I started the day by my phone alarm not going off and oversleeping. My roommate, knocked on my door 15 minutes before we were suppose to leave. I had to move fast, but I showered and got dressed quickly and made it.
We ate at the campus cafeteria called the Buttery for breakfast. We met in a classroom in the Arts building. The inside was made of concrete blocks and concrete ceilings. It was the ugliest classroom I've ever seen. I guess the art students don't need much inspiration.
Our professor Jan Rutherford was the first speaker and he spoke on Leadership. Some key things that he said that stuck with me are that baby boomers, since they have to work longer, will move towards portfolio careers meaning they will work half time with a company and then have projects with other companies or non-profits. To do this you have to have huge networks. He also said everyone needs recognition at least once a week.
We heard Donal Cullen who is the CEO of Spanish Point Technologies which is an Irish consulting company that builds IT solutions using Sharepoint. They are what is called a lifestyle company in that they make money to have a good lifestyle not to accumulate wealth or please their shareholders. One of their product launches wasn't as successful as they hoped and they attribute that to trying to solve a chronic business problem versus a critical business problem. They have an offshoring site in Minsk, Belarus.
Ronan Loftus who is the founder of Identigen has an extremely interesting company. He has a PHD in genetics and they came up with a way to trace the source of beef and pork through DNA. This company was formed right after the Mad Cow Disease breakout in the UK which caused billions of Euros of loss in both the UK and Ireland. Their customers are food retailers, packers, distributors. They have a US headquarters in Lawrence, KS.
Alan Looney, CEO of National Chemical CEO has a company of 20 people that sells polymers and is on track to make 35 million euros this year. He puts his people as the top priority of his company. He has personally interviewed and selected every employee and he looks for the right attitude and people who are very energetic over skills.
Kieren Daly, CEO of Shimmer Research sells a 1 inch by 1/2 inch square device that measures body vitals. This type of technology is allowing people in Spain to do all of their rehab after a knee replacement with these devices and a touch screen laptop. The device tells the patient what exercises to do and measures how effective they are. This reports back to the Dr to let them know the patient is doing what needs to be done and allows all the rehab to be done at home. The Entertainment business is also using this to measure emotional reactions to movies.
The whole class had a team dinner at Porterhouse Central which was a pub. Then we got to meet 5 University of Dublin Marketing students all between the ages of 22-24. They were all very nice. Ireland was playing Italy in Soccer tonight and the pub was crowded with all eyes glued to the big TVs.
In summary, what I learned is that Ireland has many small high tech and medical tech companies that are doing quite well in the global market. There is a lot of highly skilled people here and Ireland is trying to do everything to keep their graduates from leaving the country looking for jobs. The CEOs are quite different from American CEOs in that they are humble and more low key. The fact that Ireland is so small, start-up companies have to enter the global market within 24 months to stay alive.
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