Page 144 - guidance-supporting-europe-s-aspiring-entrepreneurs-policy-and-practice-to-harness-future-potential

Guidance supporting Europe’s aspiring entrepreneurs
Policy and practice to harness future potential

Communication between individuals and groups with similar experiences will help
new business owners to overcome their problems. They can share information on
what they have learned from their own experiences, for example in terms of
mistakes they have made and how they overcame them. Seeing how others have
succeeded in setting up and running a business can also be inspiring and provide
the motivation to users to progress their plans.
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The If we can, you can web portal ( ) allows users to see what their peers
are doing and thus compare their own experiences with those of their peers
and/or develop ideas for their own business. The portal includes a blog where
information is regularly updated with news of the members of the portal.

5.2.5. Training
Training courses on entrepreneurship are usually non-formal and aimed at an
adult audience, usually those with strong intention or aspiration to set up their
own business. Such courses typically cover business development (searching for
business opportunities, planning, decision-making) and management (financial
management, sales, managing people) skills but can also address other
‘enterprising’ skills, such as self-assessment and awareness, communication and
seeking advice from others (White and Kenyon, 2001).

5.3. TV/media and awareness-raising campaigns

There are a number of channels through which key messages on
entrepreneurship can be disseminated. Using different media, such as television
and radio, provides the opportunity to reach a large audience, to raise the profile
of entrepreneurship across Europe and to raise awareness of it as a viable
career path. Awareness-raising methods can (European Commission, 2007):
• raise a broader awareness and increase people’s interest in entrepreneurship.
Programmes can get people who have never thought of self-employment to
consider it as an option;
• improve the image of entrepreneurship (in terms of the risks associated with
being self-employed) and the image of entrepreneurs;
• convey ideas about what entrepreneurial life is like, the problems and
solutions, benefits and risks;

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( ) Available from Internet: http://www.ifwecanyoucan.co.uk/ [cited 20.9.2010].

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