State of Rural Enterprise Report:

Skills and labour shortages hinder rural business performance and growth NICRE’s latest State of Rural Enterprise Report Labour and skills availability: impacts on rural enterprise finds more than half of rural businesses in the North East, South West and West Midlands find it difficult to recruit or retain suitably-skilled staff, with a high proportion of… Read more

COVID-19 Press coverage for the ERC

The Business Desk : Social Enterprises vital to post COVID-19 recovery Financial Times: Starting a business in the midst of a pandemic The Times: Number of new companies set up this year is likely to break record The Times: How small businesses can get one over the big boys in Zoom revolution IPSE: IPSE sets out… Read more

Let’s talk about another M in the business population – Micros

We know that the vast majority of private sector businesses do not grow, and policymakers are always seeking ways to encourage more firms to take the first steps along the growth path, and to sustain it.  As such the emphasis has been on fast-growth, high-growth and scaling as the watch-words of business support policy.Too often… Read more

Workplace Wellbeing, Mental Health and Productivity event

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

What can we learn from Swedish approaches to workplace mental health?

In a recent speech, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said that work is good for those with anxiety and milder depression and has signalled that benefits may be removed from some mental health sufferers as part of a reform of the benefits system. But his assertion has provoked an outcry from mental health charities including Mind,… Read more

Evidence Day _ Scale Up week

ERC Deputy Director Mark Hart is an invited speaker at a Virtual Evidence Day session on Monday 17th June during Scale Up Week on: “Scaleup & growth programs: what works and doesn’t work, and under what conditions?” ScaleUp Week will showcase the latest scaling practices and celebrate the potential of scaleups across Canada. Discover the… Read more

Building relationships between Britain and Greece: Science Parks and Agri-Tech

ERC Research Fellow Panagiotis Kyriakopoulos  is organising an event in Athens which aims to facilitate the establishment of new partnerships and foster meaningful interactions among managers and owners of science parks in both Greece and the UK. It will be a hybrid event with the objective of strengthening connections between stakeholders within the entrepreneurial ecosystem… Read more

ERC Research Showcase

  On 22nd February 2024 we held an ERC Research Showcase event at Aston University’s Enterprise Hub at John Cadbury House. As usual we had a varied agenda, with the ERC team reporting on a selection of the research projects recently published and currently in progress. We covered a range of themes:   Mark Hart… Read more

Global Entrepreneurship Monitor 2023/2024 report

25 Years and Growing The United Kingdom’s score in the National Entrepreneurial Context Index (NECI) continues to fall, according to the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) 2023/2024 Report, released today in Morocco. As part of the research, national experts in the UK were asked to assess the country’s Entrepreneurship Framework Conditions (EFCs). These assessments are the… Read more