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. We heard from:
🔹 Mark Hart, on the Panel Study of Entrepreneurial Dynamics, focusing on the experiences of nascent entrepreneurs – a stage in the business creation journey that is poorly understood. Mark’s presentation highlighted high attrition and the specific challenges faced by female and ethnic minority founders, leading to higher exit rates. The findings point to a critical danger zone for underrepresented founders during the first 12-24 months.
🔹 Kevin Mole shared insights from research with Anastasia Ri and Stephen Roper on entrepreneurial mindsets. This research has explored decision-making behaviours amongst entrepreneurs, or ‘metacognition’, looking at the differences between women- and men-owned firms, finding evidence that female firm managers have higher metacognition.
🔹 Neha Prashar presented a summary of research on the hidden mechanics of job creation and destruction in the UK, looking at what lies beneath the surface of the “iceberg”. Understanding these mechanisms is crucially important to comprehending the drivers of employment change. The research has tracked trends over 25 years, revealing marked regional and national differences, as well as an overall decline in the expansion of firms.
🔹 Halima Jibril talked about her research for the Innovation & Research Caucus focusing on measuring the economic impacts of publicly-funded research and innovation on UK firms. This project provides robust population-level evidence on the business impacts of UKRI support, finding positive (although heterogeneous) impacts on business growth and widespread impacts on innovation.
🔹 Ully Yunita Nafizah presented research that has explored how knowledge spillovers influence innovation in UK micro-businesses. This study found that innovation spillovers for these very small firms tend to be predominantly sectoral, with location seeming much less critical. The findings show the potential value of knowledge-sharing within sectors for micro-businesses.
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.
