STS Family Business Project

Success Through Succession

Dundalk Institute of Technology, in collaboration with the University of Ulster and Glasgow Caledonian University, is involved in a major project aimed at assisting family owned and family related SMEs to manage the challenges of succession and to increase innovation growth and competitiveness using s series of interventions. The project will be delivered across the three regions of Northern Ireland, the six southern Border Region of Ireland and Western Scotland.

The project aims to strategically assist family owned and family related SMEs across the three regions to manage the challenges of succession and to increase innovation, growth and competitiveness using a series of interventions. The Interventions will be made available online to other family owned businesses, therefore enhancing the capabilities of other SMEs throughout the region. The project will increase the survival rate and growth potential in family owned SMEs across the eligible area.

The project aims to address and overcome these challenges of succession by providing changes in organisational structure, people and processes and through this promote a culture of organisational change and innovation throughout all levels of the business.

Key Project objectives are:

To establish regional succession planning hubs providing cross border expertise training, and in-house mentoring to support newly formed governance structures for the family and the business;
To contribute to a dynamic economy through the development of innovative approaches to ownership/management in family owned SMEs;
To build capacity within the regional SME sector to increase, enhance and sustain regional economic development;
To ensure the sustainability of the project by utilising the participant companies as future ambassadors to encourage other family business owners across the regions to adopt a proactive approach to succession planning incorporating innovation, change and growth as part of their company strategy
To create a wide range of additional entrepreneurial firms as an option for future ownership where family business owners have failed to identify a successor e.g. management buy outs, social enterprises or family business investment groups;
To address skills deficits and provide SME owner/managers and their teams with the knowledge and skills to effectively address succession challenges;
To increase capacity to absorb external knowledge within participant organisations;
To increase uptake in knowledge transfer activities e.g. via research centres and third level higher education institutions.

The project is a three-year programme. The total project funding is €1.74m from the EU INTERREG IVA Programme with match funding contribution from the accountable departments in Northern Ireland and Ireland and Scottish Enterprise Ayshire, Scottish Enterprise Dumfries and Galloway and Cooperative Development Scotland.