The final episode of The Leaders’ Room’s season two features Robert O’Brien, country leader of Medtronic Ireland and its VP of HR for global manufacturing. This series is created in partnership with IDA Ireland.
Season two of The Leaders’ Room podcast again sees host Ann O’Dea get up close and personal with the Irish-based leaders of some of the world’s most influential technology, health-tech, software and engineering companies with operations in Ireland.
As well as getting their insights on the nature of good leadership and the strategies that define success in some of the world’s most influential companies, the series also gets their expert views on the big trends that are shaping their sectors.
In this episode, we spoke to Robert O’Brien, country leader of Medtronic Ireland and its vice-president of HR for global manufacturing. In 1949, US engineer and inventor Earl Bakken founded Medtronic from a garage in Minnesota, where he developed the first external, battery-operated, wearable artificial pacemaker.
Today, 75 years on, Medtronic is a €32bn organisation, and continues to grow, as it serves some 80m patients and develops an ever-widening array of medical technologies
Worldwide 95,000 people work at Medtronic, including 5,000 here in Ireland, where the company has had a base for 43 years. As country leader, O’Brien oversees that team, while still working with the 40,000 employees in global manufacturing worldwide, so he’s well placed to lay out the skills and resources necessary to coordinate teams in a company of this scale, working on med tech solutions for a plethora of health conditions.
O’Brien has a long career of working with leaders and managing organisational transformation at Medtronic, and he starts our chat on good leaders by differentiating between management and leadership, as “the difference between working in the business and working on the business”. He also describes leadership at its foundation as “the ability of one person to draw many people together to deliver something big”.
The interview also covers the exciting developments taking place in the med tech sector and, in particular, at Medtronic, where its ambitions for the future include the vision for a ‘device for life’. He cites the example of the pacemaker, which currently has a lifespan of 10-15 years as one that in the future might be implanted for life.
As for the role of the Irish operation, Medtronic has come a long way from the days when it opened a manufacturing facility in Ireland 43 years ago.
Today the Irish operations are based at three sites, and research and development (R&D) plays a much greater role here and one that is only growing, says O’Brien, as well as other verticals like manufacturing, shared services and commercial services.
Indeed, Medtronic Ireland today services 10 of the organisation’s 15 business divisions out of Ireland. It is a very nice case study indeed when it comes to our strategy of being a centre for high-end, high-skill jobs in this country.
And this interview marks a wrap for season two of The Leaders’ Room. We’re extremely grateful to all our interviewees for taking the time to come into the studio and share their insights and their intelligence again. And big thanks as ever to our partners IDA Ireland who have made this series possible.
The Leaders’ Room podcast is released fortnightly and can be found by searching for ‘The Leaders’ Room’ wherever you get your podcasts. For those who prefer their audio with visuals, filmed versions of the podcast interviews are all available here on SiliconRepublic.com.
Check out The Leaders’ Room podcast for in-depth insights from some of Ireland’s top leaders. Listen now on Spotify, on Apple or wherever you get your podcasts.
