mortals can appreciate the visual arts, good music and literature even if they have not had specialist training. I came away glad I had a flame suit, but it was a fun tease anyway.

The Science Gallery focuses on the confluence of science and technology with art and discovery. This weekend we are hosting ArtBots – the Robot Talent Show, as part of the Dublin Fringe Festival. I went along to the opening last night – it was pretty busy – and really enjoyed some of the more artistic entrants.

On walking in, you are met by Rubot II, which was a centre of attraction for many of the teenagers there, and impressive if not particularly artistic. But close to Rubot, you can hear and see what a 6 metre length of vibrating and oscillating steel band looks like in the Storm and 6 Bands. I really liked the Rechnender Raum, an inverted dynamic machine in which its computations are sent to its centre. What Is It Without The Hand That Wields It was little gruesome, weeping blood every time a player was injured in Counter-Strike Source. I really liked Gossamer-1 with the intricate patterns it layered in response to the ambient sounds in the exhibit.

Ray Lee gave an astonishing orchestral performance of robotic music entitled Force Field as he conducted, and played virtual instruments. By moving his hands – air guitar like – he could pluck strings, play chords, and assemble a rhythmical cacophony of harmonies and melodies – quite amazing. Unfortunately however his only concert was last night, and so if you missed it, well you’ll have to wait until next time.

There are fifteen exhibits altogether, together with play areas where you can build your own robots. Entrance, as is our policy is free. On the flip side, the exhibition is only running this weekend and finishes tomorrow evening: we have to meet the costs of having the exhibitor engineers and artists be with us in Dublin.

So, if you are in Dublin this weekend, do hop on the DART and go explore the show. Its great to be able to show the public that there is art in software, science and engineering :-)..

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Postscript: some photos from the show are here.

This morning I had the pleasure of giving a brief talk at Engineers Ireland on the occasion of their second annual Innovation Awards, for the most innovative engineer and the most innovative company of 2007. A couple of people asked for a copy of what I said, so for better or worse, here goes…

172 years ago, on the 6^th August 1835, the first president of our Institution, Colonel Burgoyne, at our inaugural meeting, said:

“We are engaged in the service of Ireland, and it is our duty, as well as our interest, to promote its prosperity to the fullest”.

In my view, ladies and gentlemen, we – the Engineers of Ireland – could be doing considerably more to promote the prosperity of Ireland to its fullest.

Let me explain. In 2000, our Government had the foresight and commitment to initiate Science Foundation Ireland so as to develop a world class research capability in biotechnology, and information and communications technology, as an essential foundation to our nation’s growth. The discovery of new things, by research, is a commendable activity and may indeed be a foundation for our nation’s growth. It may attract foreign investment, and it may encourage the invention of new appliances, and machines based on insights from the natural world. We celebrate our most successful scientists via SFI, the Royal Irish Academy, the British Telecom Young Scientists Exhibition, and indeed via others.

We also celebrate our entrepreneurs. Ernst and Young, and Ulster Bank, recently hosted a televised evening at CityWest in which our entrepreneurs of 2007 were celebrated. Entrepreneurs organize and manage a business, sometimes taking considerable risk to do so. This year’s winner, Liam Casey of PCH, is a well deserved winner. Having known Liam for some time, I was delighted to sincerely and warmly congratulate him in person on the evening for his business in sourcing manufacturing services from China. But I did reflect at the time on the extent to which entrepreneurship in general, as so ostentatiously celebrated at CityWest and as reflected by the portfolio of finalists chosen by the judges, really benefits our economy. It is wonderful to see the growth of family businesses, and the implementation within Ireland of business models imported from overseas, but it is unclear to me at least whether these examples necessarily lead to a sustainable prosperity for Ireland. We can have successful hospitality businesses, successful reseller and distributorships in Ireland, and successful implementation here of models already proven elsewhere. While all these entrepreneurial activities create employment, it is unclear in general whether they lead to sustainable national prosperity. “Me-too” businesses here in Ireland may enrich some individuals, but in my view at least will not overcome our faltering national competitiveness.

Science is the discovery of what already exists. Entrepreneurship organizes a business. Invention yields new ideas which did not previously exist. But innovation puts new ideas into practice, bringing to life new insights. Joseph Schumpeter, in his Theory of Economic Development (1912/1934), noted that innovation brings new goods, new methods of production, new markets, new sources of raw materials, and new organizational structures into practice.

