Irish need to distinguish chit-chat from networking

NET RESULTS:Are other nationalities better at sowing seeds of deals at conferences while the Irish just see if they are related to you?

INNOVATION DUBLIN week started last year as a low-key affair but has steamrollered into a broad-based, interesting and often-challenging event in the capital. It has afforded an opportunity for public discussion and debate about areas often left to private conferences or the mandarins.

Innovation week is unique in how it brings people together to talk energetically about research, technology, start-ups, products, services and, of course, how the Irish psyche meshes with it all.

Across the range of events that straddled the week, people asked recurring questions about whether Ireland is a nation that truly innovates and, if so, to what extent.

Do we build companies well? Do we adequately support entrepreneurs and inventors, start-ups and indigenous success stories? Are we mature enough about failure? How do we teach, fund, mentor? And – a question that interested me in particular – do the Irish really know how to network in a way that enables other aspects of innovation to flourish?

Networking arose as an issue at several of the events in which I participated. It seems funny to ask whether the Irish network well. What other nation is as well known for its ability to gab? The Irish also have an uncanny ability to find all the other Irish people in a room, a city, a region.

That is, of course, networking. Couple a very strong sense of national identity with an almost forensic pleasure in talking about where you are from and you’d seem to have the world’s best networkers. Only the Irish can, within a few minutes, inevitably find a relative, friend or distant acquaintance in common.

Many years ago, when the economic boom times had not yet taken off and all seemed nascent and promising, I attended a government agency-supported networking event for Irish businesspeople in Silicon Valley. The reception was held at one of the huge nondescript convention centre hotels lining highway 101.

There were lots of similar industry receptions happening in other rooms along the hallways as I made my way towards the Irish event. In other rooms, men and women in business suits meandered through doors and joined small, quietly chatty clusters of people.

Then, off in the distance, I could hear a dull roar which, as I got closer, sorted itself out into a happy babble of voices, laughter and shouts across the room as a familiar face was spotted and the hubbub that always surrounds a very active bar. Of course, this was the Irish event. I was walking near a group of Americans who stopped and looked into the room. “What the heck is that?” asked one. I felt sorry as they went off to a less bubbly event.

Inside, it was the usual story. The Irish were hunkered down in long conversations, often with people they already knew, talking GAA, friends and relatives and occasionally about companies, research and the conference.

Meanwhile, the Americans from the Valley – a mix of business people, venture capitalists and angel investors, journalists and the generally curious – actually worked the room with intent. They moved from group to group, handed out business cards, talked shop.

Both groups were “networking” and I think the Irish were having more fun. Discovering, though, that you know the second cousin of the person you are speaking to because he coaches your son’s hurling team probably is not the most productive use of an event intended for business networking with people in Silicon Valley who might actually be able to move your business forward.

This event may seem reflective of a more naive era – after all, Ireland has since had Nasdaq- listed companies, indigenous success stories and a continued stream of high-level foreign direct investment.

But during Dublin innovation week quite a few people made clear they felt the Irish version of networking was still more of the order of social interaction, enjoyable but not ambitious, and most often not the type that is most productive in business.

In the broader scope of things, many of our achievements remain modest. Compared to Israel, say, which could claim 848 venture deals in 2008 – more than all the rest of Europe combined – and which has churned out about 125 currently-listed Nasdaq firms.

There are many reasons for the Israeli success but effective networking is one. The Israelis – like Silicon Valley-based Americans – view networking as “working and building your business networks”, not as “social networking”.

But let’s face it, the all-work- no-play version of networking can be terribly dull.

I think other countries could learn from the Irish about how to have fun while networking – witness the recent Founders and Web Summit events, where the social party was a key part of work-angled networking. The Irish certainly showed they could host a good party but whether it was a party to facilitate others’ networking or to enable Irish companies and entrepreneurs to network productively rather than just socially remains to be seen.

Nonetheless, if the Irish – one of the most socially adept people in the world – could make sure the parties are also about work and can lubricate the innovation and entrepreneurship process with more targeted sociability than perhaps in the past, we’d have the world’s most formidable recipe for productive networking.