The Enterprise Research Centre (ERC), in collaboration with the Department for Business and Trade (DBT), has announced the successful recipients of the LSBS Small Grant Funding call. Funded by DBT (£25,000 in total), five projects have been selected following a competitive process to undertake secondary analysis of the Longitudinal Small Business Survey (LSBS). The successful projects… Read more

Last week we published the latest State of Small  Business Britain report.  2025 was another challenging year for the UK’s small businesses and those working to support them. On one hand, there was much to be positive about. The evidence continues to show that the UK has a vibrant entrepreneurial culture, and that digital technology adoption… Read more

Striking new research findings from the Enterprise Research Centre (ERC) at Warwick Business School show that while three quarters of UK firms acknowledge that they have responsibilities to address employee mental health, only half actually have any initiatives in place. What’s more, this ‘attitude to action’ gap is widest in the smallest firms, which are… Read more

Last week we published the latest State of Small Business Britain report , our annual review of trends and issues affecting the UK’s small businesses, drawing together ERC research from the past year. These are testing times for small businesses. Recent years have seen them have to confront a range of challenges, including a global… Read more

In 2019 the UK Government set the goal of achieving Net Zero – where the amount of greenhouse gas emissions produced are equal to or less than the amount removed from the atmosphere – by 2050. This is a commitment that will impact on all businesses, including the more than 5.9 million of firms in… Read more

ERC Director Stephen Roper authored a guest column in Business News Wales in which he discusses a research project commissioned by Economic Intelligence Wales  highlighting  the pivotal role R&D-intensive firms can play in driving Wales towards a stronger economic future. Stephen says “As we aim for economic growth, it’s critical to keep our sights on… Read more

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… Read more

The Department for Business and Trade (DBT) has made available £35,000 to fund four research projects to improve our understanding of domestic business investment. DBT will also provide a new survey dataset acquired from the Bank of England on business finance and investment decision-making. Grants for four projects (up to £10.9k per project at 100%… Read more

On 20th May we held a joint event with the PrOPEL Hub on Workplace Wellbeing, Mental Health and Productivity to share some insights from some of the latest research funded by the ESRC. The first presentation of the day was by ERC Research Fellow Maria Wishart. Maria gave an overview of the emerging findings from… Read more