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Internationalisation for SME’s is not optional

Published
by
John Hannafin
on February 22, 2008
in Business
. 0 Comments Tags: , .

According to a European project on Supporting the Internationalisation of SME’s (December, 2007),

SMEs that do not consider internationalisation are unknowingly self imposing a severe restriction on their potential for long term survival

According to the report, the barriers SME’s face with regard to internationalisation

are a lack of financial resources but most of all lack of skills or skilled human capital to tackle internationalisation

The report recognises the important role technology has played, and continues to play, in breaking down borders and facilitating globalisation. It also makes an important observation; even if you as an SME decide not to trade internationally, and instead concentrate on your domestic market, you must still be able and willing to compete with international SME’s that target your market.

Therefore, a pro-active attitude to global competition and markets is increasingly becoming not a choice but a matter of necessity.

It is not just access to new markets that is driving SME’s to internationalise but also access to technology and, not surprisingly, those SME’s that do internationalise have shown a greater capacity to innovate.

So what are the drivers?

  • The “international orientation of decision makers”, which is, more often than not, the owner/manager.
  • The size of the SME.
  • The industry/sector to which the SME belongs to.

Interestingly, although the research indicates that international firms are more productive, this is not limited to firms that export. Firms that import are also international and have equally demonstrated increases in productivity.

Finally, seeing it is something close to my heart,

In relation to SME competitiveness, for the vast majority of companies there is a large potential for innovation in operations and management, including the acquisition of IT and quality systems and capabilities. To further highlight this point its is important to remember that “marketing” entrepreneurs will go international before “technical” entrepreneurs and that innovation at plant level is not a guarantee per se of improved or increased performance. In this sense, greater use of the possibilities offered by IT and support for greater use of ecommerce and CRM systems (just to mention two examples) point one way forward and can be the most relevant innovation strategy for small companies, crafts and services.

Technology adoption is not just about the technology

Published
by
John Hannafin
on February 18, 2008
in Innovation
. 0 Comments Tags: .

I’ve seen it again recently. This is the scenario. A business decides that it wants to adopt technology in an effort to address some identified issue or capitalise on some identified opportunity. Hopefully it doesn’t start with wanting to adopt technology (although it often does) but rather wanting to improve the business. Either way, the business puts a lot of effort into capturing the requirements of the technical solution and then identifying or developing an appropriate solution. These pre-adoption stages are often heavily influenced by people who are technology savvy, who often want the technology for the sake of the technology itself. The "adoption team" slowly starts to loose sight of the issue/opportunity it is seeking to address and become immersed, and somewhat dazzled, in the technology on offer. The project moves into the deployment phase and the technology is finally switched on. The project team disband (or seriously slows down) as they feel their job is done. The original issue/opportunity remains, for the large part, un-addresses.

The adoption of technology into a business is as much about organisational development as it is about aligning business goals with technology solutions. The organisation has to be prepared for the change the technology will bring about. Peoples fears have to be addresses up-front, training has to be provided and new behaviours have to be enforced. The whole change process has to be effectively managed. If not, then the best one can hope for is that the performance of the business remains unaffected. At worst, business performance will decline.

A resurgence in Instant Messaging

Published
by
John Hannafin
on February 18, 2008
in TechTalk
. 0 Comments Tags: .

Are we seeing a resurgence in Instant Messaging? I think so. Applications like Jaiku which allows you to communicate with it using IM have, I feel, introduced IM to many users for the first time. Various social networking applications now incorporate the notion of a "presence" which allow users to see who is currently online (as apposed to email where you don’t know it the recipient  is currently ‘present’) in much the same way as IM does. GMail supports IM via its Google Talk client. More and more people are seeing the benefits of IM over email, which include:

  • instant communication
  • less email noise
  • group conversations

Here at Tipperary Institute I have seen more IM users coming online on the back of Jaiku’s IM support. The client of choice seems to be Pidgin.

