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 05 February 2008
Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills (DIUS)
 
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Business expertise for growth

Expert knowledge and specialist input for targeted small-medium businesses to grow

Purpose

To improve the performance and productivity of businesses in the UK by providing expertise to help small-medium sized enterprises (SMEs) realize their full potential for growth and success.

How will this be achieved?

Through mentoring and coaching:

  1. at a national level, to meet a national market failure;
  2. at a regional or local level to meet market failures that would differ between regions or localities.

Why offer public sector support?

The rationale for this intervention varies depending upon whether the underlying problem is national or sub-national.

At the national level the intervention would fill in a missing market in business expertise. The intervention would be designed to rectify infrequent but possibly important instances where:

  • there are major advances in business technologies and processes which radically alter the competitiveness of companies, e.g. lean manufacturing;
  • yet markets for UK SMEs to acquire this knowledge are missing; e.g. due to the uneven geographical distribution of new technology and the industrial concentration of some industries;
  • the intervention provides a means for UK SMEs to acquire knowledge of the technology or process until such time as UK based consultants and others make the knowledge available.

At the regional and local level there may be specific geographically defined reasons why business expertise is not available. The intervention would be directed to rectifying the local market failure. Since the market failure might vary by locality the required type of expertise might differ from those provided nationally. For this reason the type of expertise will be determined locally after appraisal at regional and local levels to determine the existence of a market failure (as set out in the Treasury ‘Green Book’), additionality and value for money.

What will be offered?

Subsidised access and provision of quality assured business expertise and specialist and advanced skills to SMEs which they would otherwise not have. The expertise would enable the take up of new technologies, techniques and processes. Broader benefits might include:

  • lower costs;
  • higher productivity; and
  • creation of a market for the supply of mentoring and coaching services in new areas.

The expertise would be provided by an external person or organisation most appropriate to meeting the individual businesses’ needs. The expertise would vary and might be highly technical or specialist including advanced coaching for managing the growth of the business.

Who will be eligible?

National programmes would target SMEs where there is a:

  • new technology or business process which is commercially important and materially affects the competitiveness of enterprises;
  • barrier to acquiring that new technology or process, and where
  • the intervention would be successful in creating a market for the type of expertise and the intervention would be time limited.

SMEs would be eligible for programmes targeted at regional and local needs where:

  • local or regional appraisal identifies a market failure;
  • there is a well defined set of monitored exit criteria which would limit the duration of the intervention; and either
  • the recipients are located in a deprived area, or
  • the recipients are high growth or high potential companies, or
  • the recipients are one of the selected few priority sectors in the region.
 

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