In England, publicly supported advice to small firms is organized primarily through the Business Link (BL) network. Using the programme theory underlying this business support, we develop four propositions and test these empirically using data from a new survey of over 3000 English SMEs. We find...

Most advanced economies offer publicly financed advice services to start-up firms and SMEs. In England, local or regional Business Links organisations have provided these services, and divided their support into nonintensive one-off contacts providing information or advice and more intensive...

On 30th October 2003, at a joint Forum of the Advanced Institute of Management Research (AIM) and the Councilfor Industry and Higher Education (CIHE) academics, practitioners and policy makers discussed dimensions of theUK’s skills challenge. This report, which summarises the discussions that...

The evaluation assessed the impact of Business Link Local Services on those businesses that received assistance in the 6 month period April to September 2003 and its impact over the subsequent period to May/June 2005. The original aims of the report were:a) To understand and quantify...

The review shows that there are many different models of support to small business - different countries make different choices. The review developed a scale that outlines 26 different choices for policymakers in their design of programmes for business advice. It is important that these choices...

This executive summary reports on a study that tracked Euro preparationsby UK SMEs that had trade or ownership links with the EU. This study isunique because unlike other studies which measure Euro preparationsamongst the general UK business population, it tracks ‘euro aware’ UKbusinesses...