Here's a little business quiz. Imagine you run a large, innovative technology company with a number of services and products. Your company has worked hard over the past decade, with considerable success, to establish a global profile and reputation for itself.
But as we all know, the past few years have been tough. The economy stinks, many customers have fallen away, operating costs have risen, you have way too many employees and the market doesn't seem as interested in your products as it once was.
So, what do you do? 1) you offer pay rises to all the employees, hoping they'll be so grateful that they'll become more productive; 2) you maintain, even encourage and reward ,your layered and sclerotic management structures; 3) you let your senior executives bicker and criticise each other's management skills publicly; 4) you slash your research and development budget to conserve cash.
What's that? You prefer a "none of the above" option ? Sorry, but that doesn't seem to be on offer with this Government and the way it has been running Ireland Inc of late. Think of the Republic from a business executive's perspective and in between benchmarking, gnarled and creaky agencies and decision-making bodies and ministers laying into each other, the executive would be praying for an acquisition.
However, any chief executive worth her salt would recognise that options 1, 2 and 3, while serious and an indication that a shareholder revolt might be imminent, are short-term problems that could be tackled at a management level - perhaps by changing the managers .
Option 4 is the choice that signals the ship (of State) does not have steady hands at the helm even as the rocks and icebergs are popping up out of the cold waters. The minute you think R&D is expendable is the minute, competitively, you are dead.
Just look at any of the top companies in any business sector. Chances are they have not gone near R&D as a budget item, not even in this severe downturn, because they recognise that to do so may allow for short term cost savings and survival, but guarantees long term failure.
Take a look at the technology sector, the space most hard-hit by the current economic slump. Intel, Microsoft, HP, Apple, Computer Associates, Oracle, SAP - these are just a few of the firms that have maintained and in many cases increased R&D spend right through the recession.
It's elementary stuff - you don't even need to attend a pricy business school to understand this. R&D means innovation. It means you have one eye cocked on the future. Well-run companies, especially those whose business is innovation, understand that no R&D means no new products and services down the line. R&D is an essential commitment in good economic times.
It's even more crucial when times are hard, because as the world emerges from the downturn and is in a buying mood, you'll have zilch to offer. That's true whether you're talking products and services, or national capabilities.
The Republic has always been a research laggard, with minuscule amounts - among the lowest in western nations - going towards national R&D, even well into the Celtic Tiger era.
Some excellent Government programmes had just begun to address this, in particular new science and technology funding channelled through Science Foundation Ireland. But to the dismay of the research institutions and universities, large chunks of that funding has been put on hold.
Making cutbacks in R&D - in most people's minds, something vague , associated with pointy-headed professors and esoteric research papers - might seem a pretty voter-friendly compromise. After all, how many people are going to raise the issue on the doorstep come the local elections?
Unfortunately, cutting national R&D in order to save, oh, taxing people like those wealthy horse breeders whose stud operations get special dispensation from the Finance Minister, is mortgaging the whole country's future. Not this year or next, but in 10 or 30 or 50 years' time.
A timeframe well beyond today's budgetary problems. A nightmare that will be foisted on to some future government.
Harvard business professor Michael Porter, one of the co-authors of the Global Competitiveness Report, pointed this out in a keynote speech to the Irish Management Institute's annual conference this month (please note that the Government regularly promotes itself abroad with any favourable coverage in that report).
He noted that the Republic would not become an internationally competitive "innovation nation" for a decade or so, and then, only if R&D was at the top of the State agenda. While generally upbeat about the State's competitive potential, he singled out our worrying neglect of R&D, which he felt signified a lack of political consensus on the importance of R&D to the national economy.'
While it's not clear yet whether the State cared to listen to his analysis , fortunately the same general sentiment from a powerful source did get voiced directly into the Taoiseach's ear a month ago. Mr Chuck Feeney, the shy American philanthropist that has quietly funded the State's universities and institutions to the extraordinary tune of over $700 million (€599 million), rattled the only motivational sabres this Government seems to understand sometimes - personal handouts.
Like any good businessman, the highly successful Mr Feeney saw how utterly detrimental to the State's future it would be to cut R&D funding. So he threatened to cut his own €50 million contribution here to university research unless the Government stopped cutbacks to third level R&D budgets.
How embarrassing that the need for a research and development climate has not been self-evident and has had to be reiterated by foreign philanthropists and business experts. Even now, after years of the State promoting itself as a technology base for Europe and the world.
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