TRISH BALFE, SENIOR SYSTEMS ENGINEER, 12 YEARS Telecom systems software

WHEN the guys at CorkBIC talk about "latent entrepreneurs", they mean people like Trish Balfe. A 12year veteran of Motorola in Cork with management responsibilities, she had been kicking around a start-up idea "for a while", but hadn't put anything into action until the company decided in February to close its doors for good.

"It's hard to jump from a wellpaying job to start a business, " she says. "But I wouldn't want to retire from Motorola."

Balfe was let go at the end of March and teamed up with a Motorola colleague to develop "project-based" software. At this early stage she's reluctant to say exactly what the product will be, except that it will be related in some way to the sort of mobile systems work she did in Motorola.

She and her collaborator are in touch with CorkBIC weekly, trying to "ll the gaps in their sales and marketing knowledge. They've also applied to the Genesis programme at CIT, which offers incubations space, access to funding and training. The plan is to identify a client, pitch for a project . . . perhaps as a subcontractor to an established partner . . . to start a revenue stream and then build a product out of that.

COLUM HORGAN, HEAD OF CORE NETWORKS, 10 YEARS Quality assurance/project management software
AS a senior manager in charge of a 100-person team within Motorola, Colum Horgan caught an early scent of redundancies last year when Tom Shirley was called back to the US and Cork was left without a site manager. New hiring had stopped before then, but now jobs were disappearing.

"In the last six months I've been responsible for laying off people . . .

I've been thinking about starting a business since Q4 [of 2006], " he says.

Now he talks about "the buzz out there" . . . out there being the world beyond Motorola.

"I wanted to do something more independent . . . to be successful and control my own destiny, " he says.

"Somebody has to drive start-ups . . .

we can't depend on multinationals anymore . . . but I thought it would be another somebody!"

Horgan is leveraging his management experience into bespoke quality assurance/project management technology which he hopes will evolve into an off-theshelf product eventually. He hopes to take the "best of breed" practices from Motorola and apply them on a smaller scale.

He and his two partners have already been approached by a potential client (they're not ruling out Motorola) and are pursuing consulting opportunities as their product gets off the ground.

"The best source of funding is work, " says Horgan.

SIMON MARTIN, SITE QUALITY MANAGER, NINE YEARS Remote IT support for home users

SIMON MARTIN will be among the last Motorola employees to leave the Cork site at the end of the month. As a quality manager, he needs to ensure a smooth hand-off to other Motorola sites in India, China and Malaysia before striking out on his own.

"In hindsight, the redundancy is an opportunity, " he says. "It was telegraphed for a long time, but it's sad to see it happen. Motorola is a good place to work."

Martin had seen this before as a Digital employee at the Ayr plant that survived at Galway's expense when the multinational rationalised operations back in 1993. But the well-known success of Digital spinouts gave him inspiration.

Now he's seizing the chance to apply his technical knowledge and management skill to starting a business serving the 800,000 homes in Ireland with a PC . . . and he's counting on the national broadband scheme to help him reach them.

Martin will run his enterprise off a wireless broadband node in rural Cork, but for the moment he's leaning on CorkBIC's advisory services and the Fas Enterprise Start programme to help him tackle sales, marketing and internet commerce.

FRANK O'CONNOR, HUMAN FACTORS ENGINEERING, SIX YEARS Usability consultancy services

FRANK O'CONNOR is an example of the successful crossover in Cork between academic research and multinational development. Coming out of CIT, where he studied and lectured, he joined a small team at Motorola working on usability, or human factors.

While Motorola had the R&D budget (and wherewithal) to invest in this side of systems development, O'Connor believes the success of Apple and Google on the usability front means there's an opportunity out there for the rest of the IT industry who are still designing from a purely technical view.

He's teamed up with Sean Condon, a Motorola software architect, to develop a business around usability consultancy services, process design and training . . . targeting the telecoms industry.

O'Connor has a cool, academic demeanour, but he's moving quickly to secure funding from Enterprise Ireland and CorkBIC and hopes to hire "sooner rather than later", so he can capture some of the talent coming out of his former employer.

"I'd hire out of Motorola, " he says.

"It's a site of specialities and there's rich pool of talent . . . you'd be hardpressed to "nd who'd be better."

MARTIN FOGARTY, SENIOR NETWORK MANAGER, 20 YEARS Consultancy

IF there's an intellectual entrepreneur coming out of the Motorola redundancies, it's probably Martin Fogarty. He's involved in what he calls "a loose af"liation" with Frank O'Connor and Sean Condon (see above) and seems responsible for the global view of the market.

He's identi"ed network management as an area of opportunity.

"Managing complexity is what we're good at, " he says. "We can start with a narrow focus . . . everyone wants to amplify networks."

Motorola, not surprisingly, is on his list as a potential client, but the business hasn't really cohered yet, he concedes. Motorola's customer base . . . the likes of Vodafone and O2 . . . are also possible targets, although it's not clear how this will affect any pitch to his old employer.

"We're looking for a start to get things going and we'll work together if it makes sense."

He credits his time with Motorola for giving a technologist like him the chance to develop into a manager . . .a dualism he'll have to put to use now that he's walking the tightrope without a corporate net.