Innovation Vouchers for small businesses

Published
by
John Hannafin
on February 15, 2008
in Innovation
. 2 Comments Tags: .

Enterprise Ireland are currently running an Innovation Voucher Scheme for small businesses (fewer than 50 employees and has either an annual turnover and/or an annual Balance Sheet total not exceeding €10m) designed to help such businesses develop innovative solutions to an opportunity or problem they want to explore. The voucher, worth €5000, can only be used with approved “knowledge providers” of which Tipperary Institute is one. Knowledge providers are essentially 3rd level educational institutes that have been approved for the scheme. According to their web site, eligible activities include:

  • new business model development
  • new service delivery and customer interface
  • new service development
  • tailored training in innovation management
  • innovation / technology audit
  • acquiring knowledge of:
    • efficiency audits, process change
    • supply chain management and logistics
    • product and service testing and economic impact assessment

“Vouchers can also be exchanged for knowledge transfer projects from the knowledge provider. For the purposes of this initiative, a knowledge transfer project is defined as one that transfers knowledge of a scientific, technological or innovative nature that it is new to the small enterprise. The small enterprise may then use the new knowledge to innovate a product, process or service.”

If you are interested you need to send in an application form to Enterprise Ireland and than seek out a knowledge provider who can best assist you.

The broken book

Published
by
John Hannafin
on January 3, 2008
in Innovation
. 0 Comments Tags: .

How producers perceive their products can be quite different from how consumers perceive them. Do you view your mobile phone as a camera that can make calls or a phone that can take pictures? My son, who is two and a half, has a “toy” (which has been handed down to him from his cousin) called LeapPad which is essentially a book that sits into an electronic folder that has attached to it a stylus.

LeadPad

You can then use the stylus to trace over the words in the book and the words are spoken to you. My son is a little young for this toy but that still doesn’t stop him playing with it. Anyway, the other day my son asked me could he play with the broken book. The broken book? What was he talking about? As he continued to explain what it was he wanted to play with it dawned on me that he was in fact referring to his LeapPad. Why does he call it the broken book? Obvious. It has a pen that doesn’t write - it’s broken.
Wouldn’t it be great if we could all view the world with such innocent, unconditioned, eyes. He sees a broken book, I see an electronic reading pad and stylus - the curse of knowledge.

The Extended Enterprise and rural businesses

Published
by
John Hannafin
on December 19, 2007
in Sustainable Rural Development
. 0 Comments Tags: .

“The term ‘extended enterprise’ represents the concept that a company is made up not just of its employees, its board members, and executives, but also its business partners, its suppliers, and even its customers. The extended enterprise can only be successful if all of the component groups and individuals have the information they need in order to do business effectively.” (Information Builders).

The extended enterprise is alive and well. Businesses are concentrating more and more on their core competences and outsourcing all other activities. This results in such businesses being very dependant on their suppliers of both product components and services. This has proved to be a good thing. According to Smith and Reinersten (1995), as much as 80 per cent of a product’s value can be purchased from suppliers.

Key to the Extended Enterprise is trust and information sharing - the latter being greatly facilitated by advances in technology and, in particular, the web. This bodes well for rural based businesses with the appropriate technological infrastructure. The expertise that exists within rural businesses can become part of an extended enterprise. The need for geographic proximity to all parties in a business relationship are quickly diminishing - we need only look to the successes many companies in Ireland have had in outsourcing manufacturing to places as far away as India.

So my advice to rural based businesses, not only do you have to be very good at what you do, you also need to have the technology to allow you to integrate with other businesses. If you don’t currently have the technology then work hard at ensuring you have the capacity to absorb the technology if the opportunity arises.

Information Builders: http://www.informationbuilders.com/extended-enterprise.html

Smith and Reinersten (1995), ‘Developing Products in Half the Time: New Rules, New
Tools,’ John Wiley and Sons Inc.

Innovating the Business Model

Published
by
John Hannafin
on December 18, 2007
in Innovation
. 0 Comments Tags: .

