The importance of supporting scale-ups

Fast-growing companies “are having a disproportionate effect on jobs growth” despite representing less than 1% of the UK’s registered businesses, the Enterprise Research Centre’s deputy director, Mark Hart, told the FT’s Jonathan Moules this month.Such companiesare thought togenerate roughly 20% of the UK’s private sector employment according to findings of the ERC’s research teams based at Warwick and Aston universities’ business schools.

Jonathan Moules’ FT feature explores the ways in which we canencourage more entrepreneurs to scale-up their businesses (i.e., achieve faster growth in revenues than costs). Ensuring that there are sufficiently large funds accessible to startups looking to scale-up andways to connect those entrepreneurs that are successful, facilitating an “ecosystem of shared growth,” are just two solutions suggestedby Richard Heggie,head of the high growth and entrepreneurs initiative at Barclays.

Irene Graham, CEO of the Scale-Up Institute, also notes that the financial data filed with the government agency, Companies House, is a useful resource that can be used to identify those enterprises that show scale-up potential . Irene Graham will be speaking at the UKBAA Angel Investment Summit 2016, which will take placenext week, on Tuesday 1st November, at Canada House.

To read the full article in the FT, click here.