The second report covered the six other RTCs (Letterkenny, Sligo, Carlow, Waterford, Galway and Cork); it also covered the National Institute of Higher Education in Limerick, and Dublin Institute of Technology, and University College Dublin.

This report follows an earlier report produced in April of this year which looked in some depth at the Regional Colleges in Athlone, Dundalk and Tralee from the point of view of their potential as sources of new product and/or new enterprise generation. This was initially with a view to seeking investment opportunities for the National Enterprise Agency, but it seemed appropriate to link the investigation to the needs of the Youth Employment Agency Community Enterprise Programme as well, and the present sequel relates to the latter.

The April report is summarised in the following section; this formed a common introduction to the discussion papers circulated in the Dublin Institute of Technology, in NIHE (Limerick) and in UCD as the stimulus to the seminars reported in Chapters 3, 4 and 5 respectively.

The discussion paper for the RTC seminars was produced separately, with the CEOs in mind; this forms the lead-in to Chapter 2. There is some overlap of material therefore between Sections 1.1 and 2.1, for which the writer begs the readers's indulgence.

1.1 Background

The April report proposed that each College should have a 'high-profile contact-point' for a network of identified active units, each of which would relate to a specified, possibly sectoral, area of problems and opportunities. Each unit would involve the marginal time of one or more designated College staff, recruited from appropriate disciplines, and would be serviced by dedicated resources (space, technician time, equipment, part-time or full-time staff secondments) in proportion as revenue was generated by its activity. The role of the central contact-point would be to market the services of the active units, identifying clients, problems and opportunities.

The problem of how such a network could be funded, and how its activity would interact creatively with the education process, was discussed. A key role was suggested for the final-year student project: interdisciplinary group projects might be used systematically to evaluate the feasibility of marketable concepts. These would have a chance ultimately of achieving viability provided (a) there were significant support from a collaborative group of College staff, typically those associated with one of the 'active units' (b) a 'product champion' with leadership potential were to emerge (typically this would be an outside entrepreneur) (c) a source of seed-funding were available such as to enable some or all of the students on graduation to take the project to fruition, under the leadership of the 'champion' (d) an appropriate 'enterprise incubation centre' were readily accessible with which the College support-group could readily interact. AnCO 'product development centres' were considered in this context, as well as IDA and municipal enterprise centres.

It was suggested that some of the seed-funding(3) might be generated by the research and consultancy activity of the network itself, being held to the credit of those who had devoted their marginal time to it.

It was suggested that the funding for the central contact-point for the network should come from a State agency responsible for the generation of employment through innovative enterprise (rather than from the education budget), and that the continuity of the 'active units' be funded by consortia of firms or agencies active in the problem-areas in which they specialise.

In the cases of the 3 Regional Colleges studied, some specific potential 'active unit networks' were identified, with their related areas of problems and opportunities (mostly regional, some national).

1.2 General Terms of Reference

The objective specified for the present project is '....to research the potential of the 3rd-level education sector for enterprise development, with a particular emphasis on its potential for helping community enterprise...'.

It is to be regarded as a continuation of the research reported in April 1985, as summarised in the foregoing introductory section, extending to cover the remaining 6 Regional Technical Colleges, the Dublin Institute of Technology, one National Institute of Higher Education (Limerick) and one University College (Dublin).

Particular attention is also to be given to the DIT and its associated Enterprise Centre in Prussia St, with special terms of reference as outlined in the next section.

1.3 Terms of Reference Specific to DIT

In the case of DIT the Prussia St Enterprise Centre has been receiving YEA funding; it is required therefore additionally to come to some conclusions on the following points:

1. To establish the extent to which products are being developed to commercialisation.

2. To establish if the persons engaged in such development work subsequently set up their own businesses to commercialise their product(s), and if not, why?

3. If the foregoing is not happening, to ascertain what eventually happens to the projects?

4. To establish overall the benefits which the student(s) get from this exercise in terms of personal development, educational/training and career prospects.

5. Having regard to the main objective of the Community Enterprise Programme ie to create long-term sustainable jobs, are the resources being committed to this venture justified?

Terms of reference were also proposed by DIT; these are more exhaustive and it is not proposed in the present study to deal with them fully, but an initial attempt will be made. They are as follows:

(a) To examine the potential of the Centre for the promotion of an entrepreneurial outlook among engineering and science graduates of the Dublin Institute of Technology and other 3rd-level Colleges

(b) To examine its potential to advance entrepreneurial projects to a stage where they will attract capital funding

(c) To examine the financial support structure of the Centre and make recommendations on the appropriate level of support for the future from the YEA

(d) To examine the interaction of the Centre, and projects from the Centre, with the IDA and to recommend appropriate arrangements for future interaction

(e) To examine the transfer of projects from the feasibility study stage to manufacturing stage and make any appropriate recommendations to improve the transfer rate

(f) To examine the broad range of projects investigated and to recommend on the means of improving the quality of the projects

(g) To examine the potential for interaction of the Project Centre with other State agencies than those mentioned above.

