The Innovation in Business research looked at how relational, place-based business support and grass-roots networks benefitted the overall effectiveness of local support to SME’s.
Below you can access 3 reports, starting with our Literature Review which gives an overview of how the business support landscape in the UK has evolved over the past 4 decades, a more detailed look at the last 10 years – including evidence of the failures of mainstream support, and the innovative responses to these failures that have come from within communities, which recognise and address the specific challenges they face.
Our Action-learning report focuses on current best practice happening in the 6 Empowering Places catalyst areas, drawing on insights from organisations working in those places, and the commissioners and funders they work in partnership with.
The findings of both the Literature Review and Action-learning report have directly informed the Empowering Places model of social-purpose business support, which is laid out in the final report and forms the basis of the logic model in the interactive section of this website
Literature review
This report looks at the evolution of business support to SME’s in the UK over the past 4 decades, with a focus on the 10 years since the global financial crisis
Place Based report
Findings from our action-research in each of the Empowering Places catalyst areas over the past 5 years, with practical recommendations and tools you can use
Logic Model
This sets out the elements found to have the greatest impact on the success of local business support initiatives, and can be explored further on this website