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

Ethnic minority businesses (EMBs) are a significant yet under-recognised part of the UK economy. This impact report focuses on EMBs not as a niche issue, but as a way of understanding how entrepreneurial potential is created, constrained, or enabled within the UK’s wider business environment. The Time to Change: A Blueprint for Advancing the UK’s Ethnic… Read more

Several members of the ERC team took part in the Institute for Small Business and Entrepreneurship (ISBE) conference in Glasgow  on 5th and 6th November. The conference theme this year was  “Collaborating across Entrepreneurial Ecosystems: opportunities for inclusion, innovation, sustainability, resilience and growth” ERC staff presented papers on a range of themes receiving a nomination… Read more

On 12th June, we joined forces with the National Enterprise Network to hold a Micro Business Roundtable event at The Shard. In 2024, there were over 1.2 million micro businesses in the UK, employing around 4.2 million people. Despite their significance to the economy and society, micro businesses are often excluded from national and international… Read more

The long-anticipated UK–EU Reset Summit, held in London on 19 May 2025, marked a significant, despite cautious, turning point in the post-Brexit relationship between the United Kingdom and the European Union. As the first structured political dialogue since the implementation of the Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA) in 2021, the summit offered a new platform… Read more

We are pleased to announce the successful applicants for the 2025 call for proposals under the Department for Business and Trade’s (DBT) funding initiative for secondary analyses of the Longitudinal Small Business Survey (LSBS). After a competitive selection process, the following research projects have been awarded funding: Jorge Velez Ospina (University of Sussex and National… Read more

Creative PEC launches new research exploring how the creative industries participate in innovation. The report, produced by Dr Rita Nana-Cheraa and Prof Stephen Roper from the Enterprise Research Centre at University of Warwick, investigates the landscape of innovation in creative industries sub-sectors, and also compares Creative Industries innovation activity to Manufacturing and Other Services sectors. Key… Read more