I believe if we, in Ireland, can innovate and thus put new ideas into practice, then we will benefit from a sustainable national prosperity. If we can bring new products, new processes, new markets, new sources, and new business structures into practice, then we will not only change Ireland but also change the world.

Today we rightly celebrate our innovators, and our innovative companies. They should be the true foundation for promoting our national prosperity to the fullest.

What should be the justification for software patents ?

Software patents are now emerging as a major influence on open source software. In 2003, there was SCO’s threatened litigation on Linux. Last November, Novell and Microsoft signed a major agreement in which Microsoft undertook not to dispute use of Microsoft’s patents in Novell’s SUSE Linux technology. More recently, Microsoft has claimed that Linux and open source technologies infringe 235 of its patents.

Major open source organisations like Eclipse and Apache scrutinise contributed source code to try and ensure there are no patent infringements. Furthermore, under some contribution agreements, an individual contributor may become personally liable if (s)he successfully inserts infringing code into such collaborations.

IMHO, software patents are sometimes granted by national patent offices with insufficient scrutiny regarding their originality. A patent should pass the “obviousness” test: the principles claimed in a patent should not be immediately obvious to normally skilled practitioners in the field at the time that those claims are made. Having said that, it is clear that many software patents do pass this test, and are sufficiently original.

It is also illuminating to note that even when a patent is subsequently over-turned by a national patent office, as being “obvious”, a litigant may still be successful. I understand that Research In Motion (who brought the Blackberry to market) settled their purported patent infringement case with NTP for over half a billion dollars, even after many of the patents were overturned by the patent office concerned: the Judge involved would not reconsider his judgement in the light of the overturning of the patents by the patent office.

While thinking about these issues, I was interested to see developments in the use of patents in the global pharmaceutical industry, in a recent Economist article, and wondered about parallels in the software industry.

Recently, the Government of Thailand invoked the compulsory licensing mechanism of the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), negotiated globally as part of the Uruguay round of the World Trade Organisation.

Under TRIPS, a government can invoke compulsory licensing (see article 31 “Other Use”) in the interests of national emergency or extreme urgency, such as arising from national health concerns, and if efforts to negotiate with the patent owner (for example a pharmaceutical multinational) fail. As a result, a generic drug replacement for a patented drug can either be manufactured domestically, or imported from a third country.

A quick aside, just in case you are unfamiliar with generic drugs. A generic drug contains the same active chemical ingredients as its patented original, but is distributed without a brand name. It is bio-equivalent to the original. A drug patent publishes a chemical structure, which then readily copied as a generic: alternatively, a patented drug can be fairly easily reverse-engineered to produce a generic. Of course, normally a generic drug can only be legally produced once the patent for its original expires, or in territories where the patent does not apply. Compulsory licensing under the TRIPS protocol yields a further way of legalising the use of a generic drug within a specific country.

In general, bringing a new drug successfully to market requires extensive trials, under a rigorous procedure closely supervised by a national drug regulator. This is both time consuming and costly for the inventor, and hence patents are valuable in enabling their owners recoup not only the research and development costs involved, but also the costs of the clinical trials and regulatory procedures. Correspondingly, because a generic drug is bio-equivalent to its patented original, a generic can quickly gain regulatory approval, and therefore its cost is significantly lower.

The trade-off in invoking the TRIPS compulsory licensing mechanism is between a short term gain to obtain a beneficial treatment at lower cost, and a medium to long term disincentive for the industry to invest in research and development for new drugs, particularly for diseases more prevalent in the third world and emerging economies. Equally, the full costs of bringing a new drug to market will be even more met by those countries which do not invoke compulsory licensing: in practice, by the markets of the more wealthy nations.

It is also significant that a middle income country like Thailand – rather than an impoverished country – has invoked compulsory licensing. It is rumoured that other such countries – for example Brazil, India, and Malaysia – are also considering the mechanism. Some of these countries – in particular India – have their own blossoming drugs industries, including investment in research into new drugs: it will be very interesting to observe how a strengthening domestic industry in such a country can be reconciled with compulsory licensing.

Back to the software industry. I found it interesting to consider what if compulsory licensing under TRIPS were to be used in the software industry as well as the pharmaceutical industry ?

If this were the case, a national government might invoke TRIPS compulsory licensing of one or more software patents, in the national interest. This would probably be primarily as a result of economic and/or social, rather than health, concerns. Compulsory licensing might be seen as a legitimate response by a government to punitive action threatened by an aggrieved patent holder against users of a patented technology, whether those users be in nationally strategic industries, the civil service itself and/or the national education system.

