Nurturing a sense of Irish entrepreneurship

While discussing the decline of the French economy with British prime minister Tony Blair a few years ago, president George Bush remarked: "The thing that's wrong with the French is that they don't have a word for entrepreneur" - or so the story goes.

Of course, as every francophone knows, the word entrepreneur is derived from the French verb entreprendre (to undertake), and has come to mean someone who starts a business which involves a degree of risk.

While the French have been using the word for centuries, according to Ernst & Young it is only since the introduction of their Entrepreneur of the Year Award programme here in the 1990s that the word actually entered the Irish vocabulary and psyche.

But Ireland has quickly made up ground, and is now a hotbed of enterprise and innovation, ranked as the fifth most entrepreneurial country on earth. Every other week there seems to be an awards ceremony to celebrate yet another outstanding home-grown entrepreneur, from the Shell LiveWire Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award to the JFC Innovation Awards for Rural Business - a new programme targeted at farmers.

Just last week, the David Manley Emerging Entrepreneur Award took place in Dublin Castle, and 27-year-old Conor McCarthy and 28-year-old Mark Duckenfield jetted back from a street festival in Japan to pick up the award and pocket a prize worth €90,000.

A year-and-a-half ago, Mr McCarthy and Mr Duckenfield stopped to watch a troupe of acrobats in the main square of Temple Bar.

Three hours later they were still glued to the spot and the germ of a business plan had been born - to bring a world-class street performance festival to Dublin. The two friends took a leap into the unknown and quit their IT jobs. Last August they unveiled the first ever Street Performance World Championships in Merrion Square.

At first they relied on grants, but soon sponsorship was rolling in, and already hundreds of the world's best street entertainers are queuing up perform at next year's event.

"We started from scratch. Neither of us had an arts background; neither of us has a business background," Mr McCarthy and Mr Duckenfield explained. "We had to learn about marketing, we had to learn about PR, we had to learn all these different things . . . We've learned more in that last year-and-a-half than we did in four years in college - no question."

Would they recommend the stressful life of an entrepreneur to others? "Absolutely."

Presenting them with their award - named after former Dublin Chamber of Commerce president David Manley who was particularly active in advising start-up businesses - Minister for Trade, Enterprise and Employment Micheál Martin praised them highly for making Dublin a more attractive place to live in and visit.

He described small and medium-sized businesses as "the lifeblood of our economy", and said there had been a huge cultural shift in recent times. The stigma once attached to failing in business has been removed, he said, with the result that more people are willing to take a risk.

Enterprise Ireland is an invaluable source of help for "high potential start-ups" in areas such as manufacturing (for example healthcare and medical devices), and internationally traded services like software.

The organisation provides assistance at the conception stage in the form of advice, networks and cash. One key criterion to qualify for this support is that the start-up must have the potential to scale up sufficiently and to export its product or service overseas.

Enterprise Ireland says there has never been a better time to start a business in this country.