Presentations from a selection of our main events can be found below.
If there is a specific presentation you are interested in and it is not listed please fill out the form at the bottom of the page and we will search the archives for you.
Research Showcase 2026
On June 3rd we were at The Shard for our Research Showcase. At these events we bring together colleagues, partners and stakeholders to explore our latest research insights. The presentations explored themes of entrepreneurship, innovation and business growth, highlighting the mix of current research work going on across the centre. The event was closed by Stephen Roper, who shared reflections on the ERC’s future research priorities.
State of Small Business Britain conference 2025
We were back at The Shard on December 2nd 2025 for the 10th annual ERC State of Small Business Britain Conference. The focus this year was on small business support, inclusion and growth. Earlier this year, the government published a new small business strategy that set out a long-term direction for small business support. The strategy aspires to create a system that will support businesses in every community. But how can we ensure that it meets the needs of the diverse entrepreneurial community, and creates growth?
LSBS event 2025
The LSBS is an annual telephone survey of UK SMEs led by the DBT, which has been running since 2015. It covers a broad range of topics around the factors that affect SME performance, including ambition, innovation, exporting, training, access to finance and business support. On November 25th we showcased this year’s papers. A variety of themes were covered , illustrating some of the challenges and opportunities SMEs are navigating, with lots of scope for further analysis identified from this rich survey.
Research Showcase 2024
On February 22nd 2024 we held an ERC Research Showcase event at Aston University’s Enterprise Hub at John Cadbury House. As usual we had a varied agenda, with the ERC team presenting on a selection of the research projects recently published and currently in progress.
State of Small Business Britain conference 2024
This year’s State of Small Business Britain Conference took place on October 3rd at The Shard in London, facilitated by ERC Steering Group Chair Jane Galsworthy. This was the ninth ERC annual conference, an event which brings together a mixed, well-informed community of academics, policymakers, practitioners and business leaders interested in small business policy for a day of evidence-informed discussion and debate. The conference this year involved around 90 in-person delegates, as well as being streamed online. The focus of the 2024 conference was on one important question, namely, how we can better support small businesses?
LSBS event 2024
On November 20th we held the annual Longitudinal Small Business Survey (LSBS) research showcase event at The Shard in London, an event hosted jointly with the Department for Business and Trade. After an introduction to the LSBS survey from Jayshree Varsani of DBT and Emma Osborne of BMG Research, ERC Director Stephen Roper presented some headline insights from the 2023 LSBS panel report. We then heard from the researchers leading the five projects that were successful in our small grants competition held earlier this year which funds researchers to undertake secondary analysis of the survey.
State of Small Business Britain Conference 2023
On June 21st the ERC team were back at The Shard for our annual State of Small Business Britain conference. The conference, which was chaired this year by our Steering Group Chair Jane Galsworthy, focused on the theme of ‘SME futures’. Delegates enjoyed a day full of knowledgeable and inspiring speakers on a range of themes including the effects of the pandemic on entrepreneurs, building financial resilience in SMEs and the future of business support.
LSBS event 2023
The Department for Business and Trade and the ERC co-hosted an event at The Shard on November 16th 2023 to showcase new findings and analysis of the Longitudinal Small Business Survey. The event began with an overview of the key findings from the 2022 survey, followed by some headlines from the latest panel report which reports data from firms interviewed in 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022. This was as noted a particularly eventful period, going from before, then through, the Covid-19 pandemic and beyond.
