Extensive administrative data exists on the publicly funded science base in the UK in databases such as ResearchFish. This exploratory study will explore the potential to link these datasets to longitudinal small business data to enable us to examine the growth and productivity benefits of SMEs engagement with the science base.

The potential is to identify those types of interaction with the science base which have the most significant and sustained growth and productivity benefits and to look at whether these effects are uniform across different types of SMEs and projects. Are there specific types of collaborative projects, for example, which yield more significant productivity benefits? Are these benefits more concentrated in engineering than in pure science? How do firms’ engagement with ‘big science’ projects influence productivity?

CompletionNovember 2016
KeywordsCommercialisation, science base, innovation, SME, data
ThemeInnovation and Export

Project Seminar – December  2016

The ERC held a project day on 13th December 2016 at the WBS offices in The Shard. The day was split into two sessions. During the afternoon we held initial stakeholder meetings for Projects 6-9. The event was attended by over 40 stakeholders, and generated interesting discussion and useful feedback to help inform the research.

Project 8: Linking SME data to the science base – an exploratory study of growth and productivity effects

A brief presentation from Bettina Becker provided an overview of the project, key research questions and data to be linked – predominantly from the Gateway to Research (GtR) Database and the Business Structures Database (BSD). It was noted that the GtR data have not previously been used for any analysis of this kind. There was some discussion of the GtR database and of the information that will be used from this database in this project. It was also noted that these data may be linked with the UK Innovation Survey (UKIS) in addition to BSD, so as to examine effects of firms’ access to the science base on innovation as a key driver of growth and productivity. It was also noted that there is the possibility to link to project 3 by examining potential differences in productivity effects for high-growth firms. A range of research questions was presented, and it was discussed that some of these could be explored in potential extensions to the project. An estimated project timeline was given, starting with the establishment of firms’ grant histories from extracts from the GtR database, through to ERC’s matching of these data to the BSD and UKIS databases and the exploratory analysis to complete the project.

Click here to view the Project 8 Inception presentation

Research Showcase. June 2017

The ERC held a Research Showcase on June 20th 2017 at RSA House in London.
The agenda of the day reflected the range of research we are currently undertaking at the Centre. The aim was to share our research insights and ideas with our key stakeholders, and to engage in dialogue with them about these. The showcase generated lively discussion and we are very grateful for the excellent engagement from our stakeholders, whose insights will shape and strengthen the final project outputs.

Project 8- One page summary

We are always happy to receive feedback from stakeholders on our research. If you would like to submit a comment, or  you would like to be involved in future ERC research events, please email Dr Vicki Belt, Deputy Director – impact and Engagement.