State of Small Business Britain conference 2025
We were back at University of Warwick – Warwick Business School‘s offices 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?
Several overarching themes emerged during the day, including –
🔵 The importance of microbusinesses to the economy: their ‘quiet innovation’, adaptability and resilience;
🔵 The need to meet businesses and entrepreneurs ‘where they are’ rather than providing off-the-shelf support that makes assumptions about their needs;
🔵 The importance of trusted community and local enterprise support organisations in business growth;
🔵 The need for stability in funding and an end to ‘cliff-edge’ approaches;
🔵 The importance of evidence-base policy… and much more!
State of Small Business Britain conference 2024
This year’s State of Small Business Britain Conference took place on 3rd October 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? The country’s small businesses have had to deal with many challenges over the past five years related to significant socio-economic events, including for example the Covid-19 pandemic and the cost-of-living crisis. Taking place in the early months of a new Government, and just ahead of an Autumn budget, the conference provided a timely opportunity to discuss how future business support might be best structured and delivered to enable small businesses to not only survive, but also thrive, in the years ahead, informing policy work currently being undertaken.
State of Small Business Britain Conference 2023
On Wednesday 21st June 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.
We began the day with an introductory session by Stephen Roper and Mark Hart, who summarised what we’ve learnt from 10 years of ERC research
Research Showcase 2026
On Wednesday June 3rd we were at the University of Warwick – Warwick Business School‘s campus 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. We have lots of exciting new insights coming soon, including research on late payments, analysis from the Innovation State of the Nation survey by the IS-8 sectors, and analysis of the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor survey on fear of failure and attitudes to risk.
Research Showcase 2024
On 22nd February 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.
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.
The LSBS is a large-scale survey with official statistics status. The ERC has had a long association with the survey, shaping its design since its inception. For a number of years, we have also co-funded a competition with DBT to fund researchers to undertake secondary analysis of the survey. 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.
LSBS event 2024
On the 20th November 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.
LSBS event 2023
The Department for Business and Trade and the ERC co-hosted an event at The Shard on 16th November 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. ERC’s Stephen Roper outlined some key trends in the data in terms of growth-related behaviours in SMEs. These include falls in the proportion of SMEs engaging in innovation and exporting activities, accessing finance and using business support.
