garygilliland:

Northern Ireland lost a great man yesterday, Sir Allen McClay founder of Galen and Almac. I had the pleasure to work for Allen for 11 years and during that time I saw him become Northern Ireland’s richest man, retire and then comeback to found another global pharma empire. Not bad for a boy from Cookstown.

I remember the day I saw him on his hands and knees scrubbing the floor. As I passed him I said "Do you want me to get someone else to that?". He looked up and said "No, don’t bother everyone else has something important to do. I’m just doing my bit."

His pride in the work force was unequalled. He knew the names of almost everyone in the company. He inspired us to complete projects we never thought possible. He never forgot who he was or where came from and most importantly he never under estimated the importance of the work others did with him and not for him. As a raconteur he could hold a room like few others I ever seen.

Allen you’ll be missed.

I was checking flights times at Aldergrove and came up against the problem that the official site doesn’t list flights  arriving after midnight until late in the day. During a search for alternatives I came across series of interesting factoids.

As a follow up to my last post about the Independent Review of Economic Policy report. I thought I would post my comments from a LinkedIn discussion, from a few months ago, on developing a software strategy for Northern Ireland.

The current strategy of inward investment is leading to a narrowing of the skills base. For example the pool of marketing professionals with real commercial experience is at best limited not because we don’t have degree courses filled with good candidates but because so many of the large employers here are either government or ‘branch offices’ who have no responsibility for marketing. The net result is that local companies are struggling to develop viable marketing strategies. This applies not only to marketing but to expertise in a wide variety of professional areas which are essential to growth.

The arrival of corporate software factories may produce a few nice headlines in the Telegraph and improve jobs statistics but what does it do for the wider tech community? When the big manufactures arrived in the past they needed an ecosystem of small engineering firms, technical specialists, transport companies who could learn and then apply their skills in other companies and industries. The new software factories don’t need this type of support. They deploy the systems and technologies mandated by head office. Then the programming drones go to work on software which has been specified by experts based in another country. In other words the real IP is never transferred to staff here. We are creating a generation of ‘production operatives’ who like those of the manufacturing era will be replaced by cheaper labour and newer technologies.

The technical and management skills developed in the factories aren’t the key to success. We can only truly benefit from these skills when they are applied to IP developed inside NI. We need a strategy which builds IP. This will come from exploiting the expertise in existing industry sectors and academic programmes of research. These will create a virtuous cycle in which both the technology sector and the IP generator can grow and thrive together.

Our ‘thought leaders’ are composed of two groups. The ‘boys club’ which is composed of the same people trotting out the same ‘old bumper sticker’ platitudes, think civil servants, columnists and members of committees / quangos whose bio uses the word former. Then there are ‘young turks’ who think that carrying a Mac, an iPhone and the communicating via the latest social app will make Lagan Valley into Silicon Valley. The connecting factor between these two groups is a desire for self-publicity rather than an ability to produce original thought. These are the people who have brought us years of bandwagons and blockbusters. They have failed.

Look around on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter etc and there is a notable lack of Northern Irish business men. Arguments over whether they are luddites or not are pointless. The hidden genius of Northern Ireland industry lies in this silent majority who are busy working and running successful businesses. These are the people we need to engage in order to develop a successful strategy for Northern Ireland. These are the people who can help us develop an IP ecosystem which can provide sustained growth.

I closed the comment with “sorry for the rant but this stuff touches a nerve” and the IREP has simply exposed that nerve even more

From the file marked ‘no sh*t Sherlock’ comes the report from the Independent Review of Economic Policy (IREP) which is critical of InvestNI, the organisation tasked with improving the business environment in Northern Ireland.

Reading the report it would appear that it’s not a reorganisation that is required but a wholesale clear out of staff and a reassessment of priorities. The list of dubious decisions include the fact that of the £3/4 billion invested since its creation, InvestNI has

• spent less than 10% in attracting new business to Northern Ireland (FDI) and yet they have offices in 14 locations outside of Northern Ireland and manage to run numerous trade missions around the world.
• spent 40% on business expansion projects despite the fact that this money was largely invested in already profitable companies
• given 33% of the total invested to only 10 companies and only 3 of these are locally owned
• effectively driven down wages by encouraging call centres to come to Northern Ireland because of it low costs

The responses to the report seem to prove the disconnect from reality InvestNI suffers from

“As a Board, we are encouraged that many of the recommendations in the Report are consistent with changes which we have lobbied for in recent years. In particular, increasing our focus on innovation and increasing levels of R&D, widening the reach of our support for business and encouraging the development of higher added-value sectors are all central elements of our current Corporate Plan.”

Stephen Kingon, Chairman of Invest NI

So the chairman’s response to the report that says you’re not doing enough for innovation, nor investing in a range of business, nor raising waging is to say that it’s encouraging that Invest have noticed the same failings as the report.

“This is illustrated by performance in the first half of this year when, despite still being in a period of recession, almost 1,600 separate offers of assistance have been made, offering almost £70m in support towards planned total investment of £237m by our clients who, with our support, are continuing to take steps to preserve their current position and plan for future market recovery.”

Alastair Hamilton , Chief Executive Invest NI

More numbers with no explanation of why they’re good. Has the £70m been used to support local companies, or improve innovation or secure jobs or what? These might look good in the press office but in the real world they mean nothing without evidence of how they’re actually contributing to the economy not only today but tomorrow.

As a closing point, the report itself doesn’t set the bar too high.

“Furthermore, a more commercially orientated view would help switch the emphasis from Innovation and newness per se toward the introduction of products and processes new to the region. Hence the encouragement of imitations, adaptations, improvements and adoptions of products and processes into the region would appear to be much more relevant to the promotion of productivity growth in NI than the pursuit of newness per se.”

This is from a report which suggests more innovation and R&D are essential but recommends that copies and a few tweaks with probably do instead. Why did they bother?