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.
- 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.
- In Access to Capital terms, we rank 11th. Not great either.
- In Business Environment - 17th - oh dear...
- In Digital Infrastructure - 27th... no comment necessary
- In Skills - 10th. Again, respectable, but surely not exactly world's most educated workforce thingy...
- 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?
- 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?
- Lifestyle - a proxy for quality of life, that is cost-adjusted... well 26th we are. Great place to attract top notch human capital to.
- Dublin Market system is 9th ranked - respectable.
- We rank excellent 3rd in terms of Mentoring & Managerial Assistance.
- 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.
