What do you think?
Rate this book
The Impossible Dream: The Spectacular Rise and Fall of Steorn, the Celtic Tiger’s most Audacious Start-Up
In 2006, a previously unknown Irish technology company by the name of Steorn created headlines globally when it took out a full-page ad in The Economist, in which it claimed to have made the scientific breakthrough of this - or any other - century: perpetual motion, nothing less than a complete and immediate solution to the global energy crisis.
The investment money poured in, with some of Ireland's most respected entrepreneurs and institutions getting on board, but the demonstration was a spectacular failure. So how did so many well-meaning and otherwise sensible people get things so desperately, absurdly wrong? The story begins with a malfunctioning CCTV system and ends with an exploding battery, and it drives home Ireland's frenzied state of mind during the Celtic Tiger years.
The investment money poured in, with some of Ireland's most respected entrepreneurs and institutions getting on board, but the demonstration was a spectacular failure. So how did so many well-meaning and otherwise sensible people get things so desperately, absurdly wrong? The story begins with a malfunctioning CCTV system and ends with an exploding battery, and it drives home Ireland's frenzied state of mind during the Celtic Tiger years.
239 pages, Paperback
Published July 22, 2020
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
May 7, 2021
Steorn must rank as one of the defining moments of the Celtic Tiger era - they were ballsy, raking in the cash, and built on absolutely nothing. Business Post journalist Barry Whyte tells the inside story of the company who took in €23m in investment for their perpetual motion machine - clean, free, limitless energy.
It didn't work - that's not a spoiler; that's the first law of thermodynamics - but it didn't stop the company trying for more than a decade to prove their technology, even as they racked up high-profile demo failures. Steorn was, in a way, a marketing department for nothing - the promises made are remarkable, the breakthrough is always just around the corner, the demonstration set-backs are down to too much light in the room or are even planned to raise brand awareness. And quietly, in the background, is technology - not even a product, just a piece of tech - that never works. Because it was a theoretical impossibility. It takes a considerable time for a scientist to get access to the device long enough to work out what the error is - the technology was genuinely complicated, and ultimately Steorn's method of measurement was incorrect. The company's dismissal of this ("It's easier to measure that way") speaks volumes.
Whyte's story is based on interviews with many of the key players - primarily Shaun McCarthy, the main man behind the company, but also external scientists and investors - as well as first-hand documents such as Board minutes and fundraising brochures. He captures the Celtic Tiger mindset which led to significant early investment and follows the story through the dozen (!) years that Steorn spent flailing away, and on to its predictable demise in a whirlwind of infighting and recriminations. Practically no-one associated with the company comes away with any credit - investors re-invest, the company's product focus chops and changes, naysayers are dismissed with a wave of the hand.
If there's one criticism, and it's small, it's that there's no insight into what staff spent 12 years doing when working on something which surely some must have known was literally impossible. But when McCarthy says at the end "I've since come to the conclusion that we approached this completely the wrong way from the beginning" you realise with amazement that he still thinks perpetual motion works, and is still tinkering with it.
It's an appropriate ending to a fascinating read.
It didn't work - that's not a spoiler; that's the first law of thermodynamics - but it didn't stop the company trying for more than a decade to prove their technology, even as they racked up high-profile demo failures. Steorn was, in a way, a marketing department for nothing - the promises made are remarkable, the breakthrough is always just around the corner, the demonstration set-backs are down to too much light in the room or are even planned to raise brand awareness. And quietly, in the background, is technology - not even a product, just a piece of tech - that never works. Because it was a theoretical impossibility. It takes a considerable time for a scientist to get access to the device long enough to work out what the error is - the technology was genuinely complicated, and ultimately Steorn's method of measurement was incorrect. The company's dismissal of this ("It's easier to measure that way") speaks volumes.
Whyte's story is based on interviews with many of the key players - primarily Shaun McCarthy, the main man behind the company, but also external scientists and investors - as well as first-hand documents such as Board minutes and fundraising brochures. He captures the Celtic Tiger mindset which led to significant early investment and follows the story through the dozen (!) years that Steorn spent flailing away, and on to its predictable demise in a whirlwind of infighting and recriminations. Practically no-one associated with the company comes away with any credit - investors re-invest, the company's product focus chops and changes, naysayers are dismissed with a wave of the hand.
If there's one criticism, and it's small, it's that there's no insight into what staff spent 12 years doing when working on something which surely some must have known was literally impossible. But when McCarthy says at the end "I've since come to the conclusion that we approached this completely the wrong way from the beginning" you realise with amazement that he still thinks perpetual motion works, and is still tinkering with it.
It's an appropriate ending to a fascinating read.
October 3, 2020
The mass insanity of the Celtic Tiger Irish
A tremendous read. The book is not only a history of one of the weirdest companies to emerge in the last 20 years (anyone I mentioned Steorn to would inevitably say "oh yeah, those guys! Whatever happened to them?"), it's also a precis of the sheer madness that overtook Ireland during the Celtic Tiger years.
A tremendous read. The book is not only a history of one of the weirdest companies to emerge in the last 20 years (anyone I mentioned Steorn to would inevitably say "oh yeah, those guys! Whatever happened to them?"), it's also a precis of the sheer madness that overtook Ireland during the Celtic Tiger years.
December 15, 2025
Excellent book. Brilliant journalism by Barry J Whyte, interspersed by candid interview excerpts from Shaun McCarthy, founder and long term CEO of Steorn. It explores both the mindset of the founder and the cultural context that allowed the “Impossible Dream” and delusion to go too far. I would recommend this book to anyone with a passing interest in the culture of Celtic Tiger Ireland.
February 4, 2024
Picked up on a whim, had never heard of the company. Great read.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews