Entries by Wendy Ferris

GEM 2018 Report Launched

NatWest, Aston Business School and The Entrepreneurs Network launch the 2018 Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) today at NatWest Entrepreneur Accelerator Speakers at the launch include Paul Thwaite, MD Head of Sales & Specialist Businesses, NatWest & Mark Hart, Professor of Small Business and Entrepreneurship, Aston Business School who leads on the GEM UK project and is… Read more

Small firms and formal intellectual property protection: A paradox?

We know that firms use knowledge protection mechanisms to limit imitation and enhance their ability to appropriate the returns to their innovative investments. Recent research at the ERC suggests that both formal (e.g. patents) and informal (e.g. secrecy) knowledge protection mechanisms are important for the innovation returns of small firms (those with fewer than 50… Read more

Getting the right recipe: collaboration strategies for radical and incremental innovators in services.

ERC Research Paper No 77 is published today. Successful innovation requires both effective idea generation and commercialization. Here, we investigate the benefits of alternative collaboration strategies across the idea generation and commercialization stages of the innovation process. Does collaboration generate complementarities between stages of the innovation process? Or, as external collaboration is costly and risky,… Read more

State of Small Business Britain Conference 2019 – UK manufacturing ‘fragile’ as Brexit nears – research

● Enterprise Research Centre report finds dampened growth across manufacturing firms, as new start-ups also drop by 10% overall and nearly 30% in the automotive sector ● Fewer firms achieving ‘high growth’ status – with key manufacturing regions falling behind ● ERC warns of a “breakdown in dynamism” as Brexit fears stalk the sector The… Read more