 Hi everyone and I'm just straight off giving a Session all around an economic strategy for Ireland on At the CPR and conference and I want to give you a quick recap of the key things that I talked about so Time of the year for strategy. A lot of people are strategizing So I decided to use a model called ansaaf the ansaaf matrix, which I find really really helpful It's something I learned about in strategy in my own masters a couple of years ago So what I did was that I came up with an idea that Imagine if Ireland was coming up with an economic strategy just in general There's four key quadrants that it needs to look at number one is what does it do really well with the people that it does? It's really well with and to keep doing that second thing is what new products can it sell to its existing customers? Thirdly, how can it market its existing products to new customers? And the fourth thing is how can it diversify to find a whole new world out there? So what does Ireland do really well economically? Well first start were really good at agriculture Couple of statistics on this Ireland exports almost 90% of all that it produces and outside of Dublin and the Mid-East region It also accounts for 10 to 14 percent of employment, which is really specific and important But the key thing that I felt was of particular note today is that actually the food and drink sector Purchase the majority of its seventy eight point six percent of its materials in Ireland I'm looking over there because the slide is there behind me So the thing is is that actually agriculture acts as a huge multiplier within the region huge huge multiplier So as a result of that ultimately what it ends up doing is moving that money right around the economy other things that we're really good at Pharma exports pharmaceutical exports that is They account for between 40 to 50 percent of Irish exports and that works out at 70 billion a year And naturally enough with all the talk about the vaccine at the moment that could be likely to rise the global Irish Any of you that has met me before or have heard anything that I've ever done before you know That I'm a huge fan of the global Irish and the way in which that the Irish abroad help each other right around the world And whether it's through the architecture like the Enterprise Ireland the IDA board be a tourism Ireland or the GAA or The Irish international business network or any of the business networks or this charities and I could go on and on and on It's also something that we do very very well foreign direct investment is particularly important to Ireland and Also, two key things that I'd like to point out there is yes It continues to grow and you can always check out the DBE I The department of business enterprise and innovation Dashboard and that's where you can find out more details there But two key things I wanted to point out to you is number one is that the average salary in new investments is 59 over 59,384 years a year and secondly is a 44 percent of Regional investments are now outside Cork and Dublin. So it really is moving the Moving the the capability and the opportunity right around the country now In addition Ireland does small business very well and speaking from experience and I have to say Ireland is a very good place to set up a business and it's not Always easy, of course, but it certainly is a good place to build a business and to grow it from there So SMEs now account for 99.8% of all private business enterprises right around the country And in addition it accounts for employing over 1 million people In addition as well in small enterprises and when I say small now I mean companies employing less than 250 people and I know that there's a wide variety of companies there But it still is important that when you look at that sector in the economy and definitely needs to be taken care of and They account for between 2012 and 2017 accounted for creating 188,000 new jobs at a time that was really needed probably not likely to hit the headlines as much Given of course that it's going to be ones and twos and threes and fours as opposed to fifties and a hundreds But still hugely worthwhile and it's certainly the job of somebody like me to be pointing this out now also want to mention about Overseas travel right because of course it is a huge challenge If not an impossibility with all that's going on with COVID But here is something that is worthwhile Understanding from an economic point of view is that actually Irish sorry people in Ireland spend more abroad than People who visit Ireland actually spent here So if we simply stay Kate and if we maximize that product to our wild Atlantic way Go and see cork, of course That's where I'm from are coming to see Dublin as well and seeing so much that there is an offer there as well as looking at various different areas down around the sunny southeast Cycling the Greenway like I had the opportunity to do early around this year and a wide variety of other things is that when it comes to Tourism actually there's a huge opportunity and we do tourism extremely well in Ireland and we need to keep doing that So that is what I would do as the Irish government for a start Is that I would make sure to double down on what we do really well and protect that? However, there is another issue and that is if I was looking at the Irish economic strategy What I would definitely do is I would look at e-commerce and I know I know that we all know this I know that but I actually thought it would be worthwhile to look into who does e-commerce best in the world now For sure there is no doubt about it that there is a massive trend around shopping local in Ireland big trend There's an increase of 540% of traffic in Google searches for shop local Ireland alone Irish people and people in Ireland want to spend more for Irish companies But how easy do Irish companies make it and this is the challenge and of course I know that the government has the Trading online voucher. We've applied for one. We were successful in getting one This is where you can apply for a voucher up to 5,000 euros towards your sorry two and a half thousand euros towards your website But you can do it twice and where you you put in 250 euros towards it The government provides the rest to a personally I found that the experience of applying for this was pretty simple and straightforward And so that's what it needs to be low you low bureaucracy Available to many and what I do think that there's lots more that needs to happen and particularly what I did was I worked with my research assistant fabulous woman called Haley who's interning with us from Hong Kong And we looked at what are the real drivers of e-commerce today? So for example, one of them is the rise in voice search Just last Christmas. I got a Google home for us at home as well as for my mom and dad and Certainly there's more and more people using that as a way in which to find information and of course find products That they may subsequently buy and of course the rising impact of social media It is rising not falling when it comes to the impact on social media as well in addition The environmental topics influence buyers far sure There's no doubt about it is that the way the impact that certain products have and the way in which you buy them impacting on the environment and all of those things are what definitely need to be considered in From the point of view of the individual businesses themselves as well as in the environment now When it comes to new markets, of course, I could talk about various different geographies But what I think is actually a really big opportunity in Ireland is actually reverse innovation And this is where rather than building products in Ireland and then selling them abroad is that we build products abroad and sell them back at Home and by doing that we can learn from the way in which other people do things And that's why I'm grateful to say that we have our interns from Hong Kong working with us We have another intern from Minnesota in the US and they teach us they teach us great things They teach us the way in which things are done in certain areas and then we bring it back home and we make it work That's called reverse innovation is how you go outside to look at innovation and then you bring it back home And in addition as well I think this is definitely rural Ireland's opportunity to reinvent itself and recent data from my home data II shows searches for properties for less than a hundred thousand euros have gone up six fold in County's Cork and And up five-fold in Galway, Wexford and Mayo so this is the opportunity for rural Ireland to absolutely reinvent itself now Three things after that now that I've taken you through what I think we do well We should keep doing how to develop our product, which is e-commerce our market Which is reverse innovation and rural Ireland back home And I just want to tell you about one more thing is that how could Ireland diversify? How could Ireland look outwards and what are not where billions are being invested but trillions and even whatever the number Is bigger than that where could we look for further inspiration and the first place? I believe is the UN digital roadmap Sorry, UN roadmap towards digital cooperation It was just discussed this week in a conference and it's all the whole focuses on having universal connectivity Making digital goods available like certain areas of AI which our business is now looking into more and more Building an effective architecture for cooperation Cyber security and a range of other things Ireland could be a leading light in any one of those areas And I think that certainly is an opportunity and the second one the world and its mother today is talking about the SDGs the Sustainable Development Goals That's also where I could absolutely pursue a range of ways that we could be the leading light again When it comes to either the social where how we build societies around our workplaces or how we make innovation happen And the innovation partnership I've told you about that before is a great way in which that we can build on that or any of them I talk about the SDGs with the teenagers and that I work with in savvy teens They're very passionate about them as well So I think that that's Ireland's opportunity and that is the economic strategy through the Antioch matrix. Hope you enjoyed. Bye