NENSI: The Irish and European SME Incubation Project

NENSI, is a European Union project that aims to develop business support for young/starting entrepreneurs, and improving the quality and accessibility of these services, in order to increase their chance of long-term business success.

This is being be done by comparing best practice in enterprise support in the seven participating countries. The acronym stands for North European Network for Service Incubators and the organisation is funded by the Interreg IIIB programme. NENSI is partnered by academic or development bodies throughout north west Europe. Dublin City Enterprise Board is the Irish partner. NENSI represents smaller and/or peripheral cities and regions and is designed to bring about a more geographically balanced development across the North West Europe area . The NENSI project stimulates the regional spatial-socio-economical development by creating not only more, but also more viable SME’s. The business system, of the NENSI network of enterprise support organizations, is based on a validated, scientific concept developed by the University of Twente in Holland. This concept has identified four main factors in the successful development of SME’s as being Strategic, Economic, Social and Cultural/Human capital. Among the business supports to be examined for best practice are: Premises and logistic support Initial diagnosis Business plan support Mentoring/coaching Training (Test) use equipment 1st-line generic support External professional consultancy Access to seed and venture capital Support budget. The first NENSI project started on November 1st 2002 (including preparation period) and continued until March 1st 2006. Its follow-up (NENSI -2) started on March 1st 2006 and will continue until June 1st 2008.

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