Staying with the theme of funding, Enterprise Ireland have announced a new €60m growth fund (up to €650,000 per SME) in the latest edition of The Market. The fund aims to
assist SME clients of Enterprise Ireland to achieve greater competitiveness by improving their export potential”
Eligable costs include:
- capital investment
- technology acquisition
- recruitment of key managers
- consultancy to assist with the implementation of the Growth Fund proposal
- management development and
- staff training
Support Limits:
| |
Max. Funding
|
Funding Type
|
Min. Company Spend
|
|
Capital Investment
|
€300,000
|
Grant / 50% repayable
|
€75,000
|
|
Technology Acquisition
|
€300,000
|
Grant
|
€50,000
|
|
Training & Management Development
|
No specific limit
|
Grant
|
€25,000
|
|
Consultancy
|
25% of total project
|
Grant
|
n/a
|
|
Recruitment of Key Managers
|
€200,000
|
Grant
|
n/a
|
|
Workplace Innovation &
Management Development |
No specific limit
|
Grant
|
€25,000
|
|
Overall Maximum Support for Submission
|
€650,000
|
The closing date for applications is the 3rd Thursday of every month (two calls have already closed), currently until the end of 2008.
More information, including eligibility criteria and funding levels, is available at http://www.enterprise-ireland.com/Grow/Finance/Growth+Fund.htm
Eurostars is an EU research fund available to SME’s in the Eurostars participating countries, of which Ireland is one. In Ireland the funding is provided through Enterprise Ireland who will fund up to 50% of total project costs, which typically have a total value of 1.5 million Euro.
The research project must satisfy certain criteria, some of which are:
- The research must be collaborative which means that there must be at least two participants in the research project, from at least two different Eurostars participating countries (most EU member states plus some others).
- The main (or lead) participant must be a “research-performing SME”, that is, invest 10% or more of full-time equivalent or annual turnover in research activities.
- 50% of the research conducted by the project consortia must be conducted by SMEs (the remainder, for example, could be conducted by a research centre with a 3rd level educational institute, a larger organisation, a university, or indeed other SME’s).
- The research must be aimed at the development of a new product, process or service.
- The research project must have a maximum duration of three years, and within two years of project completion, the product of the research should be ready for launch onto the market
The next deadline for electronic submission of applications is Friday 21 November 2008 at 1700 CET. You can find out more information from Enterprise Irelands web site.
Recently I have been working with an Irish micro enterprise who is looking to update their web site. The web site is relatively straight forward and the functionality required is “de-facto” standard for most online trading web sites. So I thought that this would be an ideal opportunity to encourage the use of an Open Source Content Management System (CMS).
The theory is simple. Having listened to a few web designers pitch their services for the development of the site it became obvious that all were suggesting the use of proprietary solutions to handle updating the site content. [Explanation: The site, at its simplest, is a set of web pages that need to be updated frequently with new content. All the designers were offering this functionality as part of their service. The designers had developed software of their own over the years that allow this functionality to be provided. The end result is that the site owner can edit the pages online.]
The issues with such a solution are:
- Who owns the software? What are the Intellectual Property issues? For example, can I modify the software, if I sell the business (and the site) can the buyer modify the software?
- The site owner is potentially “locked in” to using the designer for future updates.
- The site owner may be overly restricted in where they can host the site as the proprietary software that allows for online editing may require “uncommon” technologies.
- What happens if the designer goes out of business?
Open Source holds the promise of addressing most, if not all, of these issues, as:
- The software license for many Open Source products allow for the software to be modified and resold.
- Popular Open Source products have a large community of developers that support the product and thus provide a healthy market for product support.
- Many Open Source products use “ISP friendly” technologies.
The theory started to fall apart a bit when applied in the context of an Irish micro enterprise seeking to use an Open Source CMS. So where does it fall apart? Essentially the lack of an Irish based Open Source CMS industry. I found it very difficult to find Irish based developers who specialise in any of the popular Open Source CMSs. There are some out there but the list is short. Why do they need to be Irish based I hear you ask, because the enterprise developing the site would like to meet face-to-face with the developer, get a feeling for what they are like. The enterprise, and this is true for many enterprises, feel the need to tread carefully when investing in technology, not that they don’t appreciate its value but because it is something they don’t fully understand.
So what can be done to overcome this barrier to adoption?
- If the enterprise was willing to learn the skillset required to use (in the broadest possible sense) an Open Source CMS then there would be no need for the “middle man”. True, but most micro enterprises neither have the time, resources or inclination. It’s not part of their core business. Which leaves me wondering whether those enterprises who can take the Open Source product in-house and upskill are the ones who will benefit the most from Open Source.
- Train micro enterprises in the use of online communication and collaboration technologies so that they don’t feel a need to meet face-to-face with the developer. This would certainly open up a huge market for Irish micro enterprises.
- Encourage and assist Irish web designers to adopt Open Source products as part of their offerings. For example, here at Tipperary Institute we could offer training targeted at Irish web designers.
The use of an Open Source CMS is not without its disadvantages, but for the time being this choice simply isn’t available to most Irish micro enterprises.
Recently I was perusing the slides from the launch of the EU Finance Day for SMEs initiative held in Ljubljana, Slovenia. I found the following information interesting.
- There are 23 million SMEs in the EU (99% of all enterprises) and they account for about 75 million jobs.
- SMEs are defined as firms with less than 250 employees and annual turnover of less than €50 million and/or annual balance less than €43 million.
- Small enterprises are defined as having less than 50 employees.
- Micro enterprises are defined as having less than 10 employees.
- Main Business constraints for SME’s:
- Purchasing power of customers(46%)
- Administrative regulations (36%)
- Lack of human resources (35%)
- Cost of human resources (33%)
- Infrastructure problems (23%)
- Limited access to finance (21%)
- 70% of SMEs have no or few R&D activities.
- 20% of SMEs (termed “technology adoption enterprises”) adapt existing technologies.
- Less that 10% of SMEs (termed “Leading Technology Users”) develop or combine existing technologies on an innovative level.
- Less than 3% of SMEs (termed “Technology Pioneers”) have high levels of research activities.
I am keeping a close eye on when the EU Finance Day for SMEs is going to happen in Ireland and I’ll post here as soon as I find out.
It never really struck me until I bought myself a Nokia N95. I won’t go into the technical wonders of this machine (but it is pretty amazing) but suffice to say that
- it has the ability to connect to a wireless network (like your home network)
- it has a fairly decent speaker on it
- there is a podcasting application available for it
Prior to my purchasing the phone I tried to get into this whole podcasting thing (internet audio programs) but for some reason, that escaped me at the time, I never quite got it. I was able to find podcasts that interested me but I never enjoyed listening to them. I tried downloading the podcasts to my laptop, putting on my big headphones, and listening to them but it just didn’t feel right. I tried downloading the podcasts using Juice, a podcast receiver, and transferring the podcasts to my iPod, but again it just didn’t work - it was too awkward, took too much time, too much hassle.
Now, thanks to my N95, I can go home and press a button on my phone, my favourite podcasts get downloaded to my phone and on my way to work the next day I can listen to them using the phones’ speaker. All very simple, very convenient, hassle free and just works.
It was never about the content of the podcasts, that was always fine, it was how I was digesting that content that was the problem.