This afternoon I spent a pleasant 2 hours or so chatting to the folks at ICON in San Gwann, Malta. ICON’s co-director Gege Gatt and I have known each other for quite a while now* and earlier this year he asked me to pop round their offices the next time I’m in Malta.
As he explained over the phone round about May or so, ICON – already a leader in bespoke web development – is working on being more innovative and creative in the long-term. As part of this process they are inviting various people from different backgrounds to come and talk to the team about the experiences and challenges they face in business life.
Needless to say, I was very flattered to be asked and accepted very happily. So I spent an hour or so nattering away about some of my experiences working at Red Gate, including things like our Down Tools Week and why we organise our own learning events.
However, what I mainly wanted to write about is, how pleasant and genuinely refreshing it is to see this sort of approach to learning and knowledge sharing being taken by a Maltese company. As Edward de Bono correctly pointed out in a recent interview we have a tendency in Malta to “stand on our shores and look inwards”. More bluntly, because of our small size, we have a deplorable tendency to engage in petty wrangling, mud-slinging and a never ending game of one-upmanship.
With a very small shift in thinking ICON is doing something different in a very important way, both for themselves and for the Maltese entrepreneurial community.
Richard Muscat 