REMARKS BY PRESIDENT MCALEESE AT A BUSINESS BREAKFAST HOSTED BY ENTERPRISE IRELAND
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT MCALEESE AT A BUSINESS BREAKFAST HOSTED BY ENTERPRISE IRELAND, AT STANFORD UNIVERSITY, SILICON VALLEY
Thank you for that warm welcome. And thank you Dr. John Hennessy, for a gracious introduction and kind invitation to visit today. When Ireland’s Hennessy clan scattered, they clearly took with them formidable brain-power and it is a matter of great Irish pride that a Hennessy heads up such a prestigious institution as Stanford University.
I thank Enterprise Ireland for organising this breakfast and acknowledge the presence among us of representatives here from IDA Ireland and Invest Northern Ireland. For quite a few years now, these organisations have worked here in Silicon Valley as ambassadors for today’s entrepreneurial and high-tech Ireland as a highly competitive destination for foreign direct investment. I have come on this visit to further deepen the many ties between this great university, its hinterland of innovation and entrepreneurship that is Silicon Valley and the Irish high-technology sector, both here and back home.
Among today’s gathering are members of the Irish Technology Leadership Group, some of whom I met just a few weeks ago when they visited Dublin. These local Irish and Irish/American business leaders are leveraging their considerable expertise to advance the global market success of Irish innovators and I want to thank them warmly for their efforts and personal commitment which has in turn sparked excitement and enthusiasm within Ireland’s technology community.
Stanford University and Silicon Valley are both powerful bywords for innovation. This venerable institution is recognised globally, not just for its academic excellence, but also as a catalyst in the formation of “Silicon Valley”. From modest beginnings, the blend of education and innovation transformed the orchards and suburban garages of this area into a phenomenal centre of global entrepreneurialism and innovation that is the envy of the world. It’s a place where the alchemy of scholarship, creativity and risk-taking have changed the future and so it is the right place in which to reflect on the changes which have seen Ireland cast off her poor and under-achieving past and reinvent herself as a successful, open, sophisticated, technologically-advanced and globalised economy with a strong ambition to be a centre of new-generation technology innovation. It is that same ambition that permeates the business ties between Silicon Valley and Ireland.
Here in Silicon Valley, Ireland’s industrial and investment agencies are working to develop new business opportunities and expand existing ones. For example, Enterprise Ireland partners with Stanford University to stage its innovative Leadership 4 Growth program which has already given more than 60 Irish entrepreneurs the chance not alone to study here but to develop those human networks of friendship, trust, compatibility and shared interests which keep Ireland plugged into important Silicon Valley constituencies, business models and ideas. The internationalisation of our business depends upon such networks and what is good for Ireland is also good for the United States, for our relationship has changed and matured in recent decades as the new Ireland emerged, confident and successful. Many people know how vital US investment in Ireland has been to our prosperity and how it has created some 90,000 jobs. Less well-known, though of great importance, is the fact that, thanks to Enterprise Ireland, there are over 200 Irish companies in the US employing 82,000 US citizens among them, almost 60 of which are located here in California employing over 5,000 people. Ireland and California are working well together, bringing real life-enhancing opportunities to our people and the chance to prosper.
Many of you here today are the very business influencers and decision-makers who have ignited and shaped the outstanding business relationships between your Silicon Valley corporations and Ireland’s leading companies. We know you have the world to choose from when seeking partners in innovation and I am proud that many of you turned to Ireland and Irish companies when making those critical business decisions. There was no nostalgia for the old Hennessy sod in those decisions but the hard-nosed wisdom that comes from weighing up the facts, the attractions and the potential.
Innovation is in our DNA - just take the Hennessys as an example, one branch went West and look how they did. Another travelled East, to France, and anyone who has savoured a balloon of Hennessy brandy will know how well they did! Like Californians, we have the energy and optimism of the frontier spirit, and the can-do resilience that comes from a deep familiarity with adversity. In these tough economic times we are not paralysed by self-doubt or overwhelmed by the scale of the global financial problems. We are too busy, like you, looking for solutions through the partnerships and collaborations which will bring us through these tougher times and introduce us to the new technologies and ideas which will advance humanity’s development and quality of life. I wish each of you well as you work to prise open the space that will “let the future in”. Thank you.