Female angel investors are a critical source of capital and expertise for women-led businesses, but they only represent a small proportion of the overall angel investor population. In Gaining Altitude: Female Angel Investors Across the Regions, the latest report from our Female Founders Forum research programme, we partnered with the Invest in Women Taskforce to better understand Britain’s female angel investor community – paying particular attention to opportunities for supporting its growth.
Towards A More Special Relationship
Britain and the United States have long shared a close bond – spanning military cooperation, cultural exchanges and economic interdependence. Despite this history, there still exists frictions for entrepreneurs from each nation when trying to expand into their respective markets.
In Towards A More Special Relationship: Strengthening entrepreneurial ties between Britain and the United States, Anastasia Bektimirova examines what those challenges are and how they could be addressed.
Small Wonders
Abundant energy supplies are essential to economic growth and if we’re to meet our climate objectives, much more clean generation capacity will need to be built in Britain. The arrival of revolutionary technologies like artificial intelligence – which promise to drive electricity demand upwards – will only exacerbate this requirement.
Small Modular Nuclear reactors, however, could be a solution to Britain’s power conundrum. In this report, our Research Director Eamonn Ives sets out the case for why SMRs can fuel economic growth and what needs to be done to speed up their delivery while bringing down costs.
United Growth
Britain’s regional economic divides have long been recognised, but recent efforts to solve them have achieved little at best. In this report, we survey entrepreneurs from each region of Britain to find out what challenges they face when it comes to running and growing a business, and to gauge their expectations for the future.
While many are optimistic about what’s to come, some remain worried – and a range of obstacles to growth linger over their heads. We conclude with a range of policy recommendations to enable business owners to take their business growth to the next level.
Job Creators 2024
In the third instalment of our Job Creators series, we reveal the proportion of founders behind Britain’s fastest-growing companies that were born overseas. This year, the rate has stayed constant – at 39%, but this is still down from the first year we researched it. Despite this decrease, the data clearly show the contribution immigrants make to Britain’s startup economy.
We conclude the report with a series of policy recommendations for the Government to adopt which would ensure Britain is attractive and open to the world’s brightest and best.
Empowering the Future
Technological advancements are rapidly transforming the job market, necessitating fresh approaches to prepare the next generation for future opportunities. Enterprise education can sit at the heart of ensuring young people have the skills necessary to flourish.
In Empowering the Future, written in partnership with Youth Business International, Philip Salter highlights some of the key policies we think are required to achieve this.
Backing Breakthrough Businesses
The Private Business Commission was launched to investigate why some companies appear to struggle to maximise their growth potential within the UK, and to advocate for policies to better incentivise and enable them to do so.
Focusing on four policy areas — funding, capital markets, taxation and employee incentives — Backing Breakthrough Businesses assesses the current business landscape for Britain’s scaling companies, before culminating with a series of recommendations to spur their growth and ensure Britain is attractive a place as possible for them to stay.
Building Blocks
Britain is a great place to be an entrepreneur – with many of the world’s most successful founders calling it home. The startups they have launched make a vital contribution to the economy, providing jobs, tax revenue, innovative goods and services and more. But there is a palpable sense that we could be doing so much better. Productivity has plateaued for far too long, causing living standards to stagnate, and evidence suggests the pace of innovation has slowed.
In Building Blocks, we set out our vision statement to secure Britain’s economic future – arguing that focusing on getting the basics right first is the best way policymakers can support entrepreneurs.
Neurodiverse founders
Neurodiverse individuals are found in all parts of the economy, and the entrepreneurial community is no exception. Though awareness of neurodiversity is steadily increasing, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s properly understood.
In partnership with Barclays Eagle Labs, we surveyed neurodiverse founders to better understand various questions about being an entrepreneur with neurodiversity. We found that many neurodiverse founders think their neurodiversity gives them an advantage, and while challenges definitely exist, there’s reason to be optimistic that progress is slowly but surely being made.
Entrepreneurs Unwrapped
Understanding how Britain thinks about entrepreneurship is vital if we are to build a society which enables and encourages more people to launch a business. In Entrepreneurs Unwrapped, kindly supported by American Express, we sought to do exactly that.
By surveying both those who have never started a business and current founders, we painted a picture of what Britain really thinks about entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship, and revealed where similarities and contrasts can be drawn between the two groups.
Can the UK Become Competitive on Text-and-Data Mining for AI?
