Twenty-one years ago this week, I was appointed to my first professorial chair in entrepreneurship at the University of Glamorgan.
Since then, I have been lucky to have had a wonderful career which has taken me across the World and presented me with incredible opportunities to engage with so many individuals and organisations and hopefully help make a difference to people’s lives.
One of those opportunities that I value tremendously is my annual visit to Dublin, where I am privileged to chair the International Assessment Board for the Irish Research Council’s Enterprise Partnership Scheme.
This is an innovative initiative where the Council, working with private enterprises and public bodies, awards scholarships to the most promising researchers in Ireland, offering them the opportunity to gain real world experience by working on a project with a non-academic organisation.
In return, industry gets access to an exceptional pool of competitively selected, high-calibre researchers and the opportunity to build links with relevant academic research groups within some of the best universities in Europe.
Since I started this role as chair of the assessment board, I have had the most wonderful experience to see, at first hand, the high quality of research being supported and, more importantly, to read about the real successes that have emerged from the programme over the last few years.
By supporting such schemes, it’s clear that the Irish Government is committed to the development of a knowledge-based economy as one its key priorities in ensuring that the Emerald Isle continues to recover from the damage caused by the economic downturn of 2008.
In fact, it is easy to forget how hard Ireland was hit during one of the worse recessions in living memory.
In the first three months of 2009, economic activity went down by an unprecedented 8.5 per cent and, a year later, the country had the largest deficit of any European nation, including Greece.
In just five years, unemployment grew from 4 per cent in 2007 to 15 per cent in 2012 and 34,500 people left the country between 2009 and 2010, reversing the annual in-migration of workers into Ireland that began in the mid 1990s.
As a result, it was not surprising that many economists lined up to write obituaries for the so-called Celtic Tiger, predicting that it would go the way of the other small economies which had overstretched themselves prior to the financial crash.
Yet, something quite miraculous has happened in the last few years and through a combination of hard and painful decisions by the government, allied with renewed confidence by inward investors and home-grown entrepreneurs, the Irish economy has confounded all expectations in its recovery.
In 2014, it became the fastest growing economy in Europe and has retained this honour every year since, with forecasters estimating that it will grow by 5 per cent in 2017. More relevantly, it is expected that full employment will be reached next year which, given the dark days of only five years ago, is nothing short of a miracle.
Indeed, Ireland is today home to all of the top ten global technology firms and eighteen of the world’s top twenty pharmaceutical companies. In addition, its home-grown food and drink sector is the largest net exporter of dairy ingredients, beef and lamb in Europe.
Some of the main reasons for this recovery include a highly competitive corporation tax of 12.5 per cent and one of the youngest and most highly educated workforces in Europe.
These factors are not only attractive to multinational corporations lining up to invest into the country but is also helping to create a new entrepreneurial boom with Dublin now ranked seventh in the top fifteen European cities for their start-up eco-system.
Of course, there may be some dark clouds on the horizon for the Irish economy given its close trading links with the UK and some have predicted that if a hard Brexit is enacted within the next two years, this could result in a loss of 40,000 jobs over the next decade in Ireland.
On the other hand, it has also been suggested that companies operating in the financial services industry could be attracted from London to Dublin in order to access the European market, thus creating thousands of new jobs.
What is certain for the Irish economy is that, regardless of what the possible effect of Brexit will be, government and businesses will continue to invest heavily in ensuring that they have the technologically savvy graduates that are one of the key influences in realising the enormous potential of the nation.
Are there lessons from Wales from our Celtic cousins experience in reviving their economy? Well, despite not (yet) having fiscal levers such as powers over corporation tax, we do have devolved powers over education and training. As a result, there is no excuse why, if we really want to create an economy based on knowledge and talent, that Wales should not also look to invest in industry-relevant programmes that will help to fully realise the potential of our young people for the benefit of the economy.