The details of this report are somewhat dated; they exist on the record, perhaps, in the archives of the State somewhere. I also have them accessibly in word-processable files, should there be a demand for a reprint, as indeed there was in the early 1990s from Eoin O'Neill, my successor in the TCD Industry Office. I give however the last chapter. RJ March 2001.

General Conclusions and Recommendations

Bearing in mind the foregoing analysis, it seems reasonable to conclude as follows:

1. The Irish 3rd-level education system is an underutilised resource in the national enterprise development process, for various cultural and historical reasons. There are aspirations within the system to change this.

2. There is broad agreement that the ingredients needed are:

(a) a research and consultancy system, involving academic staff, giving insight into problems and opportunities in industry and the marketplace, and contacts with potential entrepreneurs;

(b) development laboratory workspace where the priority is not teaching;

(c) serviced enterprise incubation space close enough to make contact easy between entrepreneurs and their technical consultancy support system;

(d) a positive academic attitude to the 'business plan' aspect of postgraduate work;

(e) the development of team-work, with interactive design, marketing, production, quality control and financial ingredients;

(f) a source of venture-seeding funds.

3. The academic system, largely within its present financial and organisational constraints, can without too much trauma provide ingredients (a) and (d), and influence (e). It may need some pump-priming support in setting up the management of (a), and in the case of the VEC system a positive enabling policy decision is needed, in the Department of Education, along lines suggested by the AVEC Report.

4. Ingredient (b) (development laboratory workspace) can to a limited extent be supplied by the use of teaching resources in marginal time (ie evenings, weekends and vacations), provided means exist for dealing openly with the costs involved (this is the principal source of tension between RTC staff and local VECs under the present unstructured system). However for projects of any size one must have control over access to space, and the ability for example to leave rigs set up untampered with. There is therefore a role both for industrially sponsored sectoral applied research and service labs, and for general-purpose IIRS regional labs. A IIRS lab on a regional campus would contribute to the dynamics provided 'ingredient (a)' existed, and local specialist support services were available. IIRS attempts to provide regional support services have remained basically centralist for lack of 'ingredient (a)' to cross-link with regionally.

5. 'Ingredient (c)' (enterprise incubation space) should be provided as a routine by an appropriate Regional Authority, as SFADCO has done in Limerick. The embryo of such a Regional Authority exists in the inter-agency regional committees associated with the 'one-stop shops'. In some regions the AnCO Centre is beginning to provide an enterprise incubation service via its 'product development units'.

6. Venture-seeding funds ('ingredient (e)') are sometimes available locally on a private or co-operative basis, but the State has an important role to play, as private or community co-operative investment funding is unlikely to flow until the project has been shown to be viable with high probability. (The tax environment is here of prime importance; this requires separate analysis and is outside the scope of this study.) The role of public funding is to support projects in the incubation period (prototype and business plan development). The Limerick Innovation Centre shows promise: decisions regarding support of projects should be locally based, with knowledge of, and insight into, the people concerned, rather than remote and bureaucratic (paper-based); this appears to hold in the Limerick Centre.

Considering the potential role of the Youth Employment Agency as a source of finance in the above process, it seems reasonable to recommend as follows:

I. Where positive steps are seen to be made towards setting up and linking the ingredients listed in Conclusion 2 above (we can call this the 'Technology and Enterprise Network' or 'TEN' concept as originally outlined in Chapter 3 of the April Report), the YEA should step in and provide the venture-seeding finance; the Prussia St experience constitutes a precedent for this role.

II. The amount of finance provided should be linked to the amount of development funding drawn into the region as a result of regional community enterprise initiatives, thus giving the Colleges a direct interest in regional enterprise development.

III. Funding of TENs should be conditional on providing access to education in co-operative management practice, though they should not be linked to any insistence on all enterprises being organised as co-operatives.

IV. Community enterprise groups should be encouraged to sponsor and fund feasibility study projects in their nearest appropriate 3rd-level College, and to think in terms of the College, and its associated TEN, as an enterprise support resource. Note that student project exhibitions and Open Days, which often take place around Easter or early summer, are excellent opportunities to make contact, and to identify potential marketable concepts.

V. Where obstacles exist to setting up the TEN system, the YEA should not hesitate to work diplomatically and if necessary politically to remove them, particularly in the matter of getting a positive reaction on the part of the Department of Education to the AVEC Report, and in the area of the AnCO/VEC interface.

VI. Attention should be given to the possibility of drawing down EEC 'Integrated Regional Development' funding, using the above process as a lever.

Some navigational notes:

Copyright Dr Roy Johnston 1999