When my colleague Sarah asked the guy sharing our taxi in Berlin this Summer where he was from he responded:  “I was in Brazil, and before that in New York and before that I spent a couple of years in London”. He then turned back to the driver and directed him to our destination in fluent German, confirming our hopes that he was, in fact, a local, from Berlin, or somewhere else in Germany.

I got a kick out of this guy’s “I’m a global citizen” stance, but it also got me thinking about one of the key goals of this office: to connect global Irish success stories back to their roots in Ireland and to encourage Irish people to tell a story about the connective tissue between their companies, talent, and Ireland as a country.

Back in the early 2000’s when I was working for Enterprise Ireland in New York, we would always say to visiting Irish companies “don’t lead with the fact that you’re Irish, it’s just the icing on the cake, you’ve got to act global.”

A decade and a half later, “act global” is still an important mantra but there are so many great business and innovation stories coming out of Ireland’s tech sector these days that our companies would benefit from including them in their pitches to international customers, investors, and partners.

Imagine if every Irish company, and every multinational executive based in Ireland, mentioned Ireland’s innovation credentials every time they attended a meeting or conference internationally. There are people in Ireland who already do this, but imagine if we as a nation of business people, entrepreneurs and techies all did it? The impact would be immediate and enormous.

One of the new TechIreland platform’s goals is to make it easy for any one to do exactly this – to tell the story of Irish innovation, company by company and sector by sector from IOT, Travel, and Telecoms to Fintech, Digital Health and beyond.

TechIreland may be “just a database” right now, but hundreds of gems of Irish success stories are packed into it already, and when the platform fully launches early next year we’ll start publishing sector briefings and offering content you can include in your decks and international PR communications. TechIreland will help to put your success story into context, a strong and impressive Irish context, giving it roots and a back story. Now, who doesn’t love a good back story?

So, if you’re an innovative Irish or multinational company based in Ireland check out the TechIreland profile we’ve built for you here and if you don’t have one yet, shout* and we’ll add you.

Let the world know you’re Irish. You’ve a great story to tell, and TechIreland can help make it an even better one.

Niamh Bushnell

* If you’re a product (as opposed to service based) tech-driven Irish company you should be featured on TechIreland. My colleague, Cathal O’ Sullivan, will be happy to help: [email protected].