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NEW HORIZONS
York and Boston, and has a team of four on the ground in California, Atlanta, New York and Frankfurt. “There’s a lot of legwork.We operate a
search engine to do this for us. That search engine has all sorts of feeders into it to come up with our target list. Then we’re out in themarket doing amixture of marketing initiatives. “The competition is intense, but our phi-
losophy is to try to find the ones that are internationalising early. A lot of the strat- egy is to spot them early and to get their footprint on the ground here. It doesn’t have to be huge; we’re not chasing num- bers in jobs. It’s about getting structures in place, and then keeping close to them and hoping that they grow.”
BUSINESS CONNECTIONS IDA has also recently launched a pilot project that uses ‘connectors’ around the world to identify high-growth companies looking to
internationalise.Areferralmar- keting scheme, Succeed in Ireland pays connectors for each sustainable job se- cured in Ireland as a result of their intro- duction or lead. Part of the Government’s 2012 Action Plan for Jobs, the initiative is being delivered by ConnectIreland. “In the international arena of competi-
years. So there’s a long lead time before a consultant or a connector gets any fee. Poten- tially a consultant could be waiting three years before getting the money. There’s a big upfront cash injection to fund ConnectIreland.” The €4,000 on offer per job will be divided
‘We’re interested in internationally traded products or services, selling outwards, recognising that the Irishmarket is too small to sustain projects’
between the consultant and the connector, with the latter’s fee being either €1,500 or €3,000, depending on how developed their lead is. For example,where a connector brings a high-value lead they will receive €3,000 per job, while the consultant will get €1,000 per job. This will in- volve the connector taking the consultant to a decision-maker in a companywith amobile proj- ect and that project being up and running with aminimumof 30 jobswithin a year of setting up. Themore likely scenario, according toMolloy,
would involve the connector taking the consult- ant to a decision-maker with a mobile project, handing it over, and the project being set up over time. In that case, if the project is delivered and the jobs are in situ for two years, the consultant will pay €1,500 to the connector and keep €2,500. The fee can be used personally, donated to a charity or waived altogether. Molloy stresses that connectors and consultants will never be paid for more than 100 jobs. There has been strong interest in the project
tion for projects, it’s a disruptive model that is hopefully going to lend itself to a lot of success fromamarketing point of view,” says O’Dowd. “I see it as a feeder of leads and of projects. It’s a marketing tool that sits alongside all our other ones.” “It’s very difficult to get to all the emerging companies be-
cause they’re so disparate,” explainsMaryMolloy,whomanages the Succeed Initiative for IDA Ireland. “Out of discussionswith Government and business people, we came up with a pro- gramme based on referral marketing and adding on an incen- tive to make people aware that Ireland is a good place to do business. “The drivers of the project are the fact that there is a very big
Irish diaspora out there – 70 million around the world; the fact that we’re fairly affable people; that our culture lends itself to other nationalities connecting with us; the success of the refer- ral marketing business model as used in other areas; and the fact that IDA was successful in its own right in the FDI space.” Through a public procurement process, IDAappointedTerry
Clune’s
Taxback.com, operating as ConnectIreland, to deliver the scheme. “We picked
Taxback.com because it has global reach,” saysMolloy. “It is familiar with referral marketing. And it had to be a consultant who was prepared to put money in up front. “The most the State will ever pay out on this is €4,000 per sustainable job. A sustainable job is one that’s in situ for two
32 INNOVATION IRELAND REVIEW Issue 4 Spring/Summer 2012
to date, with around 20,000 connectors having
visitedConnectIreland.comfor details, she says. “They don’t all have a company but they’re expressing an interest in the programme. It translates today into having about 100 compa- nies up there.We’d probably be lucky if 10pc of
them convert into a real project but it’s still very early in the process to call.” The nature of referral marketing will mean that a significant
amoung of weeding out of projects will be required, she says. “Then you have to decipher what would be suitable for Ireland, what would be sustainable in Ireland.” She points out that the primary objective is to create relatively high-value jobs that are sustainable in the long-term. “We’re interested in internationally traded products or serv-
ices, selling outwards, recognising that the Irish market is too small to sustain projects. So the companies will be in the tradi- tional sectors IDA operates in – global services, including financial services, digital media, life sciences, ICT, engineering, medtech, consumer brands. We’re looking for globally traded services, high-end manufacturing and research and develop- ment. They’re our three platforms.” The initiative has a stated aim of delivering 5,000 jobs over
the next five years. “Ifwe achieve that itwould be fantastic, but it takes a lot of small projects to make 1,000.” “We’re pushing the boat out to find new ways of doing busi-
ness, to reinforce what we know works, and to find out if there are other things thatwillwork.We’re reasonably optimistic that the model works and it could be a big help in the FDI space.”
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