This is a summary the first of two reports, done under the joint sponsorship of the Youth Employment Agency and the National Enterprise Agency, aimed at evaluating the 'innovative local enterprise' job-generation potential of the Regional Colleges. It was produced in April of 1985.

Hitherto there has been little appreciation of the potential role of the Colleges of Technology in the community enterprise process; most communities tend to regard Regional Colleges as producers of technical staff for existing firms, while the type of technology relevant to community enterprise business concepts is usually relatively unsophisticated.

This situation is changing. From the angle of the Colleges, job placements are becoming more difficult, as the supply of new foreign-based high-technology firms tapers off. Academic attention in the business schools is moving towards innovation and start-ups of innovative enterprises; some business schools (eg in UCC and NIHE Dublin) are beginning to take an interest in co-operative business organisation. Efforts have been made by the National Board for Science and Technology to develop cross-links between science, engineering and business schools, with a view to catalysing the process of innovative business generation. Final-year student projects are increasingly being specified in terms of new product concepts, or ingredients of business plans; some start-ups have already taken place (though so far this is rare).

Similarly, from the point of view of the Community Enterprise groups, it is being increasingly realised that new business based on providing goods and services, or utilising local resources, without significant innovatory edge, is vulnerable; if nonetheless it succeeds it is too often at the expense of others elsewhere in Ireland competing for the same market, so that there is no net gain in jobs overall.

Thus community enterprise, if it is to generate net sustainable jobs, just like any other kind of enterprise must substitute for imported goods or services, identify and service new needs, mobilise hitherto idle resources and if necessary be prepared to export. All these aspects involve knowhow.

Any enterprise brings together resources and needs with knowhow; the more knowhow is involved the less vulnerable it is to competition. These considerations are beginning to suggest that links be developed between community enterprise groups and the friendly local knowhow sources, the Regional Colleges. (All this holds equally well for the NIHEs and Universities, although the type of enterprise and knowhow would differ; it also holds for the Dublin Institute of Technology. Hopefully it will be possible on another occasion to go into the details of the differences. At present therefore let us focus ideas on the Regional Colleges.)

Typically the Community Enterprise group, of the type whose activities are reported in Focus, tends to be a small-town or village phenomenon. Towns with Regional Colleges tend to have evolved the traditional urban organisational forms: Chambers of Commerce, Trades Councils etc; usually they have IDA, Manpower and County Development Offices, not to speak of an AnCO centre. Hitherto community effort has tended to be focused politically, with pressure at national level to get a foreign firm to locate in the town, with IDA support. Now however the trend is towards community-funded local enterprise centres, for small-business start-ups; the State support services are tending towards the 'one-stop shop' concept of a single contact-point for all agencies, including also IIRS (for technological consultancy) and CTT (for export market advice). In some cases the enterprise centre is funded by the local authority (this tends to be the European norm).

One of the recommendations in the Reports which I have just recently submitted to the Youth Employment Agency and to the National Enterprise Agency is that these one-stop shops should also be serviced by the Regional Colleges, for the supply of knowhow in a manner which might be more locally and readily accessible than the central services provided by the IIRS.

In order for this to be feasible, it would be necessary for the RTCs to organise to supply a knowhow service in an accessible manner, other than via a routine structured teaching process. This was the central recommendation of my reports. The way in which the service would be made accessible was spelled out explicitly, and the name 'Technology and Enterprise Network', or 'TEN', was suggested.

A 'TEN' would supply (a) solutions to clients' problems (b) ideas and feasibility studies relating to innovatory products and services for existing firms (c) a flow of marketable concepts, and trained people familiar with them, suitable for new business start-ups.

While the 'client' would in most cases be an existing firm, or in some cases an individual entrepreneur, once a TEN was in existence it would be possible for a Community Enterprise group in the College hinterland to use the TEN as an active source of knowhow, often with the aid of mobilising IDA feasibility-study grant funding.

The TEN itself could evolve into the core of a 'Community Enterprise' group dedicated specifically to the urban employment problem. Thanks to its links with existing industry, it should be in a position to provide early warning of a firm's collapse (should this be a danger), and to contribute the knowhow necessary for a rescue-package with the necessary lead-time. It could also provide, as a result of final-year student project work going on in the College, a steady flow of new product concepts into the local AnCO Product Development Centre, and ultimately (or even in some cases directly) into the municipal Enterprise Centre.

Cash flow into the TEN system would be managed in such a way that no reward went to academic staff in the form of taxable income. Revenue would be used to reimburse the educational system fully for diverted resources (priority access of course being towards educational goals); this means not only use of equipment but also staff time. Staff motivation would be secured by the substitution of project work for teaching hours, the missing hours being taken up by extra part-time staff; project expenses would be covered, and project development funding would be built up under the control of those who had done the work. This would become a seed-fund for community and co-operative enterprise, provided the necessary education work was done on community enterprise principles. We have here the possibility of developing a new and more sophisticated wave of RTC-based community enterprise.

I understand that there are parallels between the above process and the evolution of the Mondragon system of co-operative enterprise in the Basque country, where the origin was a college of technology. It will however be necessary for us to evolve our own model, in accordance with what is culturally, administratively and technically feasible in the Irish educational and business environment.

There are other models closer to hand; that developed by Dr Mike Cooley and others in the Greater London Enterprise Board is worthy of close study; it has most of the ingredients mentioned above, without however the College-based organisation. In London the 'Technology Networks' are GLEB funded and managed, and are located close to the Colleges of Technology, but the contacts with academic staff are managed externally from the GLEB side. Where College-based enterprises exist in London, they tend to service primarily the high-technology needs of existing industry.

In Ireland however the college-industry interface is on the whole relatively undeveloped; given the right environment it could evolve preferentially in the 'community enterprise' direction, taking up local resources and needs with the necessary amount of appropriate knowhow.

Typical of this process are two new small enterprises I have encountered which seek to divert high-quality milk away from the EEC intervention system towards quality local cheeses. This is a highly positive response to the 'super-levy' crisis, and carries with it an implication of a whole new philosophy of food products, tending towards the highly successful French system of distinctive named local products, on which the renowned French gastronomic reputation depends. This type of enterprise lends itself to co-operative organisation, and needs continuous support as regards knowhow, often with considerable scientific skill (eg in areas such as animal-feed additives; antibiotic residues in milk are increasingly a matter for concern). It also has implications for the overall management of milk production as a national resource; one of the first problems such enterprises are likely to encounter is getting an adequate supply of milk of the right quality in the winter months.

The food industry as a local and national resource should be one of the prime targets for community enterprise thinking; this increasing interest may force some re-thinking by the traditional primary producers of meat and milk, who hitherto have been trapped in a highly seasonal production pattern, which has kept them out of the quality end of the market, and confined to disposal operations like powdered skim. The full impact of the super-levy has yet to be seen.

To date I have been involved primarily with the RTCs in Athlone, Dundalk and Tralee; community enterprise groups in the hinterlands of these colleges need have no hesitation in seeking support in the form of new product or service ideas. Other colleges will be aware in general terms of this approach, as a result of the contributions of Niall Greene and Dr Mike Cooley to the AVEC conference at Sligo on March 22. An interaction with the other Regional Colleges along these lines is planned in the near future, as well as similar but appropriately adapted encounters with the NIHEs and eventually the university colleges. Steps are also being taken to pick up some experience of continental practice in this area.

Some navigational notes:

Copyright Dr Roy Johnston 1999