On a recent press outing, I visited China for the first time. Arriving in Hong Kong with network and comms giant Huawei, a group of Irish and UK journalists were then driven an hour or so to Guangdong province, and the city of Shenzhen, where the company has its main campus.
Travelling through full border control between the special administrative area of Hong Kong and mainland China was an experience in itself, most notably because, for me at least, it was entirely unexpected. I had not realised that even after Hong Kong was returned after its 99 year lease to the British, that it was not entirely naturalised, as it were, into the rest of China.
So, after entering China proper, we arrived in downtown Shenzhen. A modern city, its ancient origins as a fishing village were entirely covered by an eighties development when it was designated as a special economic zone. It now boasts some 13 million people in its greater urban area and is home to many high tech companies such as Huawei, but also manufacturing giant Foxconn.
First impressions were of a well laid out, modern city that was leafy, relatively clean (when compared to the likes of New York for example) and vast. Around the corner from our hotel was a shopping centre, topped by a tower, that was the length of city block (about 600m) and several stories tall.
On the drive to the Huawei campus, from the downtown area of the city, one could not but notice the scale of development that is going on. Buildings were going up all around, and not in ones or twos, but five seems to be the magic combination for what looked like apartment tower blocks, all in the 40 or 50 plus storey mark.
As we arrived at the Huawei campus, we told that it covered 2 square kilometres. Next door is the Foxconn campus where, and estimates vary, roughly 350,000 people go to work every day. In fact, sometimes the company might take on 5,000 casual workers of a morning.
We have all heard of the scale of economies such as China, India, Brazil and the likes, about the capability to turn out vast numbers of goods and services, but also vast numbers of engineers, ICT professionals and researchers. And as I walked around the Huawei exhibition hall, I began, as an Irish person, to despair slightly for poor wee Ireland in face of Chinese economic might.
We cannot compete on par with companies that can turn out our working population in engineers every year. Nor can we compete with factories that can turn out in a month the equivalent of our gross domestic product in terms of value. But I was reminded of an interview I did a few years ago when Microsoft was celebrating 20 years in Ireland. The CEO, Steve Ballmer was in town and talking to the media. When asked about whether a change in Ireland’s corporation tax would see Microsoft go elsewhere, he gave a wry smile and said that there was a lot more to Ireland for Microsoft than low taxes.
Ballmer said that the Irish culture was a major asset. He illustrated this by highlighting the example above and the tide of engineers and computer scientists that the likes of China and India can turn out. He said that these people often have a hard time acclimatising to Redmond, Palo Alto or Cupertino when transplanted directly, as the cultural differences are simply too great even for these obviously talented and intelligent people. However, Ballmer said that by having bases in Ireland, these professionals can be brought to Limerick, Cork, Galway and Dublin first where they can continue their work due to the fact that most of the multinationals here do a damn sight more than just accounting within these shores. Ballmer said that the acclimatisation for these professionals is made much easier by the Irish culture and so by the time a year is up, those that wish to move, and many do not, are far better able to cope with American corporate culture.
Now, that alone is not going to ensure that Ireland remains at the forefront of the tech sector, winning business and competing globally. But during the recent Web Summit, I was socialising with some colleagues from the foreign press and as they asked questions about Irish tech start-ups and the tech scene here in general, something else struck me that, I would argue is equally important.
We Irish are perceived externally to have a certain charm about us that allows us to take liberties. In short, we get away with things that others simply might not. In a business context, this comes down to our fairly healthy disregard for rules and authority. Call it a post-colonial mentality, call independence of spirit, call it what you will, but the import is that Irish people are often willing to push the boundaries of acceptability and our national reputation means that we more often than not get away with it. But years of living with Britain to one side and the US to the other, I think, has led to a certain ability to judge how far to push things. Hence, in the tech arena, Irish entrepreneurs are often disruptive in what they do and can make more noise than others and get away with it. They get noticed, they get listened to — they get investment. But they can also back up what they are saying and deliver.
As I talked to academics, business people, journalists and the general tech audience around the web summit, I was heartened by the experience and it served to banish the fears that had crept in as I walked around the stark white exhibition hall in Shenzhen. Ireland is small, and will ever be, but Irish techies have always looked outward and gone where they can go, bringing back valuable lessons. Ireland has established itself in the tech world, and it is due in no small part to traits that are not, thankfully, dependent on numbers alone.
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