A lot of the talk about developing innovation in Ireland is superficial. That is why the detailed intervention by Dubliner Diarmuid O’Brien, innovation tzar at the University of Cambridge, is so fascinating.
Between start-ups and multinationals, established privately-held domestic companies drive one third of the economy. Often overlooked, they risk falling behind.
The Irish economy contracted in 2023. Did you feel it? Very likely you didn’t. Why is that? More importantly, what should we do about it? We should innovate.
Ireland is never, ever, ever building an innovation system of the scale of the UK, or the US, even in per-person terms. Then why bother? Because small states have to choose carefully.
Investment in Irish start-ups plummeted by 48 per cent last year, but other metrics tell a different story of venture capital activity here and across Europe.
Innovation is not only poor, but it’s exhausting. That’s because there’s no real difference between innovation and capitalism anymore, something I think about every time I go to a public toilet or try to turn on a hob.
If Ireland wants to get over the looming transition to an older population, it should look at how it embraces automation technologies such as robotics and AI.
Creating people who can build things starts and ends with education. Yet, our system is designed to take the one-in-a-million extraordinary people and make them mediocre before they’ve even had a chance to realise the scale of their potential.
Most of Europe is not creating the right people who can build things. Meanwhile, the European government funding ecosystem is broken and following the wrong strategy. So, let’s not continue to kid ourselves that everything is okay.
Dublin-born billionaire engineer David McMurtry is working with the next generation – including an Irishwoman – on the future of all these things. In exclusive interviews, he and the executives leading Renishaw's latest projects talk past, present and future.
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