The long road from one-size-fits-all SME promotion to bespoke business start-ups

This paper reports and reflects on the results of an evaluation of the contribution to local and regional development of the EDP Sustainable Entrepreneurship Award, as applied in the Tua Valley (North East Interior of Portugal). Using semi-structured interview schedules, data was collected from young participants in the programme – both those who had gone on to set up their own businesses and those who had opted not to proceed with their business plan. Municipal support staff – the institutional partners most closely involved in the programme – were also interviewed. Content analysis of interview transcripts suggests that the implementation of the programme delivered greater awareness of self-employment opportunities both to young people and to support staff, which in turn helped to develop local entrepreneurial potential and, ultimately, foster the emergence of sustainable new firms. Thus the programme set in motion a significant process of entrepreneurship and innovation in what is a relatively peripheral territory. Improvements to the monitoring of programme performance will allow new learning processes to evolve so that shifts in the dynamics of the programme’s stakeholder network can be more quickly reflected in operational terms, delivering greater capacity to stimulate business start-ups whose sustainability is based on policy initiatives that are ‘made-to-measure’ with respect to local conditions, extra-local opportunities and global challenges.