Media Lab Europe - Demise

Demise

The lab was unfortunate to have been founded just as the internet bubble collapsed and with it the corporate ability to invest in projects of this sort. Compounding difficulties, some members of the Irish university sector expressed concerns about the government money invested in the Lab. Although, in a call for proposals, the Higher Education Authority contradicted this by noting, "The HEA is delighted at the level of collaboration (between MLE and Irish universities) which has been achieved in the short time since Media Lab Europe was established."

2004 saw increasing emphasis on the long-term financial viability of the project and it encountered funding difficulties: it did not seem likely that the lab would become self-financing with its original funding model in the near future and the Irish government appeared unwilling to provide sufficient further support. On 14 January 2005 MLE's Board announced that the lab would be put into voluntary liquidation and close. In the declaration of insolvency Ernst & Young, the liquidator, noted a surplus of €325,000.

Commenting in the Irish Times, Nicholas Negroponte, the founder of the MIT Media Lab, said that the research at MLE was "beyond wildest expectations"; he was critical of European companies for their unwillingness to invest in the lab and said: "Many visitors to MLE thought the work in Dublin was more edgy than at MIT. In this regard, Ireland received what it asked for in spades. The failing was economic and the financial model was freakishly untimely."

However, it was also reported in the media (see for example Weckler 2005) that both internal and government reports commissioned when the lab first reported financial difficulties came to critical conclusions about the initial elements of the labs operations and practices. For example it was noted that the number of patents produced by the lab up to 2004 was very small, though the account did not reflect on how long processes of research development and patent application would normally take. Furthermore, independent assessments of the Laboratory's operation commissioned by MLE noted significant improvements in management and operations since mid-2003. It was also reported in (Smith 2005) that the Irish government would have provided further but limited funding, if the board had agreed to governance changes. Inevitably such brief, unofficial reports cannot present the full picture of these complex negotiations, in which both parties discussed a range of possibilities but ultimately found closure of the lab to be the only mutually-agreeable option.