ועדת המדע והטכנולוגיה, כנסת 16, פרוטוקול מספר 14, 2003-07-02 00:00

מל פולישוק-בלוך: מטרתנו להחזיר את ההיי-טק לעמדתו כמנוע צמיחה עיקרי, תוך שאנו מתעקשים על כך שהתוכנית שאנו מציגים תהיה כוללת.

מל פולישוק-בלוך: גישתי היא שאם לא נשקיע בחינוך אז אין טעם בכל זה.

מל פולישוק-בלוך: מבחינת דירוג הישגי בני 15 ברחבי העולם, אנחנו במקום מאוד לא מכובד – מקום 31 בחינוך למדעים.

מל פולישוק-בלוך: נמשיך לדון בנושא עד שיהיה שינוי.

Baruch Gindin: I would like to introduce Dr.

Baruch Gindin: Tony Murphy, who has a long history starting from the Academia; he was Head of Technology for Ford Motors Corporation in England and Ireland and then headed his own consulting and research company, which was merged into Gartner.

Baruch Gindin: He published a bestseller, about his personal involvement in the previous and current Irish programs.

Tony Murphy: I approach today’s subject of discussion in the spirit of humility and modesty, because speaking from an Irish perspective and from the Gartner perspective - we have the greatest admiration for what Israel has achieved.

Tony Murphy: You have so many well-known companies, so as to advanced technology, you are right there at the very top.

Tony Murphy: However, I will try and share with you some of the experiences we have had in Ireland, because I was, from the late 80s, involved in the development of the Irish Information and Communication Technologies sector.

Tony Murphy: I was also working for the venture capitalists and I was instrumentally drawing up this program.

Tony Murphy: Part of the things I was involved in was seeing how we could actually provide funding via the government.

Tony Murphy: I have had experiences of factors such as how to draw up a program that is geared towards achieving the real objectives and will not be open to abuse.

Tony Murphy: That can be monitored fairly effectively, because one of the issues we had was Civil Servants: If you have government people trying to think ahead what is going to be the best way to organize research, what is going to be the best way to develop resources, is a domain in which the government people are sometimes not the best.

Tony Murphy: We work with bringing in the business sector and the academic sector.

Tony Murphy: I have had a lot of experience, not only in the Irish sector but also for the EU Commission.

Tony Murphy: That is just my particular background and context.

Tony Murphy: The ICP sector has gone through a bad phase.

Tony Murphy: It is going to come back up again, that is an absolute certainty.

Tony Murphy: Very often, the time to invest in resources and development is when the sector is down.

Tony Murphy: It is changing, and every country is different, but I think you are doing the right thing by recognizing that now is the time to move.

Tony Murphy: Not saying that the ICT is a “fly by night” thing, maybe we should look in other areas.

Tony Murphy: This is what is happening in Ireland.

Tony Murphy: There has been a huge drop in the number of students taking ICT-related courses, which is a big worry for us, because there is reckoned to be a drop in the quality of ICT skills.

Tony Murphy: This inclination is dangerous, because as I see it, the number of people employed in ICT-related sectors in Ireland has hardly gone down.

Tony Murphy: Despite the fearsome headlines about companies letting off thousands of workers, when you look at the numbers, the new jobs that are being created are more than compensating.

Tony Murphy: Just to put it into context, Ireland at the moment exports about 33 billion Euros’ worth of ICT products and services every year.

Tony Murphy: It’s about a third of our GNP, which is colossal.

Tony Murphy: It is an incredible figure in a country of 3.5 million people, half the size of Israel.

Tony Murphy: We make 40% of all the PCs that are sold in Europe and we produce more computer graduates than Germany does.

Tony Murphy: This is a real motor for the economy.

Tony Murphy: In fact, pharmaceuticals and computers are the motors for the Irish economy and I think it is going to be the same with Israel.

Tony Murphy: I think that Israel has the basic knowledge there.

Tony Murphy: In some less-developed countries they have the aspirations to become an ICT country and to develop applications, and I think they are crazy, since there must be an infrastructure of knowledge, of entrepreneurial skills, of experience of marketing, and Israel has all that.

Tony Murphy: I think that in Israel’s case it is primarily an issue of selecting the right areas and giving the right support.

Tony Murphy: If that is done, remarkable results can be achieved, I would believe.

Mali Polishuk: Do you have any idea in what field we should invest?

Tony Murphy: There are some areas that despite the downturn, they are increasing: For instance, the health sector.

Tony Murphy: Gartner’s forecast is that this is going to be the fastest growing area of ICT.

Tony Murphy: I know you have some of the greatest medical skills in Israel, so I would think that you are well positioned to focus on.

