Papers & speeches

The first draft of this paper emerged from pulling together some of the conclusions from the first International Enterprise Promotion Convention and was then expanded in response to a request to act as a discussant at an UNCTAD conference exploring good practice in public policy to promote and support entrepreneurship.

There is much discussion about what constitutes a social enterprise. This short discussion paper showcases a number of social enterprises and then poses a number of questions.

According to a survey undertaken by Cobweb Information, business advisers look proactively for new ideas to improve the way in which they deliver services to new and growing businesses. Curiously, however, they report that business support generally is not an innovative as they think it ought to be. This short report was prepared for the inaugral International Enterprise Promotion Convention held in the UK in November 2009.

There many businesses in Affica that are too big for micro-finance but still considered too risky by commercial investors. How can they be helped?

We investigate the influence of gender, ethnicity, and education in the use of external advice and finance by UK small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). A conceptual model of ‘discouraged advisees’ was developed as a framework for analysis of the results of a telephone survey of 400 SMEs. We found an association between the use of external advice and the ability to raise bank finance. Furthermore, both men and black and minority ethnic (BME) participants were more likely to use family and friends for advice, whilst women were twice as likely as men to use Business Link. BME business owners were discouraged from using less ‘trusted’ sources, such as Business Link, possibly believing them insufficiently tailored or that they would provide inappropriate advice. Therefore, the findings provide support for our conceptual model of discouraged advisees and have implications for the provision of advice for business owners from BME communities.

This paper reviews the factors that are important if a business membership organisation (BMO) is to be able to be successful in advocating change in public policy. A major factor is the competence of the BMO. This paper explains how a diagnostic assessment is being used to identify development needs and to measure improvements in competence. The paper seeks to demonstrate that BMOs are becoming successful in advocating change in public policy though there is still a wider question about whether they are succeeding in improving the enabling environment.

Small business development makes an important contribution to economic growth and poverty alleviation in developing countries, but many organisations appear to have difficulty in scaling up or scaling out when they are successful. This papers offers a personal perspective on what needs to be done to encourage more successful replication.

For the last three years, I have surveyed the loan funds of the local enterprise agencies. Together with Jon Scott, I have now pulled the results together into a three year review of performance.

With assistance from Steadman Group, I undertook surveys of business leaders in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda to gain an understanding of their perceptions of the business enabling environment, their perception of whether their government is attempting to improve a range of factors which impact on business and the likelihood of them investing further unless the factors improve. The results suggest that whilst the governments gain some praise from the private sector, there is still much to do.

This paper aims to review the different approaches to providing support to entrepreneurs by business support organisations, originally created with similar objectives, in four African countries (Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and Cameroon) in order to examine entrepreneurial heterogeneity in Africa and the importance, therefore, of ensuring local solutions to local problems.
It is clear that the Trusts, having started with similar objectives, have all identified different target audiences and have set about providing appropriate support in different ways. There is no doubt that at the client level, they are helping clients to overcome considerable obstacles and to improve their businesses. To have a greater impact on their economies, they need to become better at evaluating what works and what doesn’t and sharing the lessons as widely as they can. Sharing the lessons will also help to demonstrate what the Trusts all know intuitively: that their client groups are different, with different needs, and which need to be addressed in different ways

This paper, co-authored with Jon Scott, aims to investigate the linkage between the use of external advice and access to finance for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the UK, with particular consideration of differences in personal characteristics: gender, ethnicity and education. We find that there appears to be a correlation between the provision of external advice and the ability to raise bank finance. Furthermore, there are clear gender, ethnic and educational differentials in the use of particular sources of advice which are explored in detail in the paper.

This paper, originally written in 2005, reviews mechanisms for financing entrepreneurship and new, emerging businesses at the regional and local level and assesses the current position in SEE countries. Transitional economies have acknowledged that SMEs are crucial for industrial restructuring and have formulated national SME development policies and programmes. The growth of SMEs in the region suggests that there is significant potential for further expansion. This can only happen if it becomes easier for entrepreneurs to raise the finance that they need. . The chapter highlights the need for work in three key areas: firstly, on the demand side, by building the capacity of entrepreneurs to manage their businesses effectively so that they can secure credit more easily; secondly, on the supply side, by combining new instruments and more enlightened banks; and, thirdly, through mediation, by matching supply and demand with good business support agencies, business angel networks and regional stock exchanges, for example.

"There is no shortage of private money seeking to invest in young companies, new research has found, throwing into question the Government's decision to invest hundreds of millions of public money to correct what it sees as market failure." ("Don't mind the gap, it's a perception" Daily Telegraph, 1 Aug 06)
But we would argue that is the wrong conclusion - there may be large amounts of money seeking a home, but it is looking for opportunities with proprietary intellectual capital, exceptional management, a market that is not what equity investors quaintly call 'pre-revenue' and the chance of a high return. In our view, many groups of entrepreneurs, for a variety of reasons, still find it immensely difficult to raise the capital that they need. This paper explores one of the possible reasons - personal characteristics.