Thank you very much for today. I am humbled to receive the Kerttu Saalasti Award for 2025. This award means a great to me, especially as it celebrates micro entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial culture. I had the privilege of being raised by entrepreneurs in rural Ireland and have dedicated my academic career to supporting micro and small enterprise development, and in enticing students to consider the entrepreneurial path within their studies and following graduation.
I believe micro entrepreneurship is the backbone of our rural and urban communities, supporting local innovation and offering both economic and social support in the communities they serve and live in. Accounting for circa 95% of all organisations, micro enterprises (those with less than 10 employees) represent the vast majority of businesses in Finland. This is a very similar landscape in Ireland, where 92.6% of all organisations are micro enterprises.
Government investment in micro-enterprise owner/business development and research is minuscule when compared to the contribution these individuals and organisations make to our respective economies. This is particularly true of micro-enterprises that are not focused on growth. Yet, their social and economic contribution and impact warrants greater attention, and impact criteria should be widened by those who offer research funding to ensure these socio- economic contributions are more transparently supported.
My fellow researchers and I feel that micro-entrepreneurs warrant dedicated research-led support and insight, separate to that of larger organisations. These entrepreneurs have capacity to make a significant difference in their communities. However, generic training & development interventions offer little benefit to these individuals as they navigate unique challenges and opportunities affiliate to their business size, and capacity to influence market dynamics. Failure rates of micro-enterprises remain unnecessarily high in both countries (Finland and Ireland) and I believe a holistic, co-created development system, underpinned by research, best serves this community of entrepreneurs.
Key areas that warrant greater insight through micro-enterprise research include, business innovation, the evolution and impact of capability development, assessing digital impact and transformation in a micro-enterprise environment, longitudinal tracking of female entrepreneurs and innovators in the rural and urban context, in-person and online network dynamics, power and cooperation dynamics, the role of emotions in business relationships.
I believe in working closely with students, researchers, colleagues, micro entrepreneurs and government and community stakeholders in developing in- action research projects that have tangible practical and theoretical contributions in pursuit of these goals. For example, research-informed living labs and action research interventions can help enhance capabilities and promote sustainable development in these enterprises.
Our research centre, BRIM-RIKON seeks to support this ethos, with co-created research studies. Research links between Finnish and Irish enterprise and entrepreneurship researchers are long-standing, and include comparative studies on entrepreneurship policy and network capabilities, as well as case studies focused on developing dynamic capabilities within micro enterprises and among their owners, including relationship management insights.
As an applied researcher, it has been my immense pleasure to work with colleagues in Finland in developing innovative research and development programmes, co-created with micro enterprise owners.
Our most recent research is with Prof Jaana Tähtinen, a Finnish relationship management specialist. We studied small firm B2B relationships, and how emotions affect recovery of relationships that are in trouble. As many of you know, micro-enterprises face challenges around power and control in their business relationships due to their relatively small size when compared to that of suppliers and customers. This power imbalance can create situations where they feel they need to suppress their true feelings about a relationship, or that the relationship is ‘too important to fail’. This study maps these emotional journeys through the micro owners’ lens, offering practical and theoretical insight into how to manage micro-enterprise relationships. Our paper is under final review.
These findings echo the words of Kerrtu Saalasti, “there is nothing in the world that moves forward without strong emotion and will power”.
Thank you again for this great honour, I am hugely appreciative of this award.
As researchers, I encourage us all to stay curious… curiosity is the bedrock of progress.
Kiitos.
Author: Felicity Kelliher, PhD, Professor of Management Practice, South East Technological University
Photo: Minna Kilpeläinen
In Kerttu Saalasti Institute's blog we write about the topics of the Institute's research groups, micro entrepreneurship education and the Institute's general topics. The authors are researchers, experts and members of networks.
Our topics are: micro entrenepreneurship, future manufacturing technologies, regional excellence, micro entrepreneurship education