Tony Murphy: I would not be presumptuous enough to say that this is what Israel should do, because I am not enough familiar with that.

Tony Murphy: But I think that in a generic sense, that is where you have good skills and knowledge already, and that is an area that is growing rapidly.

Tony Murphy: For instance, the whole SMEs Multimedia Enterprise area is an area that has been neglected in terms of developing and marketing IT.

מל פולישוק-בלוך: SMEs הם העסקים הקטנים והבינוניים, שהם בעצם ה"היי לייט" בכל מקום שמדברים על מדע וטכנולוגיה.

Tony Murphy: I have here a few statistics that I can give you in relation of the Irish ICT sector, because I think it can identify the potential for Israel: I just noticed here that are 100,000 people employed in nearly a thousand companies.

Tony Murphy: That is quite a significant number.

Tony Murphy: Several of the world’s largest software companies have their base in Ireland, which is a very significant one.

Tony Murphy: The growth rate in ICT exports has many times outgrown all the others.

Tony Murphy: I think that Ireland was the fastest growing economy in the world towards the 90s, and this was driven by the ICT sector.

Tony Murphy: Even last year, the local Irish software companies increased their growth by 28%.

Tony Murphy: The reason I am putting all that down there is not to say that we are great, but to say that there was, and still is, an enormous potential in the ICT sector.

Tony Murphy: In terms of ILD support, it is not a very good structure because of two reasons: First, the basic taxation system for corporate tax is very low, 12%.

Tony Murphy: Therefore, if a company wants to start a development in Ireland, they can do it.

Tony Murphy: So, there is no real encouragement to do research, and that is a vicious circle for us.

Tony Murphy: We spend 1% of the GDP on research.

Tony Murphy: It looks very low, but do not forget that is the same also in the UK and Finland.

Tony Murphy: We have been primarily a development environment.

Tony Murphy: We focused on the graduate level.

Tony Murphy: We wanted to develop an application, market it, test it and so on, and we have been very good at it as anybody else in the world, if not better.

Tony Murphy: On the actual research side, we tended not to focus too much.

Tony Murphy: We regarded the PhDs as propeller heads, and let them off to their probes of Academia, and do whatever they were used to.

Tony Murphy: This was the kind of attitude in Ireland.

Yoram Oron: Will you elaborate on governmental schemes to support VC investments in Ireland?

Tony Murphy: In a general sense, the VC scene in Ireland was very active in the late 90s, up to about 2000, it has gone way down again now.

Tony Murphy: So, in a nutshell, what we are doing is that we are funding in it, we have a number of programs in place.

Tony Murphy: In Ireland, we have a lot of multinationals that have huge installations.

Tony Murphy: Just like in Israel, there is an Irish Diaspora, in the States particularly.

Tony Murphy: We are suffering from the developing industry in Eastern Europe and the Far East, and we are trying to bring high-quality stuff to Ireland, and in the meanwhile it is quite successful.

Tony Murphy: For example, the Apple headquarters in Cork, where I live, does not deal with manufacturing anymore.

Tony Murphy: The number of employees has sunk from 15,000 to 12,000, but all of them are dealing with administrative work.

Tony Murphy: Likewise, the centre in Cork is indispensable to Apple.

Tony Murphy: They are drawing in little things all the time.

Tony Murphy: In a way, that would not happen in a large country, like the States, because there is not this national recognition or cohesiveness that a small country like Israel or Ireland would have.

Tony Murphy: You have your own pressures, but Ireland has its own as well: We came from being a poor country to being a rich one, but nonetheless, we still have the mentality of poor people, we still feel that one day we will break up and be going back to living in straw huts.

Tony Murphy: There is not the same sense of community or smallness in the Silicon Valley, for example.

Tony Murphy: So, we are using the Diaspora and well-disposed multinational heads in the country.

Tony Murphy: Ireland did not give massive grants.

Tony Murphy: The factors that brought people to Ireland were other ones.

Tony Murphy: You would have a lot of really good people, doing advanced things in this country, I know you have, that may not be commercially viable.

Tony Murphy: There comes a time when you have to stop pouring money into a situation, or alternatively you would have to guide a company into something more productive.

Tony Murphy: One of the most remarkable things I found in my dealing with start-up companies was their reluctance to hand over part of it.

Tony Murphy: They will do anything instead of giving 25% percent of it to bigger companies.

Tony Murphy: The decision makers should be helped to realize that there is not an endless stream of finance and they should be encouraged to part it with other leading companies of their field.

Tony Murphy: Very often, they are bought out and the skills leave the country.

Mali polishuk: It is our main problem now, it is a big issue.

