Damien Mulley's latest interview is with John Kennedy, Senior Reporter with Silicon Republic, a tech publication I always enjoy, especially ever since I won a printer for merely registering with them (my God, is it really more than two years ago now?). John's articles in particular are always a great read so it was interesting to see the 'microphone' turned on him for a change.
Damien asked him if he felt the Government should be investing more into indigenous Irish buisnesses and his response was mercifully lacking in cynicism -
Enterprise Ireland’s CEO Frank Ryan has, [however] unveiled a strong strategy that could see indigenous firms turn a corner and become bigger, internationalized players. There is no reason why some day Ireland should not field firms to the scale of Nokia or Ericsson.
Of course, Ericsson and Nokia were both venerable Scandinavia family businesses with long standing interests in farming, engineering and forestry. A new generation of board members had the wealth and the vision twenty odd years ago to take the old businesses into completely new areas. I think we'd be very hard pressed to find comparable examples in Ireland.
But that doesn't mean we can't build such businesses from scratch. It does mean that we need investment vehicles similar to the UK's Venture Capital Trusts -- but with less paperwork -- that can transition companies from the excellent seed money framework we have here to the bigger league.
Posted by: Julian Ellison | December 13, 2005 at 10:02 PM