Page 25 - 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

‘business incubators’ help migrants who are already entrepreneurs to expand
their business and bring it into the mainstream successfully.

Challenges involved with the delivery of career management skills
Funding, finding skilled mentors and longitudinal research evidence are key
challenges that limit the expansion of mentoring opportunities.
The cost of guidance and advice offered by entrepreneurial mentors is a
complex matter. Mentoring schemes differ in that mentors can be paid or they
can offer their services free of charge. Some findings suggest that mentee
commitment is better guaranteed when paying a fee for this type of service (a
practice used often in the UK and Ireland) whereas others (especially the Nordic
countries) advocate mentoring based on voluntary support. It is important to tap
into the potential offered by business experts (on a voluntary basis or for a small
fee), especially given that large numbers of successful entrepreneurs will be
retiring over the next 10 years. Quality research evidence that demonstrates that
mentoring represents value for money is also needed to communicate the long
term value and impact of this type of activity. While all parties involved in
mentoring initiatives are convinced that they are good value for money, it takes
time and thorough research to demonstrate the longer-term ‘effects’ in monetary
terms.
Online support brings potential disadvantages, rarely offering a substitute for
face-to-face interaction, especially if the guidance needs of an individual are
complex. Online tools cannot provide the same depth of enquiry as face-to-face
interventions. As such, online business guidance and support tools should be
seen as complementary to other forms of support, though their role might
continue to grow in the future as young people increasingly operate ‘online’.
Both European and Member State policies increasingly emphasise the
importance of providing targeted and tailored entrepreneurship support and
guidance to women. Courses teaching entrepreneurship skills to women and
internet resources and databases of support services seem to be widely available
in Europe. It seems, however, that the kind of face-to-face, customer-focused
and relational support that women would prefer are rare. Many national agencies
focusing on women entrepreneurs do not necessarily have sufficient
regional/local (‘grass-root’) presence to reach out to women.

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