PROBLEM DISCUSSION: Vaggeryd is a small municipality Småland. In addition to its

strategic position along the main traffic route E4, Vaggeryd is very interesting also because

of its advanced view on growing of the business sector, in both short and long-term per-

spective.

To meet that goal the municipality of Vaggeryd started to invest in “Egenföretagareutbildningen”

EFU in cooperation with Jönköping International Business School (JIBS). The

main idea is that students attend the courses that are held by JIBS and during their studies start their own business in a local business incubator called Fenix.

PURPOSE: To host such education requires a huge amount of energy and resources from

the municipality, which consequently would like to get answers to questions like “Is it worth investing in the education?” or “What are the results of such education?”

The aim of this paper is to give the answers to those crucial questions though I believe that

the time that has passed from the beginning of the education is too short and that the

number of the students was not large enough to get definitive answers.

This paper concentrates on a narrow part of the qualitative research methods – an inter-

view. It is divided into two parts, a theoretical part and the empirical findings.

FINDINGS: The research showed that six students out of a total of ten from generation 2005 started a new venture, three will take over a family business, and one has not decided

to start a business yet. Of six students in generation 2003 four have started a business and one of them finished in bankruptcy, one plans to start a business in the future and one does not have a good business idea.

RECOMMENDATIONS: Answers that the interviews returned gave interesting sugges-

tions to both the municipality of Vaggeryd and JIBS about how to improve EFU. I would

emphasise two, I believe, the most important recommendations. First municipality has to

attract neighbouring municipalities in the EFU project. In addition, a greater effort should be made to help students build a spider’s web of business contacts.