Projects

Recent Projects - Touchstone (Measure of Success)

Download a copy of an edited version of the Measures of Success report (pdf version) here.

The European Social Fund funded us to explore how women in business define success themselves. When government bodies assign funding to business support programmes they want to know that successful businesses have been set up as a result. This means that businesses who have been assisted are often assessed according to the turnover of their comapny , or on how many jobs they may have created.

Having worked with many women starting their own companies we thought that profit and job creation weren't really the main factors which were important to them. So we asked more than 30 business to tell us what they thought.

They told us some suprising things, such as that work / life balance and creative satisfaction are as important as increasing their income. We will build on these results with our new project and come up with some alternative ways of assessing success, based on what businesswomen think themselves.

Tara

We created online support groups that were connected through a free internet telephone system (Voice Over Internet Protocol or VOIP) and an internet messenger service.

This was an innovative project that enabled businesses at the pre-start stage to team up with like-minded people, get support and exchange information.  We selected 15 businesses who received full training in VOIP (you may know this as Skype), and cutting-edge hardware worth over £50 for free, and free installation of any hardware / software.