PwC’s new report on scaling Irish enterprises names three barriers: capital, capability, and culture.
There’s a capability gap it doesn’t mention.
Ireland hosts the manufacturing operations of nine of the world’s top ten medtech companies and the top ten biopharma firms. Their IP counsel don’t sit here. The strategic IP decisions for those companies happen at headquarters in Boston, Basel, and London.
That’s not a comment on the quality of Irish IP professionals. It’s a comment on the numbers. Boston, Basel, and London have many more in-house IP attorneys, because the companies that employ them are headquartered there. Ireland has fewer, because the companies that would employ them are headquartered elsewhere. The density follows the headquarters.
That density is what a scaling company needs. In the UK and Sweden, a deep in-house ecosystem means a scaling company can hire someone who learned IP strategy by sitting inside a portfolio for years. Ireland has excellent individuals, but not the density to hire from. The apprenticeship that builds the ecosystem happens in Boston, Basel, and London.
The report’s answer to the capability gap is to import talent. Scale-up visas, leadership programmes. That brings in the person who learned the apprenticeship elsewhere. It doesn’t build the apprenticeship here.
A visa can import talent. It cannot import an ecosystem. The fix isn’t just bringing the strategists in. It’s building an environment that grows them here, so the next generation of scaling Irish companies can hire the person who learned IP strategy by sitting inside a portfolio for years.
