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.
Irish companies spend less than other OECD countries on research and development. And worryingly for the indigenous economy, the data shows that that the vast majority of R&D expenditure is from foreign-owned multinationals.
Bobby Healy has been thinking a great deal about the future: What it looks like, how we get there and how it is made. In an interview with Stephen Kinsella, the Manna founder outlines his views and talks about innovation, funding and the issues facing indigenous business.
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