Background

Despite the alarming number of insolvencies, most of the existing advice and coaching schemes mainly offer support for start-ups and leave out already existing enterprises. The major challenge of crisis intervention/prevention is to get in touch with the micro-enterprises that encounter difficulties as early as possible. In Western Europe more than 147.000 insolvencies were counted in 2005. Notably it is small and medium-sized businesses which are most prone to insolvencies. The damage caused as a result of this added up to 37.5 billion € in 2005. Furthermore, 1,5 million workplaces were threatened or eliminated. This is only the proverbial "tip of the iceberg" because many more businesses are abandoned without insolvency. There is not a problem with business failure in general. It is part of the self-healing strengths of every market economy that not-competitive enterprises fail. It has to be seen though, that a firm which is "not competitive" has fundamental weaknesses (e.g. wrong business idea, lacking entrepreneurial spirit of the founder(s)). If enterprises fail due to defaults which could have been easily prevented by giving them a little bit of support, this is definitely not fruitful market allocation but simply inefficient. In this  context we estimate that every second business failure can be blamed on lack of support and guidance. One of the main reasons for the high failure rate of mico enterprises is that entrepreneurs look for assistance when it is already too late or even never. Instruments which provide low-level access to independent, confidential and free advice (anonymous if required) and "bit-by-bit" solutions have the best chance to reach this target group in an early stage of the crisis.