Talent Garden Dublin will be an IoT powerhouse

15 Mar 2018

From left: Talent Garden founder and CEO Davide Dattoli with DCU president Prof Brian MacCraith. Image: Talent Garden

Talent Garden facility at DCU will have capacity for 350 people working on interesting projects.

Dublin City University (DCU) and Talent Garden are to join forces this autumn to establish a unique new facility that will house up to 350 people working on innovative projects, with a particular focus on the internet of things (IoT).

Founded six years ago, Talent Garden is now the largest European co-working and digital innovation network.

‘In DCU, we have found a university partner with the same entrepreneurial DNA and ambition as Talent Garden, which made the selection process easy’
– DAVIDE DATTOLI

It hosts hundreds of start-ups and works with large corporates including BMW, Google and Electrolux in 23 campuses across seven European countries.

The network will locate what has been described as a unique new facility at the DCU Alpha innovation campus.

The new facility will provide flexible work space for freelancers, tech start-ups and corporate innovation labs, with capacity for 350 people.

The co-working building will also feature Talent Garden’s Innovation School, a digital skills ‘bootcamp’ education platform, which will work in partnership with DCU Business School to upskill entrepreneurs and assist corporates on their digital journeys. It will focus on areas such as digital transformation, artificial intelligence, growth hacking, augmented reality, virtual reality, coding, blockchain and, in the future, more formal, accredited education offerings delivered in partnership with DCU.

Crucially, members of Talent Garden Dublin can also avail of the platform anywhere in the growing Talent Garden network of facilities across 18 cities in Europe. The local partners of Talent Garden Dublin are Luca Ascani, Salvatore Esposito and Niall O’Connor, successful tech entrepreneurs based in Ireland.

“As Ireland will soon be the largest English-speaking member of the eurozone and is already the leading HQ for many of the global tech companies we work with, Talent Garden are very excited to bring our unique digital innovation and co-working model to Ireland,” said Talent Garden founder and CEO Davide Dattoli.

“In DCU, we have found a university partner with the same entrepreneurial DNA and ambition as Talent Garden, which made the selection process easy. The existing DCU Alpha community of digital and IoT innovators is the perfect home for us, while the university partnership will help us to scale our Innovation School offering globally,” Dattoli added.

The worlds of learning and work are blending together

Talent Garden Dublin will be an internet of things powerhouse

Inside the new Talent Garden Dublin facility. Image: Talent Garden

Talent Garden has also recently announced expansions into the Nordics through a strategic partnership with Copenhagen-based Rainmaking, which is a global co-operative of entrepreneurs that also runs the world-famous Startupbootcamp accelerator programme.

‘This exciting partnership with Talent Garden places DCU firmly at the epicentre of the technological transformation taking place in this country and across Europe’
– BRIAN MACCRAITH

It has also just announced a new facility in San Francisco, to stand alongside existing locations such as Milan, Barcelona, Vienna and now Dublin.

This will allow members of the Dublin facility to gain access to multiple similar digital ecosystems across the globe and avail of cross-subsidised, flexible space in key export markets.

It is anticipated that the Dublin space will appeal both to early-stage start-ups and to larger corporate ‘innovation labs’, who will be attracted by the university-co-working partnership model, as well as the existing established community of digital and IoT innovators based in DCU Alpha.

“This exciting partnership with Talent Garden places DCU firmly at the epicentre of the technological transformation taking place in this country and across Europe,” said DCU president Prof Brian MacCraith.

“The worlds of work and learning are rapidly blending together, and Talent Garden Dublin offers a unique combination of innovation and education, which will help start-ups, SMEs and multinationals navigate the opportunities created by the burgeoning internet of things sector in particular.

“Through this unique DCU-Talent Garden partnership, Talent Garden Dublin goes way beyond co-working as it is currently understood in Ireland, and into the fields of accredited digital skills training, corporate digital transformation, as well as creating international connectivity for Irish start-ups looking to scale up in other markets,” MacCraith said.

John Kennedy is a journalist who served as editor of Silicon Republic for 17 years

editorial@siliconrepublic.com