Speech by Minister John McGuinness, T.D., Official Opening of Hewlett Packard Sponsored Micro-enterprise Acceleration Programme

Wednesday 11 March 2009

It is a great pleasure for me to be invited here today to officially launch the WESTBIC-Hewlett Packard Sponsored Micro-enterprise Acceleration Programme site. The nurturing of a positive culture of entrepreneurship and promotion of new, and in particular innovative, enterprises with growth potential, is a key objective of this Government’s support for ‘entrepreneurship and micro-enterprise’, under the National Development Plan.

The Irish Business and Innovation Centres have made a significant contribution to the development of the indigenous business sector in Ireland. They enjoy strong public and private sector support as well as an extensive and well-organised network with their European counterparts.

The collective objective for Business and Innovation Centres is to act as regional promoters of new businesses across all sectors based on their innovation and growth potential – a most important objective in these times. They provide a range of services including:

Intensive handholding services to the micro-enterprise sector including access to expertise and the provision of business information, advice, counselling and mentoring.

Assistance to suitable clients to identify and access business finance through a range of services including Seed Capital Programmes and the Halo Business Angels Partnership.

Acting as lead partners in the development and management of incubation space for new and established small businesses.

Contributing to the creation of an enterprise culture by providing knowledge sharing events for entrepreneurs.

The County Enterprise Boards offer a ‘first port-of-call’ for existing enterprise owners and aspiring entrepreneurs, being strategically located in each county and the 5 cities nationwide. The role of the Enterprise Boards is to provide support for start-up and expanding micro-enterprises in the manufacturing and service sectors, with the intended effect of developing entrepreneurial activity in the local area. The Enterprise Boards are the seed-bed of our indigenous enterprise sector, which is nurtured and supported in its formative stages by Government, through Enterprise Ireland, and the Business and Innovation Centres ably complement this work. The aim of Government-supported action is to create an environment to enable innovative start-up businesses to establish and prosper. This will maximise the potential for growth of all new enterprises, and create a vibrant enterprise base for the Regions.

WESTBIC has been the official EU Business & Innovation Centre for Ireland’s Border, Midlands and West Region since 1988. The Centre is supported by Enterprise Ireland and mandated by my Department through the National Development Programme, providing innovation services to the High Potential Start-Up market and innovative early stage Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises.

Across the EU, Business and Innovation Centres support first time and early stage innovative enterprise. This is delivered through the development and management of advanced incubation services and facilities, the provision of seed capital and private equity investment funding, entrepreneurship training and mentoring and international collaboration and the piloting of innovative measures for higher potential modern enterprise. As a component of these innovative supports, WESTBIC has partnered with many organisations, both public and private, to develop better product and service offerings to new and early stage innovative companies.

One such example is the Hewlett Packard Micro-enterprise Acceleration Programme site that I am pleased to launch today. This IT-based programme is delivered on behalf of, and in partnership with, Hewlett Packard as part of Hewlett Packard’s philanthropy programme. We have much to thank them for – as employers of over 4,500 people in Ireland in a variety of functions across its core business groups. In fact, just yesterday the Taoiseach announced that Hewlett Packard are expanding their Global Service Desk operation, which will initially result in the creation of 500 highly-skilled support positions over the next 12 months. Here in Galway, Hewlett Packard’s operation has many activities including software development, engineering and marketing. In addition, it is the European, Middle East and African headquarters for software publishing, R&D and support services. In their support for the Micro-Enterprise Acceleration Institute, Hewlett Packard is continuing the further implementation of the Micro-enterprise Acceleration Programme which focuses on training solutions for micro-entrepreneurs.

Globally, WESTBIC were the first delivery organisation to collaborate with Hewlett Packard and indeed the original curriculum was developed here at Galway with WESTBIC inputs. This curriculum is now rolled out through more than 50 partners operating in 15 countries in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

There is a vast network of similar sites throughout the world supported by Hewlett Packard in collaboration with service providers such as WESTBIC. The curricula are regularly updated and improved and here at WESTBIC, in the Galway Technology Centre, the Micro-enterprise Acceleration Programme site is a considerable resource for new and early stage entrepreneurs whereby a seamless process of training, desk incubation, full incubation and eventual graduation is made available.

The facility itself is state-of-the-art in terms of the ICT connectivity and presentation equipment sponsored by Hewlett Packard which is being availed of by entrepreneurship programmes, including the Enterprise Start Programme provided by WESTBIC on behalf of Enterprise Ireland. Other entrepreneurship programmes and outside organisations also avail of the infrastructure already provided by Hewlett Packard. I am pleased to note that the site is now self-sustainable based on the level of usage and its complementarity with other supports in this state-of-the-art incubation site which, itself, is a collaboration between WESTBIC and the Chamber of Commerce.

We need to ensure that the spirit of ‘entrepreneurship’ becomes embedded in the consciousness of our people. In 2007 Ireland ranked 3^rd in the OECD for new-firm entrepreneurs and 2^nd for established-firm entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurship has a critical role in adding to our indigenous enterprise sector, which, together with Foreign Direct Investment, forms the foundation of Ireland’s enterprise base. A thriving entrepreneurial culture has the potential to make a substantial contribution to our economic and social development and to achieving Balanced Regional Growth.

I am delighted, therefore, to officially launch this progressive partnership with Hewlett Packard - an appropriate event to mark WESTBICs 21 years in servicing the innovative Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises market in the Border, Midlands and Western Region.

ENDS/TC362