Business world profits from exports of expertise

NESTLED in the leafy campus of Stirling University, there is a

remarkable unit better known abroad than at home. The Women's Enterprise

Unit in the Scottish Enterprise Foundation has one foot in academia and

the other firmly in the business world.

Its expertise is in teaching women to set up businesses. And this it

has done from Ireland to India, from Shetland to Spain, from Slovenia to

Sri Lanka.

Try to catch Christina Hartshorn, the founder and director of the

unit, and the result is a consultation with a diary which will have

entries like -- Gdansk, Tuesday; Warsaw, Wednesday; East Kilbride,

Thursday.

Having tracked her to her desk -- in a cool, narrow, tidy office in a

back-to-front building -- she leaves a visitor in no doubt that her

mission is working with women for their betterment.

''We don't live in an ivory tower,'' said the delightfully frank

woman. ''We are doing something to enable women to set up in business.

We move it on.''

The unit does that by teaching women self-confidence as well as

business methods. Said Christina: ''Women are naturally enterprising.

They often make something out of nothing.''

She saw that and experienced that for herself when she lived and

worked in Abu Dhabi and set up several small businesses there.

On her return to the UK Christina went back to teaching careers

guidance. Here she saw many well-qualified women who had taken time out

to raise their children and wanted to return to paid work.

''They wanted self-fulfilment as well as an economic return for their

work,'' said Christina, who was by this time a single parent living in

Edinburgh. ''Many of them wanted to work for themselves and were looking

for suitable training. But what was on offer then, in the early 1980s,

was delivered from the male experience of work. There was an assumption

that people had managerial or engineering experience, were working

full-time, and wanted to start manufacturing. Women also hesitated to

put forward their own business ideas.''

With this awareness of women's business start-up needs not being

addressed, she applied for the job at Stirling University as women's

enterprise officer.

''It was the perfect job for me,'' recalled Christina. ''If I could

have written an ideal job description for me, that would have been it.''

This entailed her taking her masters degree in enterprise studies.

''That was hard-going, working full-time and being a mother. Without my

mum and dad I couldn't have done it.''

Once in post at the end of 1986, she had to start from scratch.

''I wrote a business plan for the Women's Enterprise Unit. The courses

offered straddled accountancy, business practice, manufacturing, and the

rest. They were designed to encourage more women in Scotland to set up

in business and to enable those in business to develop through

training.''

Even today the business birthrate in Scotland is low.

Scottish Enterprise, in its strategy for Scotland, launched in 1993,

said the business birthrate had to be increased. Chief executive

Crawford Beveridge said then that it was working closely with local

enterprise companies ''headed by businessmen'' to make it happen.

Recently Scottish Enterprise's director of business development,

Russel Griggs, admitted: ''Our original research has highlighted that

women are an under-represented group among successful entrepreneurs. So

we are focusing attention on them.''

He points out that some of the best-known entrepreneurs are women and

are excellent role models.

''The Women's Enterprise Unit at Stirling is a prime example of the

kind of initiative we at Scottish Enterprise want to see as part of the

campaign to create new businesses in Scotland.''

According to Lanarkshire Development Agency, only 20% of business

owners in Scotland are women compared with 25% in the UK as a whole. It

has launched a programme in conjunction with the Scottish Enterprise

Foundation and Euroventure Consultants to encourage more women to set up

business in Lanarkshire.

Christina is delighted with such breakthroughs in Scotland.

''Men have knowledge and power. Women don't. How can you make a choice

if you don't know what the choices are?'' This has been the cri de coeur

of the Women's Enterprise Unit since it started.

That cry has been heard, and answered, around the world in advance of

the echo being taken up at home.

Women in India are already reaping the benefit of the unit's training

in Bombay. Linking with the Narsee Monjee Institute of Management

Studies and backed by the Overseas Development Agency through the

British Council, the unit is providing four training programmes over two

years. More than 160 women applied for the first 35 places.

Aimed to establish middle-income women in their own businesses, the

programmes are already helping the Indian economy because the successful

entrepreneurs are employing other people and generating income, even

from overseas.

Now Christina is looking for businesswomen in Scotland to link with

some of the Indian entrepreneurs who are looking for business pen pals.

As New Opportunities for Women courses were developed by Christina's

unit, they were recognised as valuable in other countries and requests

for the expertise then came from Sardinia, Italy, and Ireland, among

other places.

The Women's Enterprise Unit also provides a raft of support materials,

aimed at women, for trainers. A European training manual for business

growth for women is about to be produced and UK guidelines for women

starting a business are being translated into Italian. It is no

coincidence that along the corridor from Christina's office in Stirling

resides Dr Pat Richardson, the UK Coordinator for the European Women's

Local Employment Initiative. Pat is deputy director of the Scottish

Enterprise Foundation and has a serious commitment to the Women's

Enterprise Unit.

Said Pat: ''We start where people are at. We try to get them to

develop themselves first then put a business plan together. The most

important aspect is the personal development. For women, we make the

training relevant to their needs. Because of gender, men and women have

different needs. Those needs have to be recognised and addressed. Just

as the needs arising from differences in age, race, geography, and

culture have to be taken into account.''

Pat and Christina have trained trainers in Barcelona, Bologna, Sri

Lanka, and Jordan. And it came from small beginnings.

After winning the UK Fellowship of the German Marshall Foundation in

1987, Christina studied business provision for women in the United

States. That experience was applied by the unit to create women's

business start-up courses in Scotland. These, along with the first UK

programme for women business advisers, first brought the unit to the

notice of the rest of the world. The unit was held up as an example of

pioneering, good practice when the European Vocational Training

Programme was launched in 1988.

The following year the innovative unit sent a double decker bus round

Scotland with a women's enterprise roadshow. It showed women what was

available by way of training and development on a personal and a

business level. Thoughtfully, it even had a pram park.

The idea was such a success that it was adapted by the Department of

Employment for use in England and is currently the basis of an outreach

programme by the Department of Trade and Industry to keep local

businesses up to date with health, export and other regulations.

The unit continues to export its expertise. Negotiations are under way

with Gdansk Training Managers' Foundation, the top business school in

Poland, which recognises it is doing nothing for women at the moment.

When Christina returned from Poland and Pat had recovered from a trip to

India and was preparing for another to South Africa, they presented a

paper on business start-ups for women at a highly successful

International Entrepreneurship Education and Training Conference held

this summer. It had the most exotic location they have yet encountered

-- Stirling University.