Europe-wide study on ‘shock-proof’ firms ahead of Brexit

 Two-year project will learn lessons from 3,000 of Europe’s most resilient firms to spread best practice  Focus on under-represented groups will seek to understand how entrepreneurs overcome barriers With 70% of European jobs in SMEs, study is seen as vital pre-Brexit to cushion economic fallout A new study on business resilience in five European countries will draw up… Read more

Micro-business Britain

‘Digital dividend’ productivity boost for UK’s micro firms • Biggest ever study of UK ‘micro-businesses’ (with 1-9 employees) shows big boosts to productivity from use of digital technologies • Doubling adoption could provide a ‘digital dividend’ boost to the economy worth £16.6bn • Research points way to boosting output of group of firms traditionally seen as ‘drag’ on… Read more

Three more years of enterprise research announced

• The Enterprise Research Centre has secured funding for three further years of rigorous research into SME growth and entrepreneurship The Enterprise Research Centre has secured funding for three further years of research on the state of entrepreneurship and SME growth in the UK. The ERC, a network of researchers with a core team based at Aston… Read more

UK Innovation Survey User Group

Around thirty people attended the UKIS User Group event held at BEIS on the 20th March. A policy round-table comprising Agnes Estebail (BEIS), Will Steele (IPO), and Stephen Miller (Design Council) identified remaining evidence gaps (among others) around IP valuation and benefits, design impacts on innovation and sectoral effectiveness of policy. A number of research papers… Read more

Business schools supporting entrepreneurship and small businesses across the UK.

Stephen Roper  was invited as an ISBE trustee to join the taskforce behind the latest Chartered ABS report on how business schools deliver value to local and regional economies. Professor Roper comments, “The CABS report highlights the valuable contribution business schools make to supporting entrepreneurship and small businesses across the UK. It is good to see… Read more

Re-writing the innovation rulebook

Re-writing the innovation rulebook Have you ever heard of the Oslo Manual? Sadly it’s not a type of Nordic Kama Sutra but instead the official – OECD backed – rulebook for thinking about and measuring innovation. Over the last 25 years successive editions of the Oslo Manual have provided the definitive guide to what gets… Read more

Brexit for business?

Whether you regard today as a ‘new dawn’ or a ‘national tragedy’ short-term economic uncertainty is on the cards for us all. This is perhaps today’s only certainty. How effectively the UK can manage this uncertainty and then capitalise on the opportunities of life outside the EU will be crucial for future growth. In the… Read more

THE BIG CITIES GROWTH DILEMMA

NEW DATA FROM ENTERPRISE RESEARCH CENTRE AND GROWTHACCELERATOR REVEALS START-UP SURVIVAL RATES ARE LOWEST IN BRITAIN’S BIG CITIES BUT CITY START-UPS THAT DO SURVIVE, GROW STRONGEST JUNE 10, 2014 – LONDON The Enterprise Research Centre (ERC), Britain’s foremost SME growth and entrepreneurship research centre, in partnership with GrowthAccelerator, has undertaken unique analysis of all 39 Local… Read more

 Rebuilding SME’s confidence to borrow

March 2014 A new report from the Enterprise Research Centre (ERC) sheds more light on ‘discouraged borrowers’ – a previously under-explored group of SMEs who choose not to seek bank finance because they believe they will be unsuccessful. The report, ‘Back to Borrowing? Perspectives on the ‘Arc of Discouragement’, identifies a group of around  173,000… Read more