1/11/15: Digital City Index: What's Up With Dublin?..

Digital City Index ranks European cities in terms of their ecosystem ability to sustain digital entrepreneurship.

Full data and rankings are accessible here: https://digitalcityindex.eu/downloads.

While one can be sceptical in looking at the data, there are several things jumping out when it comes to Dublin ranking.

1. Overall ranking for the city is 8th. Not too bad, but not too great either, especially given the hoopla usually accompanies our self promotion as the world's leading tech hub.
2. In Access to Capital terms, we rank 11th. Not great either.
3. In Business Environment - 17th - oh dear...
4. In Digital Infrastructure - 27th... no comment necessary
5. In Skills - 10th. Again, respectable, but surely not exactly world's most educated workforce thingy...
6. In Entrepreneurial Culture - third.  Which is great and suggests that it is not our enterprising that is poor, but the supports systems and institutions. Guess which bit is the remit of our policymakers?
7. In Knowledge Spillovers we ranked 14th. Recall all the talk about the alleged great benefit from the MNCs in terms of knowledge spillovers? Spot it anywhere in these figures?
8. Lifestyle - a proxy for quality of life, that is cost-adjusted... well 26th we are. Great place to attract top notch human capital to.
9. Dublin Market system is 9th ranked - respectable.
10. We rank excellent 3rd in terms of Mentoring & Managerial Assistance. 
11. We rank 21st in terms of Non-Digital Infrastructure. No comment here.

So, overall, let's cut the hype and start facing the music, shall we? We are - by some distance - not ranked as the best place to start digital business in Europe. No matter how many posters saying otherwise we plaster on the walls of Dublin Airport.