The latest newsletter from TechSearch.ie provides a nice summary of the key points from their recent conference on “Innovating the Business Model - Using Open Innovation to grow your business in new directions”, with the keynote speaker being none other than Professor Henry Chesbrough (author of the excellent book “Open Innovation: The New Imperative for Creating and Profiting from Technology“).

The key points are:

  • Good ideas are widely distributed. If you accept that not all the smart people work for you, then you can recognise the need to open up the search for useful external ideas.
  • Financial Managers must “play poker as well as chess” in that they must not dis-regard the potential value of projects which may fail conventional commercial assessments.
  • Consider the need to Connect & Develop (C&D) as well as Research & Develop (R&D). To manage Intellectual Property (IP), we need to access external IP to develop our own businesses and we need to profit from our own IP by putting it into other business models.
  • Business Model innovation is just as important as Technological innovation.
  • Working in an Open Innovation environment requires an enormous level of trust between partners – it’s critical to maintain and guard this trust.
  • By securing Global partnerships, smaller companies can scale globally.
  • In terms of evolving new business models, managers need to challenge themselves to “think outside the box”

(source: http://www.inspiration.ie/techsearch/december2007/innovating_business.htm)

What makes an innovator

Published
by
John Hannafin
on December 17, 2007
in Innovation
. 0 Comments Tags: .

ImagineWhy are some people good innovators and others not? Can one choose to be an innovator? What are the characteristics of an innovator? The people over at Think Simple Now have summarised some of the habits of innovators from Scott Berkun’s book, “The Myths of Innovation“.

They are:

  1. Persistence
  2. Remove Self-Limiting Inhibitions
  3. Take Risks, Make Mistakes
  4. Escape
  5. Writing Things Down
  6. Find Patterns & Create Combinations
  7. Curiosity

For me it starts with escaping - limiting your thought process by your imagination only.

(Image By jpeepz)

Getting more from your business through technology

Published
by
John Hannafin
on December 14, 2007
in Sustainable Rural Development
. 0 Comments Tags: .

Recently I gave a talk to a group of, rural based, micro-enterprises entitled “Getting more from your business through technology”. I had 20 minutes in which to say my piece. Here were my main points:

  • No one knows your business like yourself. It is difficult, nay impossible, for anybody to tell you how to get more from your business through technology without them first understanding your business model (especially in just 20 minutes).
  • Are you clear on how you compete? Are you following a low cost strategy or a product/service differentiation strategy? Why? How do you seek to create and sustain a competitive advantage? If you know the answers to these questions then you can start determining how to get more from your business through technology.
  • Know your value stream, that is, be clear as to how you add value to the customer. Seek out technologies that either
    • help you increase the customer value you provide or
    • help you provide new customer value.
  • Technology is generally a means through which customer value can be provided. Customers value the products of technology and not usually the technology itself.
  • Develop a technology strategy which focus on realising your business strategy through, technology assisted, customer value creation. Don’t over document such a strategy.
  • Continuously ask the question “How does this technology add customer value?”.
  • The use of technology is, for most businesses, no longer optional. Ignoring technology is akin to ignoring your competitors and your customers.

Areas in which technology can assist you create customer value:

  • Marketing e.g. web site, blogs, online advertising, email
  • New product/service development
  • Supporting existing products/services
  • Reducing costs

The Impossible is possible

Published
by
John Hannafin
on December 11, 2007
in Sustainable Rural Development
. 0 Comments Tags: .

“As a doctor and researcher, Hans Rosling identified a new paralytic disease induced by hunger in rural Africa. Now the global health professor is looking at the bigger picture, increasing our understanding of social and economic development with the remarkable trend-revealing software he created.” (TEB Web site)

Below is a recording of a talk he gave at TED 2007 entitled “New insights on poverty and life around the world”. This is one of the most enjoyable presentations I have watched in a long time and is a great demonstration of Dr Rosling’s (now Google’s) way cool statistical software.