IMI mood is positive as Taoiseach sees China and India in the big picture

The annual conference of the Irish Management Institute (IMI) is as good a place as any to take the pulse of Irish business. The mood in Killarney this weekend was, without a doubt, positive, reflecting the fact that - as the Taoiseach was at pains to point out - "things in Ireland are definitely looking up", writes John McManus

If you were too busy making money to attend the IMI this year, Business Opinion is happy to provide you with a snapshot of what people were talking about behind the scenes and - as we like to say in IMI-speak - "share some of our key learnings" with you.

One of them is that, apparently, Ireland is in danger of going the same way as Sweden did in the 1970s. What is wrong with that?, you might ask - particularly if your concept of what Sweden was like in the 1970s was built around the two female singers from ABBA.

But, in fact, as Swedish management wunderkind Johan Norberg told the conference, it was a defining moment for the Scandinavian country. One hundred years of exceptional economic growth - helped by free trade and the decision not to participate in two world wars - had made Sweden the world's fourth-richest country. It had a strong entrepreneurial culture and a small and efficient public service. It was - argued Norberg - a triumph of the sort of unrestrained capitalism which he advocates in his award-winning book In defence of Global Capitalism and its associated Channel 4 documentary.

But then it all went wrong. The reason being that the Swedish people ran out of patience with market forces to distribute the country's growing wealth equitably. As a result, Sweden set about constructing the most elaborate welfare state the world had ever seen. The cost of this, together with a few other things such as the oil crisis, helped Sweden on a downward spiral to its present slot as the world's 17th-richest country.

Ireland - currently ranked fifth in the OECD league table - should study the Swedish example and avoid making the same mistake, says the Swedish visionary who then went on to share another insight with us. The average cow in the European Union is paid €2 a day by the Common Agricultural Policy. The average African has an income of €1 a day. Follow that if you can.

Yet another pearl of Scandinavian wisdom came from Christine Lloyd, the vice president of organisational development at Nokia. Apparently PowerPoint, the ubiquitous presentation software made by Microsoft is a bad thing. The reason is not - as you might suspect - something to do with a scrap over intellectual copyright between the two titans. No, it is much more fundamental. PowerPoint stifles creativity because it is tool of advocacy rather than creativity. In fact, some bits of Nokia go so far as to ban PowerPoint presentations. Other parts - in their search for creativity - hold two-day meetings with an agenda that lasts two hours. Leaving it up to the participants to come up with the rest.

But the real talking point at the conference was the Taoiseach's discovery of China. At the end of his speech to the conference, the Taoiseach went off the script to share his thoughts on the Asian superpower with the audience.

The Lisbon Agenda - which aims to make Europe the world's most competitive economy - was all very well, according to the Taoiseach, but we are in danger of missing the bigger picture. "It [the Lisbon Agenda] is a path that has to be followed. If we get there by 2010 is not that important."

The real issue is China, which is growing at 10 per cent a year and currently has 350 million middle-class consumers ( a figure that surprised quite a few in the audience), he said. India is another place to watch.

With his trademark disregard for the niceties of English grammar, the Taoiseach issued a call to arms. "We have to have an onslaught into these countries," he said.

The Taoiseach's remarks generated a lot of interest. Without doubt, something is happening at a fairly high level, and it is not unrelated to the visit to Ireland shortly of the Chinese leader Hu Jintao.

Quite what it will be is not clear. The consensus would be that there is a big opportunity for Ireland to position itself as China's bridgehead into Europe. Not unlike the way we have done for the US.

And the similarities do not end there. What they know of us they like, according to the Taoiseach, even though - claimed one conference attendee and Sinophile - they believe that James Joyce's Ulysses is representative of the Irish sense of humour.

And, more interestingly, we like them it seems. One of the other facts thrown out by the Taoiseach was that there are something like 40,000 Chinese "students" in Ireland, and fewer than 80,000 in the USA.

Such generosity of spirit - if you consider allowing someone work 20 hours a week in a convenience store for the minimum wage to be generous - does not go unnoticed in Beijing, according to another of the amateur China-watchers in Killarney. Equally significant - apparently - is the Taoiseach's decision to meet Hu ahead of his meeting with George Bush later in the year.

Intriguing, isn't it?