1,721,060 research outputs found
Home is where the business is: incidents in everyday life and the formation of home-based businesses
No full textHome-based businesses (HBBs) represent an increasingly important form of entrepreneurial activity, yet often remain overlooked within academic literature and largely invisible within official statistics. Set against the background of the home becoming a more common place of business, this article unpacks owner-entrepreneurs’ experiences in forming their HBB. By employing Lefebvre’s concept of everyday life and drawing on de Certeau’s work, it examines the trajectories and tactics of HBB owner-entrepreneurs in the Sheffield City Region in the UK. Focusing on the creative industries sector, the article problematises the push/pull, opportunity/ necessity based binary to elucidate how incidents experienced by HBB owner-entrepreneurs affect the formation of HBBs. The motivations for creating HBBs are shown to be complex, comprising personal and work-related incidents which are related to the lived practices of owner-entrepreneurs. Finally, the article broadens the discussion to reflect on implications for public policy and outlines directions for further research into HBBs as an increasingly pertinent field of entrepreneurship
Recovery and resilience: How can innovation policy support the response
Full text linkThe coronavirus pandemic has affected many of the factors shaping the R & D and innovation landscape. Innovative businesses, including early stage companies, face running out of cash due to a lack of availability of external finance or funding, and parts of sectors face being wiped out by economic contraction. R & D projects have hit the buffers due to operational restrictions. At the same time, however, there have been some potential positive effects. Businesses have had to innovate rapidly to adapt to new circumstances, resulting in business model changes and investment in new technologies, especially digital solutions. With digitally-enabled solutions becoming in demand, technology companies have made their products freely available. This chapter reviews these changes and discusses the potential impacts of COVID-19 going forward. In this context, the chapter looks at how policies and programmes could be used to best respond to the crisis in ways that may assist with longer-term competitiveness, and the challenges and opportunities that could shape a recovery that places innovation at its centre. It does this through the lens of priorities related to the 2.4% R & D target, supporting innovative companies, and improving innovation diffusion
Implications and impacts of the crisis on micro businesses and their future resilience
Full text linkSmall businesses are widely regarded as an important aspect of the productivity puzzle in the UK, representing over 98 per cent of the business base. At the start of 2019 SMEs under 250 employees accounted for 61 per cent of total employment and 52 per cent of turnover in the private sector, with micro businesses and sole traders employing under 10 accounting for 33 per cent and 22 per cent respectively. The concept of this long tail of less productive businesses is one that has come to capture the imagination of researchers and policymakers alike. Current analysis of the productivity puzzle suggests that this tail is considerably longer in the UK when compared to elsewhere. The long tail of companies was described by Haldane (2017) as those firms with low and slow productivity growth which are unable to keep up, much less catch up with frontier companies. However, the composition of the long tail is contested. As these numbers imply, it is true that small businesses are inevitably less efficient than their larger counterparts which benefit from scale and specialisation. However, the highly heterogenous base of small unproductive firms is not responsible for all of the UK’s productivity issues.
Many of the smallest businesses have borne the brunt of the immediate economic shock resulting from the Covid-19 global health crisis. However, this diversity of small businesses means that while some have experienced very dramatic reductions in turnover and needed to make temporary or possibly permanent adjustments to employment, others have found themselves presented with new opportunities with potential for productivity enhancement. Furthermore, supporting sole traders and micro businesses is not straightforward – a fact borne out in small business policy over the past three decades. The first section of this chapter begins by reflecting on the nature of sole traders and micro businesses, before the second section reviews emerging evidence and insights as to the impact of the Covid-19 crisis on micro businesses. A third section discusses the immediate responses and experiences of these businesses. A fourth section discusses the wider economic outlook and the prospects for recovery in a post-Covid world where productive sole traders and micro businesses continue to be important to the economy
The Covid-19 shock: the UK national and regional implications in the light of international evidence
No full textThis chapter examines how the covid-19 shock impacts on different types of spatial productivity transmission mechanisms. The chapter reviews the worldwide evidence and analyses regarding how the short-term impacts of covid-19 are likely to impact on the medium and long-term spatial evolution of the economy. Questions regarding urban structure and scale, commuting patterns, institutional alignment, and the spatial distribution of activities and investment are all being raised and these also pose major challenges for medium and long-term policy responses. We examine the insights arising from different parts of the world and assess how short-term decisions may impact on longer-term development trajectories. The implications of these shocks and short-term responses on long-term economic development policy frameworks are also examined both internationally and in the specific context of the UK.</p
Encouraging and enabling serious academics to become ‘engaging’: the ‘executive education as a catalyst’ approach
No full textWhilst Cardiff Business School (a large business school within Cardiff University, the only Welsh University in the Russell Group) has always been highly regarded in terms of the quality of its academic research, until 2013 little effort had been made to create an Executive Education function or convene an associated business community. This chapter discusses the challenges of developing engagement activity within a research-intensive organisation and how the author used Executive Education as a mechanism to catalyse broader engagement activity whilst appealing to research-led sensibilities. In conclusion, it explores the unexpected benefits of expanding this activity as part of our Public Value Mission
Path dependency, entrepreneurship, and economic resilience in resource-driven economies: Lessons from the Newfoundland offshore oil industry, Canada
No full textResource-driven regional economies have experienced significant growth over the past decade due to increasing prices of raw materials such as oil and the need for customized and site-specific technologies to increase production and reduce risk. As a result, significant amounts of human and financial capital have built up in these regions. However, there are few examples of resource-dependent economies using these regional assets to successfully diversify away from their dependence on extractive industries, leading to profound declines as resource prices decline globally as they did in 2015. This paper examines the evolutionary lock-in and lock-out processes of resource economies and the potential of technology entrepreneurship to initiate path creation in these regions. Based on interviews with entrepreneurs, investors, and policymakers in St. John’s, Newfoundland, we explore the processes through which firms both inside and outside the resource industry are locked-in to existing economic trajectories and the ability of technology entrepreneurs to break out of these limitations and diversify into new industries and markets. We find that the relationships between the region’s culture, its investment environment, and global changes in the oil and gas industry combine to create and reproduce industrial lock-in within the region. If long-term regional diversification and path creation appears to be the exception rather than the rule for resource-driven economies, entrepreneurs stand out as the central drivers of change shaping the path-enabling potential generated through resource booms
Inequality, well-being and (inclusive) productivity growth
No full textThis chapter focuses on current evidence regarding the links between productivity and well-being, inequality and inclusive growth. In the UK the slowdown in productivity growth since the financial crisis has been accompanied by stagnating real wages, rising income and wealth inequality, and austerity. The chapter elaborates on the risk of a potentially ‘vicious cycle’ that may undermine efforts to improve productivity and economic growth, and as such may risk further polarisation of the benefits of improved productivity by exploring key thematic areas. From the analysis, the following themes and areas would appear to be paramount for delivering inclusive productivity growth in the UK: the productivity-related effects of hysteresis, particularly the long-term scarring effect of the financial crisis on regional labour market polarisation; the need for international comparative analysis; demand-led productivity growth and the role of inequality; ways to best manage the productivity gains from digital and technological diffusion to support, rather than undermine, inclusive growth; consideration of ‘soft’ infrastructure and pre-market and non-market factors which affect inclusive productivity growth, including the care economy
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