The evidence is mounting that the pandemic has spurred more people in the UK to want to become an entrepreneur, with the latest Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) report finding that the crisis has played a significant role in getting more people to think about starting a business.

The GEM report is probably the best resource for comparing entrepreneurship between countries. This year it reports that: “The United Kingdom was one of the few European economies to increase its entrepreneurial intentions rate, which is adults expecting to create a new business in the next three years, up from 7.6% in 2019 to 8.2% in 2020. Of those adults intending to start a new business, 80% indicated that this decision was influenced by the pandemic to some extent.” This represents the highest figure among European countries, and the same rate as the United States, which "suggests a level of adaptability to the pandemic that is rare among peer economies,” write the authors. When it comes to measures of entrepreneurial intentions, being more similar to the US and less like Europe is generally a good thing.

The pandemic has dented ambitions though. Only 1.3% of UK adults plan to hire six or more employees over the next five years, compared to 2.6% in 2019. And 4.2% plan on hiring no employees at all.

The report offers more notes of optimism, however, with the UK improving on a number of metrics between 2019 and 2020. Experts found improvements in: access to entrepreneurial finance; research and development transfers; commercial and professional infrastructure; government policy; and government entrepreneurship programs. And while the Government’s response to pandemic was only ranked 20th among GEM economies, on the entrepreneurial response to the pandemic the UK came fifth.

While the pandemic isn’t quite over, entrepreneurs and those supporting them should take a moment to pat themselves on the back. Then we must strive to support this new cohort of wannabe entrepreneurs realise their entrepreneurial intentions.

Really really want
We spend a lot of time talking to politicians and civil servants about policies to support entrepreneurship. We also spend a lot of time chatting to people like us who lobby the government on behalf of businesses of all sizes. In normal times we even have a group that meets for a drink to discuss this stuff after work. Alongside the research, consultation responses and media work, I think it’s fair to say we have a decent impact on entrepreneurship policy in the UK.

As the team has grown, and we’ve increased the number of Advisers, we’ve expanded our expertise. Collectively we know a lot about a decent number of things – or at least know an expert or entrepreneur who does. But there are still gaps in our knowledge.

I want us to get better at crowdsourcing your ideas, to take them to government. One way I’ll try to do that is asking for more policy ideas in this newsletter. To that end, on Wednesday we have a webinar with Paul Scully, the Small Business Minister. While there will be opportunities to ask questions on the day via Slido, it would also be great to get your questions in advance.

I can’t promise to ask them all, but I will read every suggestion and I’ll forward them onto our research team, which will help inform our work. The minister will be joined by Chris Hulatt, co-founder of Octopus, and both will be talking about ‘how to build a nation of entrepreneurs’. So what do you want the government to do differently?