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The Nucleus Approach

Introduction

Nucleus and SME statistics

Statements of chambers and SMEs

Impact: What changed? Interview with Jordi Castan

Sustainability

Legal property of the Nucleus Approach

Nucleus

Definition

Types of Nuclei

Manual for the Nucleus

The start

9 criteria for the selection of a sector

How to kill a Nucleus

Chambers and Associations

Lobby and Public Private Dialogue

Benchmarking of chambers

5.         Implementing the Nucleus Approach

The following factors are relevant with regard to implementing the Nucleus Approach:

• Chambers are not open to organisational development. They have up to 150 years old traditions and its representatives are self confident as local elite. They often know only the prevailing paradigm of a “business club”. A chamber as a professionally managed lobby and service institution is not imaginable and thinkable[1]. When a technical cooperation project confronts them with the demand to change in the scope of a project planning process they – openly or disguised – will turn away. 
  This is different with Nuclei. It is relatively easy to mobilize chambers in their favour – without that the entrepreneurs becoming aware that with Nuclei seeds are sown to start of organizational change processes. Therefore, it is neither necessary nor advisable to illustrate the need for change to chambers. The changes come about automatically after the introduction of the Nucleus Approach, which offer many possibilities for interventions.

• In few developing countries it is possible to identify counsellors who are both well qualified and as well financially affordable by chambers. However, when beginning to implement the Nucleus Approach, “low level” business counsellors do well as long as they have a strong personality as well as social intelligence and are willing to learn. They may be trained to moderate working groups within the frame of a workshop lasting only a few days and a consecutive on-the-job coaching. With this, they wield very fast an instrument that allows them to survive in the Nucleus and to prove themselves to the entrepreneurs. They have to acquire the relevant professional know-how over time.

• Any approach to promoting chambers achieves sustainable impact only if it is designed in a way that allows the chamber and the entrepreneurs to finance the developed services themselves some day. This holds true for the Nucleus Approach. It is a universally applicable – unwritten – rule that some 100 to 200 membership fees are required in order to cover the costs of a counsellor. Experience shows that a good Nucleus counsellor can manage up to 10 Nuclei (less than 10 if he / she in addition provides counselling to individual entrepreneurs) with 12 to 30 members each, i.e. some 120 to 300 entrepreneurs.

• The Nucleus Approachis not directed towards a single chamber but to groups of them, at least three or better more. An essential, speeding up element in the approach is the networking between the chambers and the Nuclei as well as a continuous benchmarking among them. It shall become a norm for chambers to maintain Nuclei and for SMEs to engage themselves in Nuclei. Should other chambers, due to dissemination activities, gain an interest in the Nucleus Approach – possibly even at national level, chances increase that project interventions will have a sustainable impact[2] even after external support has been phased out.

• Working simultaneously with several chambers allows the project staff to align the intensity of their interventions to the absorption capacity of the individual chamber. In other words, the project staff can work with very small and weak chambers which are little differentiated and until now possibly relied on honorary staff only, but at the same time it can work with larger ones which command more differentiated organisational structures.

6.        Impact of the Nucleus Approach

Impact analyses in Brazil, Uruguay and Sri Lanka[1] repeatedly show:

• The mutual perception of Nucleus entrepreneurs shifts considerably from “competitor” and “enemy“ to ”professional colleague“ and ”personal friend“ since participation in a Nucleus – a climatic improvement and therefore an advantage in the location.

• Chambers are increasingly regarded as organisations open to SMEs, efficient service providers and lobbying organizations.

• The chambers become more member-oriented and more efficient in their organisation. They increase the membership considerably after the introduction of the Nucleus Approach, as the example of Sri Lanka shows:

In reference to the membership of the individual chambers when they started to implement the Nucleus Approach the number of entrepreneurs reached by the chambers increased by 250%. The permanently increasing white and black parts of the columns show the Nucleus member development whereas the more or less stagnating grey parts show the chamber members who are not Nucleus members.

• The entrepreneurs introduce many changes to their enterprises and subjectively perceive their enterprises as having improved after the introduction of the Nucleus Approach. The entrepreneurs are more courageous and optimistic regarding their own enterprise, even though their environment may be deemed
  rather pessimistic.
   

• Under the umbrella of their chamber, Nuclei can, with lobbying activities, successfully influence their environment, which includes private as well as public institutions.

The biggest surprise for SMEs is that the development of their enterprises does not require finances – grants or loans – nor machinery to start with but ideas, know-how, organisation and leadership.

This shows that the Nucleus Approach with its assumptions, regarding entrepreneurs and chambers, its logic, organisation and impact is taking a hold.