Young engineers understand technology very well, but they usually have poor skills on business practices. For this reason, they should appreciate tools that help in assessing small companies from a combined viewpoint of business and technology. In this article we present such a tool in the form of a model that helps to understand how an enterprise is using information and communication technologies (ICTs) and “how” and “when” a company should incorporate new technological elements. The model can also be applied to marketing research to understand the small and medium enterprises (SMEs) emergent market related to ICTs and to plan government policies devoted to fostering ICT introduction in SMEs. The model has been applied successfully in the assessment of 500 SMEs, and also as an innovative active learning tool for higher education.
It is widely accepted that both “innovation in-house” and “innovative small and medium enterprises (SMEs) cooperation” require for SMEs to use information and communication technologies (ICTs). Moreover, ICT expenditures are productivity improvement drivers by themselves (Lapierre and Denier, 2005; Falk, 2005).
That is, the use of ICTs can be considered as key factors for innovation and entrepreneurship. ICTs are a must for SMEs to innovate.
In fact, a look over the fifth edition of the European innovation scoreboard (EIS) reveals that there is a big innovation gap between Europe and the US that is not closing (Trendchart Report, 2006). The EIS includes innovation indicators and trend analyses for all 25 European Union (EU) Member States, as well as for Bulgaria, Romania, Turkey, Iceland, Norway, Switzerland, the United States and Japan. It assesses five key dimensions of innovation: innovation drivers, knowledge creation, innovation and entrepreneurship, applications, and intellectual property.
The innovation and entrepreneurship dimension of innovation is supported by six indicators, which are mainly related to the innovation performance of SMEs.
Let us pay attention to three of the six indicators from the innovation and entrepreneurship dimension, which are (Trendchart Report, 2006):
•
SMEs innovating in-house: This indicator measures the degree to which SMEs that have introduced any new or significantly improved products or production processes during the period have innovated in-house.
•
Innovative SMEs cooperating with others: This indicator measures the degree to which SMEs are involved in innovation co-operation. Complex innovations, in particular in ICT, often depend on the ability to draw on diverse sources of information and knowledge, or collaborate on the development of an innovation. This indicator measures the flow of knowledge between public research institutions and firms as well as between firms and other firms.
•
ICT expenditures: ICT is a fundamental feature of knowledge-based economies and the driver of current and future productivity improvements. An indicator of ICT investment is crucial in capturing innovation in knowledge-based economies, in particular due to the diffusion of new information technology (IT) equipment, services and software.
Besides, there is a need to foster young engineer's abilities and education towards technology-based and market-based innovations, mainly through the development of entrepreneur profiles or through the mentoring of young entrepreneurs. All the same, the entrepreneurship objective should also be extended to small organizations that need some help to foster their innovation abilities.
For this reason a good solution to innovation and entrepreneurship fostering could be to instill into the minds of young ICT engineers the idea of being the professionals that assist small enterprises on their way to innovation and competitiveness based on IT. Furthermore, these young professionals should be provided with a valuable tool (tricks, if you prefer) for the rapid assessment of the needs of SMEs. That way, both objectives could be achieved: the entrepreneurial character of young engineers would be developed, and also small enterprises could find in such professionals the support they need to improve their use of ITs for their sustainable and competitive growing.
Why is that consultancy field suitable for young engineers? The information and communication systems for the SME emergent market cannot be easily afforded (at least directly) by large IT providers or telecommunication operators. The reason is that the offer from large operators or providers is quite packetized, so personalization or configuration is only possible at a pure technical level, but not at a business level. There are so many business models, industries, company sizes, company structures or client typologies that off-the-shelf ICT business solutions need necessarily be adapted by a consultant. The question to be addressed is which types of ICTs should be used and how to introduce them in each specific SME. The model proposed in this article is an approximation to the answer.
The tables included in this article, which define the model, were constructed from the authors’ experience in the introduction of Information Society in small and medium enterprises (SMEs) since 1995. Furthermore, the contents of the model were reviewed by a set of experts in SMEs and information and communication technologies (ICTs) from the telecom industry.
Nevertheless, the contents of the tables should only be taken as the basis for constructing your own model. That is, you should consider the model not only as a tool to apply directly to your client assessment and further advising, but also as methodology for constructing your own vision.
In fact, we have changed the model ourselves to adapt it to other consultancy environments in which the standpoints were different. It worked well. With very little mind effort we reached successful results. Some of our ex-students are also using this way of thinking about their client's business and they have received very good feedback. Nevertheless, the model can be considered as a think tank.
It is true that SMEs have different characteristics since the nature of work varies with industry, and so it could be thought that someone without business administration knowledge cannot benefit from the model proposed in this paper. Nevertheless, the consultancy works of 210 last year's students, who applied the model to 210 real small enterprises, show that young telecommunication engineers can.
Putting an SME in the way to Information Society or in the way to making the best ICT investment in terms of economic return through company benefits is more of an art than engineering. Of course the ICT consultant, as the artist, must master the colors but, no doubt, the final picture is a result of a deep comprehension of the landscape plus a ninety percent of technical skills… and a ten percent of inspiration. The only aim of the present article is to show you how to comprehend landscapes at a first glance; the rest is up to you. You can do it yourself.
