Tech Fix Friday: Is It Enterprise If The Bake Sale Earns More?
Six Transition Year students at a school in Athlone, County Westmeath, have five weeks left to complete their LCVP enterprise action. Their plan is 'Tech Fix Friday': students bring in broken headphones, phone chargers and slow laptops, and the team cleans, repairs or troubleshoots them for a flat fee of €5. The school has advanced €140 for tools, cleaning fluid and replacement cables; the team estimates 40 customers and €45 of materials, leaving a surplus of about €95. A neighbouring class is running a bake sale for charity that will raise roughly €300 with far less effort. Two team members want to switch, arguing that '€300 beats €95 and it's less hassle before the mocks.' Two of the six have never done any repair work, and the team has not yet tested whether students will actually pay. The teacher has said the class must justify which activity best meets the purpose of the enterprise action, and that a decision has to be made at Thursday's meeting.
1. Using the characteristics of enterprise, explain why Tech Fix Friday can be described as an enterprise activity even though the bake sale raises more money.
Read the worked answer
The surplus is not the test. The process is.
Enterprise is about spotting an opportunity, taking initiative, organising resources, accepting a calculated risk and creating value. Apply each characteristic to the facts:
- Initiative and opportunity spotting: nobody asked these students to notice that classmates have broken headphones and no cheap way to fix them. That is a market insight.
- Organising resources: they costed the job (€140 of tools, €45 of materials), set a price (€5) and forecast demand (40 customers). That is planning under uncertainty.
- Calculated risk: they must buy tools before they know if anyone turns up. If ten customers come, they lose money. The bake sale carries almost none of this - the buns come from home and the customers are guaranteed by parents and teachers.
- Creativity and problem solving: diagnosis and repair are non-routine; each device is a different problem. A bake sale is a format repeated since primary school.
- Value created: a surplus for the enterprise, a free repair service for students, and a reusable tool kit that stays in the school.
Why the bake sale scores lower despite €300: it shows charitable goodwill but almost no evidence of the process the portfolio rewards - no research, no pricing decision, no risk assessment, no evaluation. A correct answer says clearly that both activities contain some enterprise, but the repair clinic demonstrates far more of the characteristics per euro raised.
2. Recommend which activity the team should run. Justify your recommendation using at least three criteria and show the break-even reasoning.
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Recommendation: run Tech Fix Friday, but fix the pricing and prove demand first.
Break-even check. Contribution per job = €5 − (€45 ÷ 40) ≈ €3.87. Break-even = €140 ÷ €3.87 ≈ 36 jobs. Their own forecast is 40, so the margin for error is four customers. That is too thin, and the answer should say so rather than pretend the numbers work.
Criteria:
- Evidence for the portfolio. Research, planning, risk management and evaluation all generate artefacts here. A bake sale generates receipts.
- Risk, and whether it can be capped. Raise the fee to €8 (contribution ≈ €6.87, break-even ≈ 21 jobs) and spend only €70 up front on the most common fixes. Risk is then €70 of school money, not €140.
- Time and capacity. 22 jobs at roughly 45 minutes each is about 17 hours across six weeks - manageable alongside revision. Two inexperienced members need a week of practice on dead devices before opening.
- Sunk cost. Nothing has been spent yet, so switching is still possible - but abandoning completed research wastes the only irreplaceable resource, which is time.
Conditions attached to the recommendation: take bookings on a Google Form in week 1; if fewer than 21 jobs are booked by the end of week 2, scale back to cleaning and cable replacement only; use a signed permission slip with a 'no fix, no fee' policy.
3. Identify the two most serious risks facing this enterprise and explain how the team should manage each.
Read the worked answer
Risk 1: damaging a device and being blamed for it. A phone that will not charge may already have a damaged board; opening it can finish it off. The reputational damage in a school is far worse than the money. Management: a signed permission slip naming the fault and stating that pre-existing damage is not the team's responsibility; a 'no fix, no fee' rule; the owner present while the device is opened; photograph the device at intake; practise on the team's own dead devices first; check what the public liability insurance actually covers.
Risk 2: demand collapses below break-even (36 jobs at €5). The 40-customer figure is a guess, not research. Management: charge €8, which cuts break-even to about 21; take bookings in advance so the tool order follows demand rather than hope; set a decision point at the end of week 2; keep a small float rather than buying the full tool list.
A third risk worth a mark: data protection. A repair may expose a customer's photos and messages. The team should have a written rule that nobody opens any app, and should ask the owner to back up or lock the device where possible - accessing personal data without consent would breach GDPR and the school's acceptable-use policy.
A strong answer links each risk to a concrete action and to what evidence will go into the portfolio, rather than listing risks in the abstract.