Tony Murphy: I think it is good, because it happened in Ireland as well.

Tony Murphy: If you look at a lot of the famous Irish companies, most of them have gone to the States, or something like that.

Tony Murphy: I think it cannot be avoided.

Tony Murphy: Nonetheless, it is building up the country as well.

Mali Polishuk: Is it not one of the reasons that the industry is going down, that you take away the knowledge, skills and spirit?

Tony Murphy: I do not think so.

Tony Murphy: I feel it is not a bad thing.

Tony Murphy: It is a great encouragement for the people to develop their local, and indirectly the national industry.

Yoram Oron: Two out of three exits in Israel are companies sold to a major foreign investor.

Yoram Oron: I think it is a fantastic thing, because most of them keep their facilities in Israel and support them.

Baruch Gindin: According to our research it is not like this.

Baruch Gindin: There is a lot of leakage, the government is not collecting taxes for this, so what happens actually is that we develop here and other governments enjoy all its benefits.

Mali Polishuk: It is, as I said, a big issue.

Tony Murphy: The statistic would probably suggest that it is true, but somehow it is only my intuition that it is not a bad thing.

Tony Murphy: There is more than one answer.

Tony Murphy: When you go into technology companies, most of the times the last thing on their minds is the customer.

Tony Murphy: It may sound extraordinary, but it is true.

Mali Polishuk: What is the unemployment rate in Ireland?

Tony Murphy: It is about 4%.

Mali Polishuk: Was it the same 10 years ago, or it is only because of the reform in the economy?

Tony Murphy: Starting ten years ago it has been going down and down.

Tony Murphy: It coincided a lot with that.

Mali Polishuk: The reduction of the unemployment rate is actually one of my targets here in this plan.

Tony Murphy: One of the best things in Ireland, which I am certain that would apply well in Israel, is a rapid and flexible response.

Tony Murphy: I had the impression that Israel would be a highly militarized and ordered country, and I see the total opposite.

Tony Murphy: It even made the Irish look organized.

Tony Murphy: Just like the Irish, there is not a linear way of thinking in Israel, or a holistic way of doing things.

Tony Murphy: Ireland has been particularly good at changing horses in mid-stream.

Tony Murphy: If a company needs a change in its lines, it will take place within a few weeks.

Tony Murphy: I find this so important in the current age.

Tony Murphy: Israel should capitalize in that because I know you have that capacity.

Tony Murphy: Technology companies are very poor in showing to a business what the real value of their solution is.

Tony Murphy: They are really good at saying what the solution will do, but that is not the same thing.

Yoram Oron: You told us about the low investments in Ireland.

Yoram Oron: Is it essentially a substitute to giving a low tax structure, which allows the company indirectly to do the same work with the same income?

Tony Murphy: Absolutely.

Tony Murphy: By leaving more money available to the companies they should spend more on Research and Development.

Tony Murphy: The final result of this action is that the proportional money we are spending is low.

Tony Murphy: The companies usually take their R

Baruch Gindin: Out of the comparison we just made between Ireland and Israel, we found out that the proportion of IT or research-related companies versus manufacturing is in favour of the latter.

Baruch Gindin: Therefore, the R

Tony Murphy: In Ireland we still have millions supporting R

Tony Murphy: We give companies the amount of 8000 Euros to employ a graduate for a period of six months, and we expect them to invest some of their own money.

Tony Murphy: There are many companies that coordinate with that arrangement.

Tony Murphy: This scheme is very new but it is working already.

Yoram Oron: How old is this program?

Tony Murphy: It is very new, only a couple of months.

Tony Murphy: I gather the initial response is fairly good.

Philip Liebman: Instead of paying them unemployment insurance you just pay them to work.

Tony Murphy: It is an opportunity to get graduates into an environment, get them off unemployment and save them from emigrating.

Tony Murphy: It is too early to say how successful it will be.

Mali Polishuk: How many people take part in this program?

Tony Murphy: I would say a few hundreds.

Tony Murphy: It is brand new, so I do not have exact figures.

Tony Murphy: We are promoting a positive image of ICT, because we are worried by the drop of people taking ICT studies.

Tony Murphy: We are doing quite a subtle sale – bringing forward the good news and trying to downplay the bad news – it is just a campaign.

Mali Polishuk: Have you encouraged students to go and study?

Tony Murphy: In theory, second and third levels are free in Ireland, but I would argue it is not free, because poor students would have to find transport, accommodation, etc.

Tony Murphy: If you take the statistics of low-class people doing third level, since we have free education in the last 20 years the ratio has not changed.

Tony Murphy: So in fact the poor are subsidizing the rich – it is mostly the wealthy people going to third level and getting it for free.

