Leonard Brody believes that link-ups between the two would be ideal, writes Karlin Lillington
Leonard Brody's curriculum vitae is not for the faint of heart. He looks worryingly young to sit on so many company boards, to work as a senior adviser to a US venture fund, to have co-written a book on Canada's technology innovators, to run private equity research firm Ipreo, to have worked in the music industry, to have founded a pioneering sports agency representing football players, to have been an overseer of dotcom company Onvia's Canadian operations and to advise the Canadian government on technology policy.
Now, he is in Dublin on his second visit in less than six months, meeting business people interested in setting up a private fund to support joint Irish-Canadian digital media ventures, and talking about the commonalities between Canada and Ireland, and opportunities for better research and trade connections.
He's had four hours' sleep but is one of those people who looks fresh after transatlantic flights, who can talk with real passion and balancing humour about the technology industry, and who loves being Canadian.
He really loves Canada's success story in technology.
"In my opinion, it's a tech miracle that's come out of Canada," he says.
For example, some 40 per cent of jobs in the province of Ontario, which has a network of universities and research centres, are connected to the technology and biotechnology sectors.
The country tops the global charts for e-government policy and broadband penetration, boasting a universal access policy for high-speed internet access across the huge country.
His book, Innovation Nation, lists dozens of Canadian technology success stories - Java creator Mr James Gosling, Red Hat Linux founder Mr Bob Young, XML author Mr Tim Bray, Research in Motion (RIM, maker of the Blackberry), Nortel, eBay co-founder Mr Jeff Skoll, JDS Uniphase, Open Text, Cognos and SoftImage.
Most people don't think of Canada when they think technology success - indeed, the Republic has probably had better press in the past decade as a technology leader - a situation Mr Brody is here to rectify.
And not just here. His "Innovation Nation" speaking tour - "It started as two speaking engagements, which have turned into about 80" - has already done one tour around Europe and now he's back for more, talking up Canada at CeBIT, then hitting cities, mostly in eastern Europe: Warsaw, Budapest, Moscow, Kiev, Odessa and others.
The accession countries are hot, he says.
"Guess which country has the highest number of start-ups per capita? Estonia. They're beating the pants off the Irish."
But he has swung back through Ireland for the second time because he is enamoured of the potential for Canadian-Irish joint ventures, particularly in the area of digital media.
Canada is one of the leading locations in the world for the digital media industry, both on the software production side (a Canadian firm created the software that was responsible for the special effects in the Lord of the Rings movies) and in animation and special effects production.
Toronto is the third-largest film industry centre in the world, after Los Angeles and New York.
He has just had a lunchtime session with some leading Irish business and digital media industry figures.
What would he like to see emerge from the meeting? "I'd like to see a joint invasion of the UK," he quips, then grows serious.
"Joint research, co-productions - let's look at the existing co-production treaties and get them more fruitful. I'd like to see something that mirrors Canada's relationship with Israel," according to Mr Brody.
Those countries have a joint research development organisation that has proven highly productive, he says.
There's definite interest in Dublin in, at the very least, establishing a private Canadian-Irish investment fund, according to several people close to the project.
"Ireland has good strengths in new media, including the presence of (Massachusetts Institute of Technology's) Media Lab and the Digital Hub. There's a real natural fit with Canada," Mr Brody says.
But aren't Irish new media companies perhaps a bit too small to venture into such partnerships?
"Smallness is actually the best scenario. If companies are large, they don't need this. We are looking for the young gems in Ireland. What we can provide is the opportunity to commercialise," he says.
Both Canada and the Republic's digital media companies have to look to larger markets than their own - Europe and the US - yet another reason to do joint productions, he says.
"The square root of it is, you have a strong technology leaning in Ireland, a real understanding that technology is important to the country's future and there's real new media strength."
On the other hand, the Republic is facing changing times.
EU subsidies will decrease with the arrival of the accession countries and the State needs to think of ways to maintain its Celtic Tiger reputation of being a technology contender, he says.
Canada has had the reverse problem - a positive technology story to tell and no one telling it, to the point that Canadians themselves were unaware of the central position of the technology and biotechnology industries in the nation's intensive economic growth, not dissimilar to what happened over the past decade in the Republic.
That spurred the Innovation Nation book, which became a surprise bestseller in Canada in 2002.
"Canada had this good story which no one knew about, not even Canadians," according to Mr Brody.
He hopes the book has gone some way toward addressing that issue, to the point of getting the famously low-key Canadians to beat their own country's drum.
"Canadians have this humility," he laughs. "But when they're proud about something they're pretty vocal."
