I met up with Finbarr Bradley for lunch on Thursday in Metro Cafe. Finbarr is now a professor in the Dept. of Economics in Maynooth, and has a couple of new degree courses coming on-stream.

Finbarr told me a little about his plans for his new course, ‘Venture Management’. Finbarr believes the role of entrepreneurs is to build value, and he believes the same entrereneurial knowledge are needed in the public and voluntary sectors as much as they are in the private sector.

He is very interested in the area of public-private partnerships, where the government works with companies to provide public services. He is bringing a new graduate course on-stream, the Masters in Project Finance and Venture Management (Public, Private and Community/Voluntary Enterprise) on-stream early next year. (See PDF brochure.)

The challenge with running a business degree is how to bring the subject alive in the classroom. It is an exciting subject, but it can seem pretty boring when you read about it in a textbook. Part of Finbarr’s appraoch is to bring his new students to see traditional markets in action at venues like cattle marts and street markets.

Another interesting aspect of Finbarr’s work is building relationships with industry. Located in Maynooth, Finbarr is right in the middle of a lot of industrial development, with many major multinationals within a short drive of the campus.