It’s fair to say that the Irish business establishment has been slow to use the web as a source of competitive advantage.

Looking across the major sectors – banking, insurance, telcos, utilities, retail, media – it’s hard to think of a single blue chip firm that has broken the mould and disrupted their market with a strong internet play. Although investment was made online, the nettle was never really grasped. (Ryanair is probably the exception that proves the rule).

One likely reason is the complacency brought on by the fat years of the Celtic Tiger. Which begs the question, will complacency be replaced by urgency now that the fat years have gone? The question occurred while reading a book called Zero Sum World by Gideon Rachman, a journalist with the Financial Times.

The book is about the change in global power politics since the financial crisis of 2008. Prior to the crash, in the period from 1991 to 2007, the world enjoyed what Rachman calls the “Age of Optimism”. During this time there appeared to be a broad consensus among the major powers that free markets and international trade would solve all our problems.

This was an era of unprecedented prosperity and peace (yes, despite 9/11, Iraq, Bosnia, et al this was a period of relative global calm). Instead of competing for power and resources, the big players like the US, the EU, Russia and China, were happy to grow rich together. Why argue over a slice of the pie when the pie kept getting bigger? This was a win-win world.

Since 2008 the world has been in retreat and the pie has stopped getting bigger. Competition is back. Any advantage that one power gains seems to be at the expense of another. If China forges stronger links with Brazil, the US is losing influence. If the EU sources oil from Azerbaijan, Russia is losing money and clout. I win, you lose. This is a zero sum world. A world that is much more volatile as the big players compete intensely with each other.

While competition might be dangerous in a global context, it can only be healthy for Irish business, particularly consumers. When times were good, there was little incentive to differentiate. Why invest in a competitive advantage when you didn’t really need to compete? Why fight over customers when one customer, for example, could have multiple mortgages, multiple credit cards and all the spin-offs associated with them? The big players were happy with the status quo: let’s grow rich together. The big loser was the customer, stuck with online services that can seem light-years behind those offered abroad.

But times have changed in Ireland too. Competition is back. Irish firms are fighting hard for every customer they can get. The best years to invest online – the cash-rich years of the boom – may have passed. But necessity is the mother of invention. Perhaps the new zero sum world will see the business establishment open its eyes to the web. And perhaps we’ll see some clever, game-changing internet moves in the coming years. The customer can only benefit.