Location, Location, Location

Driving UK Economic Growth through Scaleup Ecosystems

Scaleups consistently say that they want to be able to access solutions locally to help overcome their barriers to growth. They are seeking a comprehensive local ecosystem that helps them to recruit talent and develop their leadership, opens doors to markets at home and abroad and points them towards the most appropriate financing. They also want to be able to find a flexible infrastructure with up-to-date facilities and resources to support their growth.

In the 2019 ScaleUp Survey almost half (48%) of respondents said they wanted easier access to Growth Hubs and seven out of ten would like a single point of contact to act as a relationship manager for them. Four in ten still felt there was insufficient support to meet their needs and half feel (47%) that the majority of programmes to help are too centred in London / the South East.

A core part of the ScaleUp Institute’s mission is to help generate a locally based agile, vibrant and connected scaleup ecosystem. To achieve this we provide training to the public, private and education sectors on the ingredients to build an effective scaleup environment.

The first of such training was provided in 2016 when the ScaleUp Institute, with the support of Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses UK and Innovate UK, held the ‘Driving Local Economic Growth through Scaleup Ecosystems’ (DEG) course – led by Professor Daniel Isenberg of Babson College. Two original workshops were followed by a third programme in 2018, supported additionally by the British Business Bank.

Thanks to these courses around 200 leaders from LEPs, cities, universities and Growth Hubs from across England, as well as participants from Northern Ireland and Scotland, have taken part in interactive lectures, exercises and case study discussions. They have gained an understanding of the common frameworks deployed globally to remove barriers to scaling and they have been challenged to develop plans for action in their areas.

The ScaleUp Institute has watched the progress made by many of the participants to develop bespoke programmes and initiatives – 50 have now been developed reaching circa 2,500 scaling businesses. Many of which include vitally important account management as well as the key elements of peer-to-peer learning and executive education and development. University and business school engagement plus public/private sector collaboration continue to be features of successful programmes.

Each year we have presented those we believe are exemplar areas and are delighted that in the 2019 Review the number of exemplars has risen to 23. We provide a detailed description of the activities and programmes and record the progress they are making. We believe that each provides an interesting model of engagement and activity from which others can learn, be inspired to shape their local scaleup plans, and from which fresh insights on good practice are emerging. We will continue to monitor these for impact and will seek to feature them as endorsed case studies in future years. These programmes also now feature on the online ScaleUp Support Finder where businesses can seek to register interest in them as well as provide feedback on them.

At the end of this Review, we give an overview of the scaleup plans and programmes across all local areas in the UK in an Annex.