A report by Dr Ross Brown of the School of Management and researchers at the universities of Glasgow and Stirling shows that there is a mismatch between the nature of high-growth firms and the policies in both Westminster and Holyrood which have been developed to support them. High-growth firms tend in fact to be well-established firms from traditional business sectors. The UK’s growth-orientated firms tend to be in the consumer-orientated or service industries rather than R&D intensive sectors. The report suggests that entrepreneurship and small business policy could be better formulated away from the provision of risk capital funding and R&D grants to more emphasis on peer-to-peer support and specialised advice. The authors of the report call for a major overhaul of enterprise support to generate more high growth firms. [press release]The report, Increasing ‘the Vital 6%’: Designing Public Policy to Support High Growth Firms, is published by NESTA (National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts)
