MILLSTREET NATIVE CAROLINE DOWLING - PRESIDENT OF COMMUNICATIONS & ENTERPRISE COMPUTE AT FLEXTRONICS, THE SECOND LARGEST ELECTRONICS COMPANY IN THE WORLD - IS THE GUEST SPEAKER AT THIS YEAR’S AWARDS
IN advance of the Duhallow Business Awards we met up with Millstreet native Caroline Dowling, President Communications & Enterprise Compute ( CEC) at Flex, who will be the guest speaker at the awards ceremony, to gain an insight into Flex, Caroline’s role and the importance of local business.
Flex is a $26 billion dollar leading sketch-to-scale solutions company that designs and builds intelligent products for a connected world. With approximately 200,000 professionals across 30 countries and a promise to help the world live smarter, the company provides innovative design, engineering, manufacturing, real-time supply chain insight and logistics services to companies of all sizes in various industries and end-markets.
Flex has a long history in Ireland, having opened its first operation in 1983. Flex in Ireland today is made up of a diverse workforce of almost 700 employees working across a broad range of functions and locations which include Cork, Dublin, Limerick and Leitrim.
Caroline Dowling is the President of Flex CEC, a $9 billion group comprised of an international team focused on product design, manufacturing and services providing solutions worldwide for the telecom, networking, server, storage, cloud, data analytics and converged infrastructure markets. Caroline, who lives in Kanturk, has worked with Flex for nearly twenty years.
Given Caroline’s experience of working for a global, multinational organisation we asked her why she thought Ireland is a good place to start a business?
“There are several reasons. We are a business friendly environment, we embrace new ways of working, we learn and adapt quickly,” she says. “Of the entire United States Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) spent in EMEA (Europe, Middle East & Africa) Ireland attracts over 70%, that is incredible for a country of our size.
“I believe culture is the only sustainable competitive advantage, and Ireland has this in abundance.
“We work hard, we play hard, we learn quickly. We possess an innate belief in ourselves and what we will achieve. We take responsibility, act and deliver results.
“Ireland is a highly adaptable and innovative country. Through our effective national and local government programmes, such as IRD Duhallow, we support all business types from start up to global organisation. This is clearly evident from the many successful Irish start-ups, growing over 500% in the past seven to eight years, as well as the continued trend for global organisations to locate high skilled operations in Ireland.”
Dowling travels all over the world, sometimes being on three continents in one month. We asked her are there Irish traits in business being adopted in America, and/or American traits being adopted here?
“Learning on the global markets has tremendous value. Sharing this learning is sharing gold,” she says.
“We see it with many start-ups whereby their sponsors are typically folks that have worked in a global capacity in large companies for decades. This is evidenced in the unprecedented
Caroline Dowling was the keynote speaker at the it@Cork November 3 Tech Talk took place in Flex, Kilbarry Business Park, Cork with over 90 attendee on the evening. Caroline spoke on how our world has evolved through innovation from the 1740’s industrial revolution to the information age, and how we are now entering the fourth industrial revolution which is being driven by technology. Caroline looked at how technology is driving a paradigm shift in how we deliver a connected world and looked at what it means to us. Caroline is pictured here with Barry O’Connell, PlanNet 21 , Ronan Murphy, chairman of it@cork.
number of innovative new companies in Ireland today.
“In Silicon Valley, the most common Irish trait I see, alongside smart people that work hard, are integrity and smart collaboration; smart being the operative word here. Networking and choosing a few best friends to affect change and results is a core Irish trait, and I see it inside my own company and, indeed, in many of our large customer base.”
Caroline is looking forward to being involved with the Duhallow Business Awards this year and meeting the great nominees. She acknowledges the importance of local businesses and the contribution they make to the community.
“When it comes to the economy as a whole, Central Bank research shows Irish-owned firms make up over 25% of the Irish economy,” she says. “They are the dominant employers in the domestic facing sectors such as construction, tourism and retail/services which provide careers and are crucial for regional employment.
“I have seen great evidence of this in the Duhallow region – with new start-ups and enterprises opening every month. It is inspiring to see what local entrepreneurs are doing and will become more critical as the global population grows and urbanization continues.”