Data is the raw resource upon which AI is trained, and the regulations for how data can be used will have significant consequences for the roll out and quality of AI. There is currently a great deal of legal uncertainty about commercial text-and-data mining (TDM) in the UK, and other countries have moved faster than the UK at securing the legal foundations for training AI.
In this short paper, Dr Anton Howes explains what approaches are being taken with regards to TDM around the world, and what British policymakers could learn from them in order to ensure the UK is a competitive place for AI to be developed.
Accelerate to Excel
In this year’s annual Female Founders Forum report, we take stock of what progress women entrepreneurs have made over the past several years since we started researching and campaigning on policies to remove obstacles they face in starting and growing a business.
Written by Margaret Mitchell, and featuring stories from numerous leading women entrepreneurs, among other things, we show how the amount of equity funding for female-led startups remains stubbornly low.
Risk Readiness Report 2023
Risk is part and parcel of being an entrepreneur, and the best among Britain’s startup community are those who can successfully manage and exploit uncertainty.
In our inaugural annual Risk Readiness Report, published with the international law firm Mishcon de Reya, we set out to better understand entrepreneurs’ attitudes to various questions of risk.
Making Tax Simple
Taxation in the UK is overly complex, which has a negative impact on productivity. Despite the efforts of successive governments to streamline the tax landscape, business owners still spend too long preparing and filing their taxes, or feel obliged to pay specialists to handle them instead.
In Making Tax Simple, published in partnership with Enterprise Nation and Intuit, we take a closer look at the tax system business owners face – paying particular attention to how digital tools can pay dividends for both them and the government.
Access All Areas: Older workers
As well as being a health crisis, the Covid-19 pandemic also posed immense challenges for jobs and the wider economy. One area where this has had long-lasting consequences is in terms of the number of pre-retirement age older people who fell out of the labour market and still remain economically inactive.
In Access All Areas: Older workers, the latest in our series of reports with Enterprise Nation, we examine the causes, consequences and solutions to this stubborn problem — making recommendations to government and businesses alike on how they can get more older people into work and entrepreneurship.
Passport to Progress
Talent is evenly distributed but opportunities are not. For many gifted individuals and entrepreneurs, maximising their potential is contingent on the ability to move to where they can best deploy their skills.
In Passport to Progress: A Blueprint for the World’s Most Pro-Innovation Visa System, published in partnership with ABE, Derin Koçer explains how immigration can enhance entrepreneurship and innovation, analyses international visa frameworks, and makes a series of recommendations for improving migration systems worldwide.
Job Creators 2023
In 2019, we published research showing that half of the 100 fastest growing companies in the UK had a foreign-born founder. In Job Creators 2023, we have repeated our research — and find that the figure has shrunk to 39%.
While the headline statistic might have fallen, we believe the takeaway message remains the same — immigrants play a disproportionate role in setting up lucrative and innovative companies. As such, the UK should do more to welcome international talent to its shores, and we make a series of recommendations for how to do that.
Academic to Entrepreneur
British universities are a wellspring of innovative ideas, many of which go on to be commercialised via ‘spinout’ – companies based upon the intellectual property generated by academics. Recently, however, the UK’s approach to spinouts has come under question, and has prompted a government review into spinout policy.
In Academic to Entrepreneur Unlocking the Potential of UK Spinouts, Dr Anton Howes, Eamonn Ives and Sam Dumitriu explore the history of spinout policy, assess its current strengths and weaknesses, and set out their thoughts for a better system of commercialising academic ideas – arguing the case for a shift towards an approach known as Professor’s Privilege.
Access All Areas: Space
Despite changing consumer and working patterns, access to different ‘spaces’ are vital to entrepreneurs’ growth ambitions – whether they’re in retail, manufacturing, or are services-based.
In the fifth instalment of our Access All Areas series with Enterprise Nation, we look at what the Government can do to ensure small businesses have the types of spaces they need to sell and scale – from business rates reform to planning policy.
Blueprint for a New Great Exhibition
Exhibitions of industry have a long and successful history of being used by policymakers to showcase and inspire innovation. Recent attempts to replicate such exhibitions, however, have not always lived up to their goals – and have been far removed from the momentous success of events such as the Great Exhibition of 1851.
In Blueprint for a New Great Exhibition, Dr Anton Howes explains the background of exhibitions of industry, and how we might feasibly and successfully organise a new one for the modern day, to display and encourage future innovation.