Mali Polishuk: We also have something like the Science Foundation but its budget is only 50 million Shekels a year, not 250 million Euros like it is in Ireland.

Mali Polishuk: The focus in Ireland is on production, and in Israel it is mostly R

Tony Murphy: We are falling behind because we should do more in the R

Zvi Kaufman: The Israeli argument is, “why do we have many small companies and not a single large multinational that is producing anything?

Zvi Kaufman: ”

Tony Murphy: Why do you want that?

Tony Murphy: There are thousands of technology companies in Ireland, so if 20 of them close down, it is still OK.

Tony Murphy: Speaking from the Irish perspective, we produced 6 world leading companies, which is an amazing result for a country our size.

Tony Murphy: They have all been badly hit by the recession, but we are finding now that we should be more towards the Research and Development side because we are using a lot of the production facilities of Eastern Europe and the Far East.

Tony Murphy: For example, the Apple company in Cork employs around 11,000 people and there is no massive singular focus on Research and Development, it is all a series of little bits of expertise and I think that is a good thing, because it reduces vulnerability.

Tony Murphy: I do not understand your concerns, then.

Tony Murphy: I would feel very sad for Finland if Nokia collapsed.

Tony Murphy: With the Research and Development, it is a much more solid base for producing than the actual production.

Mali Polishuk: Who could do it in the government?

Tony Murphy: The problem in Ireland, and probably in Israel as well, that every government is a coalition: The first thing you do is to cave into demands.

Tony Murphy: So, if we try to find a strong man, so to speak, to take over something, immediately they start shooting at him.

Tony Murphy: Again, what we lack is coordination.

Tony Murphy: When I say 250 million Euros it sounds impressive, but probably two times of that have been wasted due to opportunism and overlapping.

Tony Murphy: We are focusing on research now.

Tony Murphy: We know we are good at this and we are going to focus on those areas.

Tony Murphy: I would be very critical about this in many ways, but the way we are actually supporting them is very good.

Tony Murphy: We have very specific research-supported programs, we have marketing programs, and the value you can bring to them is amazing.

Tony Murphy: Simple things like those are very useful.

Tony Murphy: You need experienced people who have been around the globe and maybe brought their own companies, I am sure you have a lot of them in Israel.

Tony Murphy: If they are recruited to mentor companies as they go along, it will be very useful.

Tony Murphy: We are absolutely gigantic in pharmaceuticals; it carries our exports.

Tony Murphy: In the early 80s we targeted pharmaceuticals and ICT.

Tony Murphy: Some people would argue that pharmaceuticals are much more successful than ICT, but I do not think it is.

Tony Murphy: We have many companies and research centres in the universities, but in terms of companies that started and became world players, there are very few.

Tony Murphy: But in terms of the actual money, there are tens of billions of Euros exported every year.

Tony Murphy: We targeted people who left Ireland and had their experience around the world, and convinced them to come back by special supports and so on, in order to enterprise Ireland.

Tony Murphy: Some of the best things that happened in Ireland have come via those people.

Yoram Oron: How many of them have come back?

Tony Murphy: 400,000 Irish people have come back in the last 7-8 years.

Tony Murphy: It has caused a problem – housing prices have gone through the roof.

Tony Murphy: It is great however, because formerly dead communities are now vibrant.

Nili Shalev: Is it the first generation that is coming back or their children?

Tony Murphy: The ones who left.

Tony Murphy: The people who left during the big recession in the early-mid 80s are coming back now with their skills, experience and money.

Mali Polishuk: We heard your opinion about the Irish government and the Irish ministers.

Mali Polishuk: How do you convince them, then, to undertake this reform?

Tony Murphy: In fact, it was the government that actually drove this.

Tony Murphy: The body Enterprise Ireland, that faced a lot of criticism, handled the development of the Irish sector very well.

Mali Polishuk: We must conclude.

Tony Murphy: Thank you very much for listening.

פיליפ ליבמן: רציתי להוסיף שחברת גרטנר, כחברה גדולה בתחום הייעוץ והמחקר בתחום טכנולוגיית ה-ICT, חלק ממה שאנחנו עושים זה מה שדנו בו כאן.

פיליפ ליבמן: מכיוון שאנחנו חברה בינלאומית אפשר לאסוף נתונים מכל מיני מדינות על מנת לתת עצות קונקרטיות למדינות אחרות.

פיליפ ליבמן: פיתחנו גם מצגת מפורטת ובה המלצות כיצד לצאת מהמיתון.

Mali Polishuk: I believe strongly that what you have suggested is the only way to solve our economical problems and I will try to convince our government to take those measures.