In recent years, most European countries have experienced substantial demographic changes and rising cultural diversity. Understanding the social and economic impacts of these shifts is a major challenge for policymakers. Richard Florida's ideas have provided a popular – and pervasive –...

The digital industries cluster known as Silicon Roundabout has been quietly growing in East London since the 1990s. Rebranded Tech City, it is the focus of huge public and government attention. National and local policy makers wish to accelerate the local area's development: such cluster...

Policymakers need to understand innovation in high-profile sectors like technology. This can be surprisingly hard to observe. We combine UK administrative microdata, media and website content to develop experimental measures of firm innovation – new product/service launches – that complement...

We take a fresh look at firms' innovation-productivity linkages, using novel data capturing new aspects of innovative activity. We combine UK administrative microdata, media and website content to develop experimental metrics – new product/service launches – for a large panel of SMEs....

A growing number of studies find linkages between workforce diversity and business performance, but key aspects of this relationship remain unclear. First, within the firm, the role of 'top team' demography on firm outcomes is surprisingly little understood. Second, urban location may amplify...

Governments around the world want to develop their ICT and digital industries. Policymakers thus need a clear sense of the size and characteristics of digital businesses, but this is hard to do with conventional datasets and industry codes. This paper uses innovative 'big data' resources to...