Ireland was long considered a backwater of Europe and an economic appendage to the United Kingdom. Its greatest export over the past two centuries has been its people. George Bernard Shaw, the great early 20th century playwright, bespoke the Irish predicament when he said, "I showed my appreciation of my native land in the usual Irish way by getting out of it as soon as I possibly could." [1]
[1] Jon Winokur, The Portable Curmudgeon . New York: New American Library Trade, 1987.
Ireland has turned itself into an exemplary model of economic strength through linkage to the Innovation Economy. Its story is a great inspiration for those regions seeking to elevate themselves through economic development.
Moving up the value chain to adapt to economic and technological change is built into Ireland's development strategy. Competitive advantage is dynamic, not static. In the 1980s, low wage costs and tax incentives attracted mainly assembly and manufacturing activity. As cost pressures in the 1990s began to reduce the attractiveness of Ireland as a location for mobile investment, the focus moved to software development. In the late 1990s, Ireland vigorously sought to ride the wave of the Internet and e-business explosion by highlighting its competitive edge in state-of-the-art facilities such as broadband connectivity. Today Ireland is set to become one of the foremost knowledge-based societies in Europe.
Throughout this remarkable "Innovation Revolution" one fact remains certain: Ireland has a pro-business political culture that has built a regulatory, service, and fiscal environment that few countries can match.
