GEM UK Reports published.

      The latest Global Entrepreneurship (GEM) UK report along with individual GEM Scotland / Wales and Northern Ireland reports in partnership with NatWest, have been published today. As with previous economic downturns it is the small business community that drives the recovery across all sectors of the economy. UK entrepreneurs once again have… Read more

The cost of doing business 2022q2 Data from the Small Business Price Index

Small businesses with less than 50 employees employ 12.9m people (48 per cent of total private sector employment) and account for 36 per cent of private sector turnover. The Small Business Price Index (SBPI) provides an indication of the cost of doing business among this critical group of firms. The SBPI suggests that small business… Read more

Design Economy: People, Places and Economic Value

Mark Hart and Neha Prashar alongside BOP consulting undertook the research for the latest report from the Design council  Design Economy: People, Places and Economic Value report. The research into the social,environmental and economic value of design provides  key insights into how we can tackle climate and biodiversity emergencies, and high levels of social and… Read more

What works for supporting firms to go digital?

It has often been suggested that smaller firms – especially more risk averse family-owned firms – may be reluctant to invest in new technologies or innovation. The Evolve Digital scheme, a business support programme for family run businesses, was developed through 2019 to address this issue. Evolve Digital was implemented as a Randomised Controlled Trial (RCT)… Read more

Supporting the Triple Transition

On a sunny morning on 16th June, we welcomed delegates back to The Shard for our first in-person ERC State of Small Business Britain conference since 2019. The conference, which was chaired this year by Lucy Armstrong, focused on the theme of the ‘triple transition’, or the question of how moves towards net zero and… Read more

New Research Paper : TCA, Non-tariff Measures and UK Trade

UK exports suffered £12.4bn decline in 2021, largely attributed to non-tariff measures – new research Professor Jun Du and Dr Oleksandr Shepotylo from Aston University analysed the effects of the end of the Brexit transition period on UK exports This equals to a nearly 16% of UK total exports in the first half of 2019… Read more

Latest ERC Podcast

Published today – the final episode of our first podcast series. ERC Director Stephen Roper is joined by by Jill Pay, Chair of The Gender Index; Yvonne Greeves, Director of Women in Business at the NatWest Group; and Julie Kapsalis, Chair of Coast to Capital LEP  reflecting on the important theme of ‘women and enterprise’.

Re-imagining the entrepreneur

Who do you think of when you think of an Entrepreneur? In the latest  blog published today by NICRE , Stephen Roper, Deputy Director , ERC and Co-Director , NICRE dispels the ‘urban’ image many may conjure up by exploring findings that entreprenuership is actually more common in rural rather than urban areas. Read the… Read more

Poor broadband hinders resilience among rural businesses

Sub-standard infrastructure in rural areas – particularly lack of quality broadband – is affecting businesses’ ability to be resilient and bounce back from adversity, according to a major survey from the National Innovation Centre for Rural Enterprise (NICRE). Around a third of rural enterprises in the North East, South West and West Midlands, compared to a… Read more