2006 was a record year for business start-ups in Ireland.
Enterprise Ireland, the the country's "state development agency," supported the establishment of 76 new export focused high potential companies in 2006. Nothing remarkable there, beyond the numbers, but perhaps more surprising is the fact that the "companies come from a wide range of knowledge intensive sectors," as Micheál Martin, Minister for Enterprise Trade and Employment, puts it in the press release on the story.
As Finland's success in innovation also shows, Ireland's prowess proves that you do not have to be a huge economy with a surfeit of universities to be able to generate high-tech companies.
Enterprise Ireland has an interesting way of defining what it calls a "high potential start up". To qualify as an "HPSU," the business has to be:
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Based on technological innovation;
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Likely to achieve significant growth in 3 years (Sales of €1m per annum and employment of 10);
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Export oriented;
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Led by an experienced team, with a mixture of technical and commercial competencies.
I guess we shouldn't be at all surprised either by the fact that 43 of the 76 companies are in "Software and Services". Maybe more of an eye opener is the fact that 16 are what the agency describes as a "Third Level/Campus Company" and that 21 come from a "Serial Entrepreneur," confirming the stereotype view of the enterprising Irish.
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