Entrepreneurship & Business Management

There is no age too young for starting to formulate your own business ideas. The fresh viewpoint that young people bring to the marketplace can lead to innovative and profitable solutions to longstanding problems and inefficiencies. However, setting up your own business requires more than just a great idea, skills such as finance, marketing and communication are also essential. Starting your own company is inevitably a risky business, but the odds are much improved by a good qualification.

Similarly, management is no longer the preserve of older people who have earned their position through many years’ service. Management today is regarded as a viable career aim for young graduates.

Education

ITT Dublin (CAO codes: TA113/TA122), DIT (DT324), IT Carlow (CW908) and NUI Maynooth (MH404) all provide dedicated business management courses. Such programmes represent an excellent springboard to management careers in public or private organisations. The wide array of business modules covered means that graduates can specialise through further study in areas such as human resources, accountancy, marketing, and so on.

Dun Laoghaire IADT offers a degree for students who want to shape their own future in the world of business. The four-year Honours Degree in Business Studies – Entrepreneurship allows students the exciting opportunity to run real life, well-resourced businesses during the course of their studies. 

Several third level institutions provide a degree in Business Studies/Commerce. Besides introducing students to the principles of management, these courses also include various core business modules, e.g. accounts, marketing, communications, business law, entrepreneurship, and human resource management. Whether running your own business or taking up a management position, it is vital that you have a holistic knowledge of all aspects of the organisation’s activities. The comprehensive mix of business modules in a Business Studies/Commerce programme, which often enable students to specialise in management or enterprise, provides this understanding.

FETAC Level 5 Business Studies programmes enable students to learn the practical skills involved in running a company: communications, bookkeeping, marketing, IT skills, etc. Work experience provides the valuable opportunity to apply these skills in a real life business setting. Business Enterprise and Marketing in Dun Laoghaire College of Further Education is a one-year programme dedicated to producing graduates with the required planning, financial and managerial skills required to successfully set up their own small business.

The Work

There are many routes into management positions. Graduates may wish to specialise in a particular area of management (e.g. marketing, financial services) by undertaking a postgraduate programme. Alternatively they may be fortunate enough to land a management traineeship. These positions, usually offered by larger companies, provide paid employment as well as a fast track to challenging and well-paid roles in middle and senior management.

Good management requires a number of attributes: a high level of numeracy, leadership ability, self-confidence and the ability to make tough decisions in difficult circumstances. It is the manager’s duty to ensure that all the various parts of a company (sales, production, etc) are working smoothly together in achieving a single, over riding goal. Communication skills are particularly important as nowadays managers are required to be motivators and approachable, rather than the more dictatorial approach which was favoured in the past.

Those seeking to go own their way by setting up a small business need to be innovative (formulating a new service or product that fills a gap in the market), determined, and ready to work extremely hard to achieve their dreams. Many ‘start-up’ businesses get into difficulties very quickly due to a lack of fundamental business skills such as finance, IT skills and business planning.

Further Resources

 Young Entrepreneur Programme: www.youngentrepreneur.ie
 Enterprise Ireland – government agency responsible for developing and promoting Ireland’s business sector: www.enterprise-ireland.com
 Irish Business and Employers Confederation (IBEC): www.ibec.ie