Celebrating innovation

The American Chamber of Commerce is currently engaged in a programme of events aimed at celebrating innovation activity in Ireland. The events, which are taking place throughout the country, showcase innovations in both US and Irish firms that can only happen through exceptional teamwork, strong leadership, and that have real impact, nationally or internationally.

“There is a lot of really great stuff happening in Ireland at the moment,” says Mark Gantly, senior R&D director with HP Enterprise and chair of the American Chamber’s R&D group. “We held a showcase in Galway recently hosted by EA Games. It was fascinating to get an insight into what’s happening there with games like FIFA 17 representing enormous pieces of work.”

The EA Games Galway site hosts worldwide customer experience, quality assurance, quality engineering, and digital platform teams. “Some of our teams, like worldwide customer experience, help players have great experiences directly on forums, phone, chat, and email,” says Alex Masters-Goessling, director of communications and employee engagement with EA. “We’re players helping players, people helping people – whenever, wherever, and however they need us.”

“At EA, we put players first,” adds EA Galway site director Elaine Murphy. “In Ireland, we have a diverse and global team of people directly supporting players, testing our games and providing valuable player insights and feedback to EA development studios around the globe.”

The Galway event naturally featured a large medical devices element, given that industry’s strong presence in the area. “There is a huge amount of innovation going on in the medtech industry,” says Gantly. “Ten years ago, companies here were manufacturing basic stents and have now moved onto new, much higher-value stents and devices such as valves for structural heart applications. Over time, commoditised products move to lower-cost locations but Ireland has moved up the value chain. It is very important to have R&D here in that respect. You need to be able to see around corners. Ireland has moved from a passive dependent manufacturing base to one that is always looking ahead to the next wave.”

The cluster effect generated by the medtech sector in the region has also been very significant, according to Gantly. “The large IDA investments in the 1980s and 1990s, including Medtronic and Boston Scientific, sparked the development of start-ups and the attraction of other multinational companies,” he says. “We also have the Curam SFI research centre in NUIG. There is now a genuine medtech cluster of multinational, indigenous, start-ups and third-level institutions here in the west.”

Innovative start-ups are a key element of that cluster and the multinational sector has a key role to play there as well. “When I am asked to give career advice to graduates, I tell them to go to work for a multinational where they can see how products are developed and brought to market. After that, they can move on to other companies or start up their own. You can’t overstate the effect in terms of the talent pool that multinational companies here in Galway have had. Thousands of people have gone through companies. When it comes to creating successful start-ups, the Digital Galway story is well told but we have the medtech story now as well.”

Financial services

Manufacturing and software aren’t the only sectors where innovation is taking place, however. Financial services organisations are becoming increasingly dependent on innovation for competitive advantage.

Gulru Atak is head of Citi Bank’s Innovation Lab in Dublin. “If you look at how fintech is disrupting banking and other industries, the organisations who don’t innovate and invest in technology and reinvent themselves are not in the game,” she says. “That’s why Citi are so focused on innovation. Technology and innovation are important for us to be able to grow. For Citi to be around for another 200 years will be dependent on innovation.”

The Dublin facility is one of two Citi innovation labs internationally, the other is in Singapore. “We have a global mandate and the Dublin lab is producing solutions for the global organisation. For example, we have just developed a new blockchain solution in co-operation with Nasdaq and are now looking at how it can be developed further for other clients.”

“We are pushing innovation as something fundamental to preserving and growing the FDI base,” Gantly concludes. “But it’s not just about the lightbulb moment. It’s about ongoing improvement in products and process as well. And in order for FDI to grow we need better communication collaboration between multinationals, the research system and the start-up community.”