Climbing a mountain, travelling North or spending time near the sea we all become aware of differences in the climate. In some places configurations of landscape create specific micro-climates, which create conditions of warmth or shelter allowing plants and gardens to flourish. Recent research suggests that business innovation may work in a similar way, with… Read more
ERC Deputy Director Mark Hart joined an expert panel at the The Centre for the New Midlands webinar ” How do we fire up the start-ups” discussing how to make the West Midlands the most attractive place to start a new business in the UK. Amongst the questions discussed were Is the West Midlands the place… Read more
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
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
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
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
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
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