The technical consequence of compulsory licensing of a software patent is clearly not equivalent to compulsory licensing of a pharmaceutical drug. As I noted above, a generic drug can quickly be derived as a bio-equivalent of a patented drug. It is not nearly as easy to produce a software program which is equivalent in all respects to another program which is built using one or more patents, assuming that the source code of the patented work is unavailable. That is, there is no direct software analogy of generic drugs. Nevertheless, compulsory licensing of a software patent would remove the ability of the patent holder to impose punitive licensing terms on infringing software, including in particular infringing open source software.

If there were no intellectual property protection, would there be innovation ? Some open source protagonists would claim ‘absolutely, of course there can be’. I personally think that although there can be innovation in software without intellectual property, nevertheless so far, innovative and intellectual property free open source software is unfortunately rare. More frequently, open source software is a replacement for well established main stream technology: Linux, JBOSS and MySQL are all examples.

So, if there were compulsory licensing of software, would commercial software organisations become disenchanted with investing in innovation ? I started this blog entry by musing what should be the justification for software patents ? In my view, the pharmaceutical industry points the way for us in the software industry.

Consider. In the pharmaceutical industry, a new drug has to be extensively proven in trials, before the national regulator will permit that drug be sold. The resultant product is thus reasonably expected to be safe and to address the medical problem for which it is claimed. In return for this investment and careful procedure, the drug inventor can be awarded a patent.

By analogy then, should therefore a software patent only be awarded once the software products which exploit it, are carefully proven to be safe and effective, via documented testing and trial use ? Should there be national Software Administration Agencies, to which a prospective software patent holder should apply, providing extensive evidence of testing and trials under an auditable procedure to verify that use of the technology described by the prospective patent is effective and safe ?

As I think about testing software, I recall a comment to me by Andrew O’Sullivan (the VP at IONA responsible for professional services) last week. The willingness of enterprise customers to accept even a single bug in a software product today is substantially less than during the late 90s and the frantic dotcom era. Today, software is fully expected to work first time, and every time: any bug which comes to light seriously adversely reflects on the vendor concerned.

So: maybe software patents should only be awarded to verified high quality software, in the same way in which patented drugs have to first prove themselves in trials.

If this situation were ever put in place, what of the role of compulsory licensing ? Could a software patent be overturned by a compulsory license issued by a national government for national social and economic reasons, despite the investment made by the patent holder in proving that the software concerned was safe ?

In the pharmaceutical world, the equivalent is happening today to patented drugs. However in the software world, we would not obtain the same result. If a software patent is compulsory licensed, the associated software program(s) exploiting the software patent would not in general be as readily reverse engineered as is a patented drug to a generic drug. Instead, compulsory licensing would inhibit litigation potentially taken by a software patent holder against alleged infringements by other software programs (including open source). But these other software programs would not be identical in effect as the patent protected works – unlike a generic drug which is bio-equivalent to its patented original. In particular, these other software programs would not, by virtue of the compulsory licensing alone, be implicitly as verifiably safe as the regulated products directly using the patents.

In summary, there are some interesting similarities but critical differences between software and pharmaceuticals. It appears to me that there is merit in only awarding software patents to verifiably tested, safe and effective cases. It also appears that there could be an argument for compulsory licensing of software patents. Unlike the pharmaceutical industry and generic drugs, a compulsory licensed software patent would not enable an exact equivalent to be produced. Thus compulsory licensing would simply remove the threat of litigation against infringements. The patented software would be verifiably “safe”: the infringing software would not necessarily be “safe” since it would not necessarily have been subject to the full rigor of regulation. In my view, the outcome would be that commercial enterprises would remain incented, perhaps even more so, to produce patented products, and to ensure that these are safe and fault-free.

Why would any entrepreneur chose Ireland as the headquarters for her global start-up ?

I’m not a spokesman for the Irish Government nor any of its myriad of agencies and civil servants. But that was the question which we discussed over dinner last night, quite robustly it must be said, between members of the US based team for Enterprise Ireland (EI) and some of the 30 Irish based IT CEOs attending the Leadership For Growth programme. This one year programme is organised by EI and the Irish Software Association, together with the CLG Executive Coaching, some experienced Irish technology business coaches, and hosted here this week at the Stanford Graduate Business School from where I write this blog entry.

