History of Innovation

For over 30 years, Ireland's leading e-Learning companies have been at the forefront of delivering high quality products and services to a global audience.

Perhaps the most well known early commercial successes of the Irish e-Learning industry was CBT Systems (later renamed SmartForce) which was founded in Dublin in 1984. SmartForce went on to become the leading CBT provider in the world in terms of revenue. The company began trading on NASDAQ in 1995 and by the time the company merged with Nashua, NH based SkillSoft in 2002, it had annual revenues of over $200 million.

Since the 1980s Ireland has spawned dozens of e-Learning companies, many of whom are leaders in their respective areas of expertise and are pioneers of some of the most innovative solutions on the market. They range from specialized industry and solution oriented content providers such as Intuition to professional custom content and solution development services such as Interative Services and PulseLearning.

Ireland has also not lacked for technology innovation in the learning arena with products such as WBT Systems' award-winning Learning Object-based solution and the innovative mentoring and evalaution technology for Microsoft .Net engineers developed by innerworkings.

Most recently, ThirdForce has continued the wave of learning industry consolidation driven out of Ireland with the successful integration of leading vendors from Ireland (Electric Paper), the United Kingdom (Creative Learning Media) and the United States (MindLeaders) to create Ireland's latest e-Learning success.

Today through its unique combination of entrepreneurship, and partnership with research institutions and state organizations, Ireland's e-Learning industry continues to be at the forefront of world-class e-Learning solutions. The innovative nature of the members of the ILA together with their collaborative next generation learning research will ensure that these companies, both separately and together, continue to deliver on that pedigree and write the next chapter in Ireland's storied e-Learning history.