Entrepreneurship in Northern Ireland

The most interesting topic to arise out of the visit of EC President Manuel Barroso to the incoming First and Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland was his undertaking that a study would be carried out into ways to encourage entrepreneurship.

According to Wikipedia it was the Irish born economist, Richard Cantillion, that first defined an entrepreneur. So in some ways this island already has a head start in understanding entrepreneurship. The Wikipedia definition goes on to define an entrepreneur as an individual who undertakes and operates a new enterprise and assumes some accountability for the inherent risks. Business entrepreneurs are willing to accept a high level of personal, professional or financial risk to pursue that opportunity.

If anything Northern Ireland has certainly created a breed of individual who recognise an opportunity and assume the risks associated with pursuing this enterprise. The Organised Crime Task Force (OCTF) estimates that intellectual property theft in NI is worth £200 million, and that fuel (and other cross border) smuggling is worth £245 million in lost revenue. Add to that some NI farmers ability to be creative in the claiming of headage payments for sheep and I think it is fair to say that we have a strong entrepreneurial culture, its just some of it is very poorly directed.

The success of companies like Norbrook, under the direction of Edward Haughey and the Quinn Group ,with Sean Quinn at the helm, prove that Northern Ireland is capable of producing entrepreneurs that can compete with the best the global marketplace can offer.

If it is generally accepted that real entrepreneurship can not be taught what can be done to encourage the risk takers in business to thrive and prosper in NI? Personally I think any study would need to focus on the role of Invest NI and its culture for developing entrepreneurial spirit within the business community. Is Invest NI prepared to match the risk that the start up business might be taking? At times I find that, due to public accountability, that Government departments tend to operate like banks in the way they decide on the allocation of monies. For local businesses, unless you can gold plate a return on the money invested, it is very hard to get support from Invest NI. Rather than being guided by consultants and educators the guidance should be coming from successful business people who have started up an enterprise and made a success of it. Of course public money needs to be accounted for and not spent foolishly, as otherwise the tab is picked up by the taxpayer, but a balance might need to be struck.

While reality TV can not always be taken as a guide to real life it was evident from watching BBC's Dragon's Den that successful business people, while of course looking mostly for a track record in business from potential candidates, were sometimes prepared to take a risk on a project, despite it being risky, as they believed that could recognise a drive, an ambition in the individual to make it work. While on a business plan the project was full of risk they were prepared to invest in the individual. You would have to wonder in a climate of public accountability if there exists in bodies like Invest NI the ability to take a high risk chance on an individual - there might be some failures, but one success could give you a Sean Quinn or Edward Haughey whose contribution to the NI economy would outweigh other failures.