Northern Ireland’s enterprise progress threatened by Brexit uncertainty

Brexit’s risk to recent positive trends among Northern Ireland’s entrepreneurs and micro-firms has been spelt out in new research. The two studies by the Enterprise Research Centre (ERC) and Queen’s Management School show that the number of people in Northern Ireland becoming entrepreneurs has risen significantly in recent years, while its micro-firms (those employing 1-9 people) are the… Read more

Financial Times special report on the UK’s entrepreneurs

ERC data features in today’s Financial Times special report on the UK’s entrepreneurs: Belfast stands out for start-up productivity.   While Belfast still struggles to foster companies that survive for at least three years, this year’s data from the Enterprise Research Centre show that Northern Ireland performs above the UK average in other key metrics… Read more

Latest SOTA reviews from ERC

This week sees a further two SOTAs published in the new series. Each ERC SOTA Review provides a short briefing on a tightly-defined topic, drawing on the most recent research and policy literature. The reviews clearly summarise the main evidence points, provide an indication of robustness for each evidence point and identify key uncertainties and… Read more

What is the State of The Art (SOTA)?

We are working in an increasingly fast-paced world in which more and more information is becoming available from multiple sources. For many of us, this situation makes it difficult to keep on top of complex issues and debates and identify trustworthy and reliable information. To help, the Enterprise Research Centre is today launching a new… Read more

Longitudinal Small Business Survey. Call for proposals 2018

The Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy has made available  £25,000 to fund five secondary analyses of the first three waves of the Longitudinal Small Business Survey. The Enterprise Research Centre (ERC) is administering this call on behalf of BEIS. Note that applications will not be accepted from anyone who is being supported through… Read more

Spin-outs and the great university challenge

ERC research cited in article by James Hurley in the Times,  September 10th  2018. A 2015 study into spin-outs by the Enterprise Research Centre found that for the “majority of academic founders” there were “significant tensions” between their commitments to university academic work and the demands of the embryonic company. Research paper No 35:  Profiling UK… Read more

On the value of daughters

Having a daughter can be a delight. I should know I have two. It turns out however that having a daughter is not only a delight but that it can also have a significant effect on the decisions we make about how we run our organisations and businesses. A fascinating new research paper describes what… Read more

Supporting start-ups and local business

Start-ups are crucial to the growth of the UK economy, with nearly 600,000 companies established last year – but support is needed to sustain local businesses beyond the start-up phase. Growth of small business is an important part of driving economic progress and rebalancing the UK economy. The UK now has a larger number of… Read more