Enterprise Connect is the Commonwealth government’s program for fostering regional innovation and productivity enhancement. It operates through a number of focused Centres. The Innovative Regions Centre (IRC) has sought to acquire, adopt and utilize a range of analytical tools, programs and systems to help it achieve its mission of stimulating productive and profitable innovation and entrepreneurship in a variety of challenged regions in Australia. A fundamental capacity required by CIR is the ability to diagnose how community and regional factors are likely to impact on any innovation or entrepreneurial policy initiative proposed for a region. After examining a number of potential methodologies and approaches, IRC determined that the leading-edge, research-based system most appropriate to the regional diagnostic task is the framework proposed in the paper: Hindle, K., 2010. Hindle, Kevin 2010. How community context affects entrepreneurial process: a diagnostic framework. Entrepreneurship and Regional Development, 22(7): 599-647.
MENTREG consultants worked with IRC field operatives and advisers to develop and adapt this conceptual framework into the practical diagnostic system now employed by its field officers to determine the ‘fit’ of a proposed entrepreneurial project with the capacities, culture and aspirations of particular regions and communities.
