The project

In Greek mythology, Pandora's Box is the box carried by Pandora that contained all the evils of mankind — greed, vanity, slander, lies, envy, pining — and hope.
After Prometheus' theft of the secret of fire, Zeus ordered Hephaestus to create the woman Pandora as part of the punishment for mankind. Pandora had been given a jar and instructed by Zeus to keep it closed, but she had also been given the gift of curiosity, and ultimately opened it. When she did, all of the evils of mankind escaped from the jar, although Pandora was quick enough to close it again and keep one value inside, and that was Hope.

As the undisclosed risks of organisations and enterprises might be considered as threatening as the evils of the box of Pandora, risk management could be the ultimate tool to prevent the risks getting out of the box putting the companies in hazardous situations.

When promoting entrepreneurship we should be aware that entrepreneurship implicates to a very large extend the willingness to accept uncertainties. In fact, entrepreneurship thrives on uncertainty. In other words: entrepreneurship is about chances and risks.  Entrepreneurs tend to regard a risk as an unplanned occurrence with negative consequences. Risks are related to ‘bad luck’. But the identification of possible risks and their consequences, offers us the possibility to exclude them, or at least, to reduce their negative impact. Dealing with risks requires an attitude of ‘being prepared’.

Nowadays in modern society companies and organizations have to deal with risks which are getting much more complicate and thorough then before. Due to their small size, Small to Medium Enterprises in Friesland (SMEs) can not afford the consequences of any kind of risk. Therefore the application of an effective risk management system is necessary within SMEs. Most often the use of those systems isn’t well enough applied within SMEs, and if they are, they’re sometimes not being used in an effective way.
To find companies who probably have to deal with risks the most, the project aimed to find these companies in several sectors: Agri-Food, Life Sciences and the Small Metal Industry.

To create a training programme, based on the results of the research, we can help Frisian companies and organizations to implement an effective risk management system.

The objectives of the training program
Our goals are focussing on a change in attitude toward risk assessment as well as to facilitate SMEs in dealing with risk assessment in a responsible and affordable way. They can best be described as:
-           to increase risk awareness and make risk assessment a common practice within SMEs.
-           to assist SMEs in making risk assessment a common practice within their organisation.