A new report commissioned by HEFCE from the Enterprise Research Centre  and building on earlier work by ERC and HEFCE examining university-business interactions has been published. This report investigates the population of small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the areas covered by the 39 local enterprise partnerships in England, and estimates the effect on innovation where SMEs… Read more

Stephen Roper was recently part of a team working with OECD to advise the government of Abu Dhabi on the development of the entrepreneurial eco-system. The final report from the project has just been published by OECD. Stephen’s involvement in the project focussed on boosting innovative entrepreneurship and SME innovation and stressed the importance of… Read more

The 19th Annual Ethnic Minority Business Conference (EMBC), the UK’s benchmark event on diversity and entrepreneurship, was held in Birmingham on the 20th of October 2015. Attended by over 125 participants from academia, the corporate sector, financial intermediaries, policy makers, practitioners, community based organisations and entrepreneurs this event was organised by the Birmingham Business School’s… Read more

Leadership and management skills in SMEs ERC Research conducted by Professor James Hayton cited in Invest NI updated Research Note. Deficiencies in Leadership and Management Skills (LMS), and not implementing management best practices, are a key constraint on business performance in the UK.  To provide evidence of how LMS influence the adoption of best practice… Read more

Formation of  the Communities of Interest  The Inaugural Meeting for the Communities of Interest ( COI )  took place on Tuesday 26th August 2014 at UCL, London, UK Dr Mark Gilman, Director of the Centre for Employment, Competitiveness and Growth, Kent Business School, University of Kent  welcomed participants to the inaugural meeting of the COI. He will… Read more

ERC Researchers made a significant contribution to the BIS Enterprise Research Conference on 3rd March at the ERC’s London home in the Shard. Mark Hart launched the 2014 Global Entrepreneurship Monitor report on entrepreneurship and Jonathan Levie and Ute Stephan presented two new pieces of ERC research for BIS looking at the relationship between ambition… Read more

The work of the Enterprise Research Centre  features in a Special Issue of the International Small Business Journal ‘Building the evidence base for SME growth policy’ In this special issue the ERC aim to identify those areas in which solid evidence does exist and highlight remaining gaps in the evidence base. Articles focus on five key… Read more

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… Read more

This working paper co- authored by ERC Director Stephen Roper and Anastasia Ri, Assistant Professor of Research at the ERC  published by the Productivity Institute investigates how firms navigate the dual challenges of digitalisation and climate change. The comprehensive approach considers climate change strategies, distinguishing adaptation-only, mitigation -only and ‘dual’ adaptation and mitigation strategies. Drawing… Read more