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Enterprise Development Agencies: The emergence of a Super Task

Growing a business in Ireland

What sort of government support does a fast-growing Irish company with high export potential really want? That was the question that Enterprise Ireland, the government agency charged with supporting such companies, wanted answered. So, we started the process of identifying the tasks that companies with high-growth export potential wanted.

Here's the type of tasks we came up with:

Sample tasks

We went out and got votes from 300 companies of the type Enterprise Ireland needs to support. Here are the results:

Results of Survey

So what's the top task? Grants and funding. Overwhelmingly so. Absolutely so. Grants and funding-type tasks are first, third, fifth, eight and 10th.

And there's certainly a long neck, a small set of tasks that are really important. The top 5% of the tasks get 23% of the vote. They get as much of the vote as the bottom 60%.

Long neck graph

And here's what was in the long tail, the set of tasks not in the long neck:

Unpopular tasks

Out of 3,795 votes cast, not a single one went to "discuss / contribute to Enterprise Ireland's policies". "Annual report for Enterprise Ireland" got six votes out of 3,795.

Growing a business in Norway

We were also asked to answer the same question by Innovation Norway. As we went through the longlisting and shortlisting process, we realized that the same types of tasks were emerging.

Over 900 Norwegian companies voted. Here are the top tasks that emerged (the list that was voted on was obviously in Norwegian, but we've translated it into English here): Norwegian top tasks

And what was by far the top task? Grants and funding. Just like the Irish companies. And there's a definite long neck. As you can see from the chart, the top 5% of the tasks got 23% of the vote; mirroring the Irish trend.

Norwegian long neck

And here's the long tail:

Norwegian unpopular tasks

'Annual report for Innovation Norway' got 22 votes out of the 14,055 cast.

There was a category question in the Norwegian survey that asked companies to list the type of support they had recently received from Innovation Norway. Such support included consulting, networking, marketing and, of course, funding and grants.

Struck by how strong the vote was for funding, Innovation Norway asked to see the difference if companies who had only selected funding were removed from the data. (The category question allowed respondents to select more than one type of support). The resulting top tasks were:

Grants
How to apply for funding
Start-up grants
Financing-how do I proceed

Next, we were asked to remove companies that had selected funding as a type of support they had received from Innovation Norway, even though they had also selected other sources of support. And the top tasks were:

How to apply for funding
Grants
Start-up grants
Financing-how do I proceed

So, the top task of those who hadn't yet received funding from Innovation Norway was how to apply for funding. Funding and grants are not just top tasks; they are super-tasks. They totally dominate, no matter what way you analyze the data.

Embracing task management at Innovation Norway

Once Innovation Norway had identified their top tasks, they began to change the way they worked and how they were organized in order to truly create a task management environment, as the reality is that if people are not responsible for task success, then the model of task management can't work. There follows a table, created by Innovation Norway that summarizes the journey they embarked upon in order to become more task-focused.

Innovation Norway table

There follows a copy of the Innovation Norway homepage before the top task identification project.

1. The top of the page is dominated by an image. A translation of the text within the image reads: "We provide local ideas, global possibilities." This is the vision statement of Innovation Norway.

There now follows the new homepage. (This page is currently in beta.) The top of the page is now dominated by the top tasks of funding and grants.

Funding and Grants page

Find funding and grants
Who qualifies? What can you qualify for?
What you can get? What possibilities do the different grants provide?
How do you apply? Application forms, dates and time schedules.

This new homepage is extremely practical and task-focused. Just what the customer wants.

Growing a business in Scotland

Growing a business in Scotland The Scottish Enterprise request was as follows: "Scottish Enterprise wants to better understand our customers' top tasks when visiting our website so that we can improve the support and services we provide to them." We went through the longlisting and shortlisting process and ended up with a list very similar to the one we had used for Enterprise Ireland and Innovation Norway. However, it was a bit shorter, with 66 tasks. The Enterprise Ireland list had 83 tasks and the Innovation Norway list had 97.

230 Scottish companies voted. Here are the results:

Scottish task results

And what was by far the top task? Grants and funding, of course. There's a long neck. The top 6% of tasks got 23% of the vote. Here's what the long neck looks like:

Scottish Long Neck

And here's what's in the long tail:

Scottish unpopular tasks

So, not too many people are interested in "About Scottish Enterprise". Nor do too many want "organization charts for Scottish Enterprise."

There are tiny tasks, there are top tasks and sometimes there are Super Tasks. Might your website have a Super Task?

Top Tasks Management Solutions

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The Stranger's Long Neck

The above is an excerpt from Gerry McGovern’s latest book, The Stranger’s Long Neck

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