The Enterprise and Entrepreneurship practice area is led by Leigh Sear and specialises in working with clients to understand and support entrepreneurship and enterprise development – whether in individuals, businesses, organisations or communities.
The practice area is involved in undertaking a range of applied policy research, strategy and professional development projects on behalf of public and not-for-profit organisations including national Government departments and agencies, regional development agencies, education institutions and business support organisations. Recently, this has included developing a marketing and communication plan for promoting international trade in the North East, reviewing and developing a framework for community-based enterprise coaching in the North East, and an ongoing evaluation and an evaluation of enterprise education materials used by the UK Intellectual Property Office.
The issues of how to encourage a more dynamic start-up and small business market and how to build an enterprising culture are currently two key Government priorities. At the Enterprise Summit in November 2004 the then Chancellor, Gordon Brown, expressed a desire to create no ‘no-go’ areas for enterprise in the United Kingdom and the Small Business Service Action Plan stresses that ‘for enterprise to flourish, there needs to be a culture where people with the initiative, skills and drive to start and run a successful business have the confidence to do so and consider it to be a realistic career choice’ (Small Business Service, 2004, p. 21).
At a general level, the issue of supporting and understanding enterprise and entrepreneurship is surrounded by a series of stylised facts and myths which are commonly used by policy makers and practitioners as evidence to support new policies or initiatives. We all now know that the majority of businesses in the UK have less than 50 employees and contribute disproportionately to job creation, at a time when large businesses are shedding jobs.
Similarly, there is a common profile of an entrepreneur as innovative, proactive, risk-taking, and go-getting. Yet despite the use of such myths in justifying public interventions, attitudes to enterprise and rates of business formation in many areas of the UK have not improved. This may be because there are a number of important areas of policy ‘need to know’ which need tackling, the insights from which can be used to develop innovative and value added policy and programme responses.
Some of these key questions include:
- What do we mean by enterprise and what is involved in building an enterprise culture? Does it simply mean increasing the number of business start-ups as measured by VAT registrations? But what about enterprise/entrepreneurship activity in social and community enterprises, large business organisation and public sector organisations?
- What are the costs and benefits of providing support for groups such as women, ethnic minorities and graduates interested in enterprise through mainstream or more targeted interventions?
- What works best to change attitudes to enterprise across society and how can an enterprise culture be developed?
- What is the qualitative impact of regulation and legislation on the performance and development of smaller enterprises?
There are a similar set of questions and issues facing agencies at a local and regional level, such as Business Links and the Regional Development Agencies.
