Is Ireland over-investing in IT/digital technology?

I am assuming you live in Asia and I don't want to get personal and I've been an 'emigrant' myself, but my experience is that there is a tendency to be overly critical of the 'homeland' by emigrants abroad. Sometimes this is justified, often it is not. Especially when it verges on applying personality characteristics to Irish people living in Ireland.

Wind it back, there is a tendency to be overly defensive from people based in Ireland. Just wind it back please. I am giving you my opinion that is formed from relevant experience. The claim was made that Ireland ranks highly in terms of 'entrepreneurship' and I really don't see the results of that on the ground. If the proof is in the pudding there is no pudding to be found.

I live in one of the world's most entrepeneurial nations in the middle of Asia, so it's no surprise that the piddling numbers of small and medium size businesses in Ireland wouldn't impress me. Now if you said that Ireland had better beer and whiskey would I disagree?

I grew up in Ireland and know it well, even in the boom times most people went into construction related trades in terms of running business, designing , making, developing, buying, selling houses. These were also classed as Irish entrepeneurs. The term doesn't impress me much on it's own. Ireland's export business is hugely dominated by multinational exports.

There are good numbers of people working in freelance type IT services, which could be classed as entrepreneurial I guess. Again though the IT business would be dominated by the multinationals in terms of output and earnings.

This doesn't mean that there aren't people hungry to work for themselves or do it for themselves, but their numbers don't match up with real go getter areas overseas. The lack of investment cash is a big problem, it's all there in the surveys, I've given you the link above.

It's nothing to do with looking at personalities, it's looking at the numbers, the export figures in terms of indigeneous companies. 75% of Irish exports are from multinationals. Anybody can open a company, but does that make one a businessman? Does it really mean anything if they don't really do anything? IMO it's better to look at successful companies and their record on exports.

http://www.idaireland.com/news-media/featured-news/multinationals-exports/

The numbers simply don't suggest that Ireland is a hotbed of entrepeneurial/indigeneous business activity. That doesn't mean things can't improve, and it looks like they are somewhat with a heavy weighting to food/drinks sector.


The performance of Irish companies with regards exports to Asia is abysmal. I've tried working with one or two and they just don't get it.
http://www.irishexaminer.com/business/features/real-focus-should-be-on-indigenous-exporters-234732.html
They have been very far behind the curve and scrabbling to catch up now.

Also this Irish Examiner article misses the point of why our exports didn't grow after year 2000.
It was not solely because Ireland became less competitive and FDI dropped. It's because indigenous Irish companies didn't pick up the slack! When multinationals stopped investing there was nothing else substantial domestically in terms of export oriented companies to keep the momentum going! They didn't target Asia where the real substantial growth was in the last 10 years or so.

If there was a lot of interest in starting businesses in Ireland, one would assume there would be a network of investors and a lot of businesses!

Since there aren't either of those, what should we conclude?

You say I haven't given facts but I have actually. These are strong indicators of the business culture in Ireland.

-Only 2% of Irish high net worth individuals invest their money in enterprises
-Only 25% of exports from Ireland are from indigeneous companies
-Manufacturing and exports tailed off in the early 2000s as local 'enterprises' were not formed in significant numbers (excepting construction related activities) to compensate for the lack of FDI

Now if you are argued that the people with an entrepreneurial bent had gone into trades or domestic related activities, and later were wiped out for choosing the wrong options, you might have some point.

I was responding to Experimental's statements below, which simply do not make any sense to me! It sounds like a load of old waffle and hot air f I'm being honest. Don't get all defensive.

I have noticed that Irish startups are much better at selling themselves than Silicon Valley ones. In fact, very few countries are as good at starting businesses as Ireland is. The process of starting businesses is a competitive advantage, because it's unpredictable and it can't be replicated. The methodology behind this process has no single universal format, so it's hard to teach and therefore hard to outsource. Over hundreds of years, Irish people have built up a unique entrepreneurial culture, so I wonder if the government invests in developing it further.

I'm not saying that some Irish people do not have an an aptitude or an interest in doing business, I'm just saying that there is nothing particular that would make Ireland special in terms of opening or operating businesses, especially if you look at the trade figures.

If the situation is changing and there are a lot of genuine and well run companies setting up and starting to be successful I will be the first to congratulate them!

[QUOTE=Sister Assumpta;85507041However the fact that our exports are dominated by MNCs does not lessen the fact that our rate of entrepreneurialism ranks fairly well on an international basis, even better than Germany, France and the Nordics. [/QUOTE]

Just out of curiosity, because I genuinely don't know, would these figures include all of the 1 person companies out there formed by people who choose to work as contractors?

I've worked in engineering consultancies and in IT in this country and in these industries up to half the staff are their own companies who are paid directly by the parent company. This is done on their behalf to gain a high daily rate whilst foregoing any benefits or job security.

So technically whilst these people have started their own companies I wouldn't classify them as entrepeneurs as they don't employ anyone else nor will they in the future.