Friday, April 26, 2019

Irish Government as alchemists in innovation game

In the Middle Ages, alchemists searched for the philosopher’s stone to transmute or transform common metals to gold. However, despite failures, their work was the genesis of modern chemistry. Ireland will have failed twice — 2013 and 2020 — to meet innovation goals and with some help from our old friends the leprechauns, 3 significant global innovation rankings have given the country ranks of 10, 14 and 21 in the past year. However, the Irish Government is still at the level of the alchemists as any young knowledge economy startup that has international appeal and is funded by venture capital is inevitably acquired by a foreign company.

Sunday, April 21, 2019

Ireland's underperforming indigenous exporting sector

Ireland has two economies: the foreign-owned exporting sector that has driven economic transformation and its underperforming indigenous counterpart which is vulnerable to Brexit. Ryanair — Europe’s biggest individual airline brand in 2018 carried 139m passengers — for example, has been a rare significant international success in recent decades. Ireland’s annual indigenous exports to the other 18 countries of the eurozone are less than €5bn or 20% despite currency stability, while 40% of food exports go to the UK.

SEE: Irish Government as alchemists in innovation game

Saturday, April 13, 2019

Irish median income at 13th in Europe, UK at 14th rank

Irish median income in 2017, adjusted for price differences called PPS, was at 13th in Europe (EU28 + Switzerland [2016], Norway and Iceland [2016]) closely followed by the UK and Malta, according to data this year from Eurostat

The median is the mid-point where half or 50% of a sample is above and 50% below.

Wednesday, April 10, 2019

The Blame Game and its Irish connections

 Google Books Ngram Viewer: 1950-2019

Last month the Financial Times headlined a report ‘The British begin the Brexit blame game: PM and her ministers are already pointing the finger at EU for impending failure' and this week the Irish Times published an opinion piece ‘Internal British bloodletting is the biggest worry of the Brexit blame game’ from a former Irish ambassador to the UK — just a decade ago the politicians, civil servants and media cheerleaders, who brought the Irish economy to the brink of ruin for the second time in a generation, not surprisingly had played the same finger-pointing game.

Saturday, April 06, 2019

Few Irish firms in FT 1000 & Inc. 5000 Europe lists of fastest-growing companies

The FT’s 2019 annual list of the top 1,000 of Europe’s fastest-growing companies, was published by the Financial Times in March and this week INC. — the American entrepreneurship magazine — published its Inc. 5000 Europe list of the top 5,000 fastest-growing private companies in the region.

Ireland has one legitimate entry in the FT 1000.

Monday, April 01, 2019

Time for Internet change 30 years after first website

The revenues of the top 5 US tech firms in 2018 exceeded the IMF's 2018 forecast for the gross domestic product (GDP) of Switzerland — a country of 8.5m people with an income per capita that is among the highest in the world. Amazon's high growth strategy focuses on high profitability in the long term; tax provisions in accounts may not correspond with what is paid while Microsoft's tax amount in 2017/2018 is not at a normal level. Alphabet is the parent company of Google.
Facebook's net profit margin of 45.5% reflects its near-monopoly position while not having to make capital investments on a scale with large non-digital companies.