This sub-theme explores the types of government interventions and support programmes that are necessary to help new firms grow and become resilient to external shocks.
Staff
- Dr Abdullah Gok
- Dr Russell Matthews
- Dr Suzanne Mawson
- Dr Samuel Mwaura
- Professor Eleanor Shaw
- Dr Anna Spadavecchia
- Dr Bernd Wurth
- Professor Nigel Lockett
Research
Abdullah Gok
Dr Abdullah Gok studies the effectiveness of entrepreneurship policies by using the realist review method to synthesise the existing evidence. He was recently a part of a Scottish Government funded study in which a team explored the effectiveness of public policies and programmes that encouraged women to engage in entrepreneurship.
Suzanne Mawson
Suzanne Mawson’s work focuses on high growth/scale-up entrepreneurship, including the nature and processes of growth in these firms, their support requirements (financial and otherwise) and the wider public policy context and support mechanisms designed for high growth firms/scale-ups (high growth entrepreneurship policy). She is also researching wider issues related to business growth including the role of entrepreneurial financing; the effect of changes in ownership structure and business models; the development and impact of business accelerator programmes at both firm and economy levels.
Eleanor Shaw
Professor Shaw’s work has focused on both women entrepreneurs. Her research on women’s entrepreneurship has been funded by the ESRC and supported by several retail banks. This work has explored women’s access to finance for start-up and growth and has found that women-led businesses are typically undercapitalised relative to their matched male partner. This initial undercapitalisation has a longer term impact on the growth patterns of women-led ventures.
Eleanor’s research has also examined the networking practises of women entrepreneurs and examined the impact of these on their experiences of entrepreneurship and of leading an entrepreneurial venture. Her research has identified differences in the networking practises of matched samples of male and female entrepreneurs which reveals that female entrepreneurs are routinely not identified by other (male) network participants as credible as their male counterparts.
Collectively, these findings have influenced policy interventions at UK and Scottish Government levels including the introduction of a Women’s Enterprise Strategy and changes to bank practises specifically credit scoring applications for funding to support venture start up and growth.
Anna Spadavecchia
Anna Spadavecchia’s recent work in Entrepreneurship Policy focussed on the impact of national and regional policies in the development of clusters (Clusters 2020). Focusing on countries such as Italy, Anna has also examined the political economy of financing small and medium-sized firms (SMEs) (Political Economy) and the relationship between local banks and SMEs, as compared with the relationship between large banks and corporations (Small Businesses and Local Banks).
Nigel Lockett
Nigel Lockett is contributing to the enterprise education policy with research on entrepreneurship education for natural scientists and graduates.
His NERC-funded project (2016-17 DTP and CDT ‘added value activities in innovation- £69,000) considered stimulating entrepreneurial thinking for scientists (SETS) and the 2019 ‘The University as an Entrepreneurial Learning Space: The role of socialized learning’ paper in International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behaviour and Research focuses on graduate entrepreneurship.