I think any business visitor to Ireland today will be confused by the image which the country presents. On the one hand, Ireland appears to be thriving, with evidence of strong economic growth driven by a combination of indigenous and multinational companies. Dublin, Galway, Cork and Limerick are all exciting cities, with young and dynamic societies. On the other hand, there is clearly so much which is broken. The physical transport system is still very poor indeed, with long commutes, and highways which are frequently car parks. The health system seems to be a black hole and, despite larger public investment as a proportion of GDP (currently abut 6%) than many other countries, appears to fall very far behind what is available elsewhere. Labour and housing costs are expensive. The corporate legislative environment is onerous and burdensome. Personal taxation, with the top tax band at 41% is moderate compared to other European countries but the tax band threshold is quickly reached by most professional staff.

Joe Macri, an ebullient Australian friend, and the current head of Microsoft in Ireland, spoke forthrightly recently that the sole reason that multinationals stay in Ireland is to avail of the low corporate tax rate of 12.5%. Past advantages have been eroded by international competition: it is no longer the quality of the Irish workforce, or cost competitiveness, or the telecommunications infrastructure, or anything else. If he and the American Chamber of Commerce are right, then clearly Ireland needs to grow its own indigenous companies and entrepreneurs to sustain economic growth as multinationals in due course move elsewhere.

Michael O’Leary, of Ryanair, is probably the most outstanding CEO which Ireland has yet produced. Ryanair is now amongst the most profitable and largest of the global airlines. Peter Conlon – himself a highly experienced technology entrepreneur – nominated O’Leary at dinner last night as the role model which Enterprise Ireland should adopt, and I think Peter is correct. And there are others who come to mind: Liam O’Mahony, CEO of CRH, a company which has global presence through outstanding execution of M&A; Eddie O’Connor, CEO of airtricity, ironically having far more success with wind farms outside of Ireland – such as Texas – than at home; and Liam Fitzgerald of United Drug, who has built a highly regarded company. Noticeably absent from my list above is of course global Irish ICT companies, and that’s part of what the Leadership For Growth programme aims to solve.

I believe that Brand Ireland is now internationally very strong. Ireland is a neutral nation. It is now well on to its commitments to donating 0.7% of GDP for third world aid, made at the UN Millennium Summit in 2000, which has further raised its international political profile. It is also important to recognise that Irish aid is not tied to trade requirements, as is frequently the case for some other western governments. Ireland boxes above its weight at both the UN and European Union institutions. Ireland is the home of the “celtic tiger”. The consequence of Brand Ireland is that being an Irish company opens opportunities for global business, whether it be in the US, or China, or Saudi Arabia, or Israel, or Brazil – pretty much wherever. Without wishing to be geo-political, frankly I believe that certain other national brands are now extremely damaged in the global community, creating obstacles for their own entrepreneurs to undertake business and opening opportunities for others, such as the Irish.

I also pointed out last night that the substantial investment in world class R&D in Ireland, by Science Foundation Ireland and industry, is now also creating entrepreneurial opportunities for new global businesses. As chair of the CTVR initiative, there are clear global leadership positions emerging in cognitive radio, dynamic spectrum management and trading, and terabit per second laser technology. There are further significant global advances in, for example, bio-diagnostics, nanomaterials, the semantic web, and alimentary pharmabiotics amongst the other Irish Centres for Science and Technology. Such world class research will be exploited by visionary entrepreneurship.

It is also remarkable how the composition of the work force in Ireland has changed this decade. The Polish, Chinese, Latvian and other communities are significant. While these nationals are visible in the hospitality service sector, a visitor to Ireland might not realise how many professional grade staff there are amongst the new immigrants, including in particular the ICT sector. Ireland is also has quite a number of start up companies founded and run by immigrant entrepreneurs, and I believe that some of these entrepreneurs may well emerge as global leaders. The strong linkage to other, frankly lower cost, economies which the immigrant communities create, are enabling relatively easy off-shoring opportunities to globally compete with world class products, of Irish based innovation, with high value propositions.

Ultimately, the striking observation is that the most successful world class entrepreneurs based in Ireland, have done so despite the challenges: the physical infrastructure, even the physical location of Ireland, the cost challenges, and the frequently dysfunctional civil service. The Irish have historically been the “under-dogs”, and rise to the challenge. Ireland has now become culturally deeply entrepreneurial, with a deep “can do” attitude swelling in its national psyche.

I know a German CEO who relocated herself from Munich to Dublin last year to found her global company, which is based on a highly innovative and insightful use of web 2.0 social community technology. Watch out for Anna Kupka and Ammado. I suspect there will be many more like her.