Jaded (Adj.)- To be physically tired; exhausted
Today we arrived in Dublin, Ireland after a flight where most of us slept for the equivalent of two hours of sleep, after a delay with American Airlines yet again. This time they had to hold up the flight for almost an hour as they replaced a part and loaded the luggage. We hit the ground running in Ireland as we checked into our room and got ready for our first site visit after lunch, Enterprise Ireland!
Enterprise Ireland is a government organization that helps out other Irish firms by funding them, holding mentor workshops, and providing guidance to connect to other businesses and encourage companies to become global. Enterprise Ireland is a for-profit company, in a way, by collecting equities in companies, just not involving themselves in the firms decision making. They also get return from the companies through the taxes imposed, due to Enterprise Ireland being the government.
Five take-aways from our group of presenters at Enterprise Ireland (EI) were:
- The fact that Ireland has a failing economy without government intervention
- How EI has so many resources available to firms, in order for them to profit and grow the Irish economy
- Chatted with Kevin, the third speaker, about the network help that EI provides, such as logistic companies, as well as collecting his card
- EI provides great internship opportunities even if you are abroad for an internship
- They like diverse strengths and multiple entrepreneurial founders to a company
What jumped out at me the most was how the Irish economy thinks differently about government involvement in business compared to America being frightened at the idea.
Three things that went over my head:
- Multiple points of the first presentation left me a little lost, how one could qualify for funding
- A couple of more topics that left me clueless were the policies section that the second presenter was explaining
- The third thing that went over my head was the video of Linda explaining an operation of EI, it may have been because of the low volume.
I did not understand parts of the presentation being given today, so I went and talked to one of the presenters when we had a break, which let me have a better knowledge of the information he presented. The emotion this evoked was frustration, but after dealing with this situation, I felt confident.