Graham Byrne, head of Ireland and Scotland businesses, Promethean
9th March 2010
Entrepreneurialism starts in schools.
In terms of reliance on foreign direct investment, there needs to be an acceptance that that’s not the only route. We are a high-cost economy at this point and we need to focus on the knowledge-based aspects of the economy. This means focusing on creativity, entrepreneurialism and using the digital economy to get us to a point before it overtakes us.
We should be looking at the digital economy from an early year’s perspective, and this means having children embrace this from an early stage in their schools.
In terms of the components of entrepreneurialism, there are similarities in terms of how we engineer a dynamic environment – we need to start by being more creative in the classroom, helping kids to be more self directed in their learning, self-confident and willing to try new things and take risks. We feel a lot of the technology we’re putting into classrooms gives children the confidence and exposure at an early age where it becomes a part of their mindset.
One of my own personal concerns is how we have addressed things like bankruptcy laws. If creativity and entrepreneurialism are to drive the economy in the years ahead, many could be punished if they fail. This will create challenges in that many traditionally led businesses too could be victims because they will find it hard to keep their head above water in the present economy until they can have a crack of the whip again.
Graham Byrne's biography
Graham Byrne is the head of Promethean’s businesses in Ireland and Scotland.
He took over the role of Head of Ireland in February 2009 and assumed leadership of the Scottish business in December 2009.
He has overall responsibility for developing and implementing market and channel strategies with a view to strengthening Promethean’s ActivClassroom market position.
A key focus has been building Promethean’s educator support capabilities, and enhancing its strong links with government, teacher and parent communities. Graham has been deeply involved in developing innovative partnerships with fund raisers designed to help schools to finance interactive classroom systems, and with educational publishers to create localised interactive curriculum resources.
Byrne was born in 1973. He began his career in sales with Cable in Wireless, working in a number of senior sales roles, before moving to Global Crossing Financial Markets in London as global account director, responsible for managing its global matrix sales teams. Byrne then joined MCI Worldcom (Verizon) in a similar capacity.
On returning to Dublin, Byrne embarked on a number of entrepreneurial ventures, including founding and selling a retail group and acquiring Ashfield, the second level and IT education group.
Byrne studied commerce in UCD before completing his MBA at the Smurfit Business School in 1996.
