December 2020 Press Coverage

Financial Times: Starting a business in the midst of a pandemic  Business Fast: Starting a business in the midst of a pandemic  Bdaily: Major initiative calls on Midlands businesses to prioritise mental health and boost productivity  Love Business: Major initiative calls on East Midlands businesses to prioritise mental health and boost productivity  H&W Chamber: The… Read more

Small business past, present and future

ERC’s 2020 State of Small Business Britain  is now out. And what a year it has been for the UK’s small businesses. ‘Unprecedented’ must be the defining word of 2020 and our latest report looks at how the unprecedented events of this year have translated into impacts on and actions by small and medium enterprises… Read more

COVID hammers UK firms – but sparks digital ‘pivot’ for some

Over 40% of UK’s small and medium-sized firms report COVID-related hit to turnover, while 3 in 10 forced to cut jobs Around 200,000 firms could be close to collapse based on analysis of those trading insolvently or running out of cash But a fifth of firms report positive impacts from the pandemic, with many embracing… Read more

GEM NI Report 2019

Published today this report, completed by Queen’s University Belfast in conjunction with the Enterprise Research Centre, provides international benchmark data for entrepreneurial activity in Northern Ireland, on a comparable basis. The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) is an international project which seeks to provide information on the entrepreneurial landscape of 50 countries in 2019. This is important… Read more

Autumn 2020 Press Coverage

FT: Do entrepreneurs need an MBA? The Express : Boris Johnson 3-tier system to harm the self-employed  Sunday Times: Winter is coming – and so are the insolvencies Start Your Business Magazine: Post-Covid Gains. ‘Laggards’ key to post-Covid productivity gains Research Professional News: Researchers fear spending review might be downgraded London Loves Business: Chancellor’s new measures… Read more

What ‘works’ for improving small business productivity?

Ask anyone working with small business owners and they will tell you great stories of how mentoring and training can transform people and their businesses. Each of these stories is important in its own right. In terms of policy, however, this type of anecdotal evidence is of little value in terms of justifying public investments… Read more

Crisis entrepreneurs

Is now a good time to start a new business? In this FT article published this morning, ERC Deputy Director Mark Hart says we could be seeing an uptick of “crisis entrepreneurs” adding that these are people who have lost their job during the pandemic and have no other choice in the current labour market than… Read more

Business resilience: location, location, location!

Anticipating adversity, and undertaking crisis planning, are associated with increased resilience in businesses. Yet research published earlier this year by the ERC (carried out before the pandemic) found many small firms struggle to identify their most potent future threats and when crisis hits, most have no contingency plans, resorting to depleting their financial resources to… Read more

Entrepreneurship “in jeopardy” after hitting new high pre-Covid

Published today the GEMUK 2019 report sponsored by NatWest shows UK early-stage entrepreneurship hit a new pre-pandemic high in 2019.  However, this may be in jeopardy because of the effects of the crisis combined with significant gaps in support for people in the early stages of enterprise formation. The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) research consortium… Read more

Talking about workplace mental health: How do employers in the Midlands understand and experience mental health issues?

How do employers talk about mental health issues in their workplaces? In our latest Insight published today we use survey and narrative data collected from Midlands firms in early 2020 prior to the first COVID-19 lockdown to examine two questions: What do employers understand by ‘good mental health and wellbeing in the workplace’?  How do employers describe… Read more