SPRI and Mondragon Corporation will participate in the SME & Cluster Assembly event taking place in Dublin from November 2nd to 4th. This year, for the first time, the SME Assembly and the European Cluster Conference have merged within the European SME Week initiative, becoming the premier and most significant event for European SMEs and Clusters.
As part of the event's agenda, a panel discussion titled 'Language as a Competitive Advantage: How Minority-Language Regions Drive SME Growth' will be held. It is scheduled for Tuesday, November 3rd, at 12:00 PM. Participants will include Jasone Aretxabaleta, coordinator of the Indeus initiative supported by SPRI, and Ander Etxeberria, head of Cooperative Development at Mondragon Corporation, who will analyze the role of the Basque language in business competitiveness.
Also participating in the panel will be Siobhán Ni Ghadhra (President of Údaras na Gaeltachta and founder and executive director of Danú Media), Lenneke Willems (Marketing Manager and Irish language intermediary), and Fionnbarra Bradley (former lecturer at Dublin City University). The session will be moderated by Conall Ó Mórain, an economics journalist and CEO of The Media Group.
The main focus of the panel will be minority languages, with a particular emphasis on Basque and Irish. Often, local languages are considered merely cultural heritage. However, for SMEs in regions like Gaeltacht, Euskadi, or similar European territories, the importance of languages extends further: to achieve customer loyalty and employee retention, to differentiate in the market, or to leverage emerging opportunities in language technology and artificial intelligence.
The realization of an idea conceived within Indeus, the Basque Industry Platform, two to three years ago, has come about through the collaborative efforts of SPRI and the Irish government's agency, Údarás na Gaeltachta. SPRI launched the Indeus initiative 8 years ago to support Basque industrial companies that operate or wish to operate in Basque, by facilitating access to necessary products and services in the language. Currently, over 50 companies are affiliated with the Platform.
Údarás na Gaeltachta is a public government agency responsible for the economic, social, and cultural development of the Gaeltacht regions of Ireland – areas where the Irish language (Gaelic) is spoken. Its primary objective is to ensure that Irish-Gaelic remains the main daily language in these regions and is passed on to future generations.
