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Three Quarters Of UK SMEs Think Innovation Is Important For Recovery From COVID-19

Hernaldo Turrillo — Wed, 23 Sep 2020 13:31:29 +0000

Three Quarters Of UK SMEs Think Innovation Is Important For Recovery From COVID-19

· 85% of UK SMEs consider innovation an important part of Covid-19 recovery, yet less than a fifth (15%) strongly agree the Government is doing enough to support it

· Nearly a quarter (22%) of respondents have never claimed R&D tax credits, despite being aware they exist

· One fifth of SMEs said they had no strategy in place to track their IP

Just 15% of UK SMEs think the Government is creating an economic environment in which they are encouraged to innovate, according to new research by GovGrant, the R&D and IP specialists. This is despite the fact that over three quarters of these businesses consider innovation to be important for recovery from Covid-19, reaffirming the disconnect between businesses and the Government support schemes available.

The survey collected the views of over 500 SME decision-makers across seven different sectors. The findings show that whilst 85% of respondents acknowledged the importance of innovation, just 26% felt their current activity was highly innovative.

Luke Hamm, CEO, GovGrant, comments:

“Despite the Government’s R&D Roadmap outlining its commitment to R&D and innovation, our research shows the need for further support when it comes to recognising innovative activity. SMEs urgently need clarity and a common definition of innovation that transcends sectors, geography and generations if we’re going to plug the gap between the support that’s available and how SMEs make use of it. This is particularly true when it comes to IP.”

This might be the result of confusion around the definition of innovation, with respondents split across three different definitions – 42% of respondents said they viewed innovation as tiny and continual changes that happen daily, with the rest saying that it either happened rarely (but made a considerable impact) or occurred sporadically. This disconnect may well be the reason that many SMEs are failing to claim valuable tax credits for their R&D, with nearly a quarter stating they had never done so.

GovGrant’s research also revealed that 43% of UK SMEs do not have anyone in charge of the commercialisation of intellectual property and innovation at Board level. As a result, only a quarter of respondents (24%) thought the main purpose of a patent was to add commercial value, and one fifth said they had no strategy in place to track their IP.

Luke Hamm concludes:

“Innovation has never been more important for creating a resilient and productive economy post Covid-19, especially with Brexit and the end of the transition period also fast approaching. We need to be taking intellectual property much more seriously. The Government must do more to improve awareness and accessibility of its support schemes, including the Patent Box, if SMEs are going to invest in their R&D and thrive. We urgently need to review the patent process and make it attractive on the global stage.”

Hernaldo Turrillo

Hernaldo Turrillo is a writer and author specialised in innovation, AI, DLT, SMEs, trading, investing and new trends in technology and business. He has been working for ztudium group since 2017. He is the editor of openbusinesscouncil.org, tradersdna.com, hedgethink.com, and writes regularly for intelligenthq.com, socialmediacouncil.eu. Hernaldo was born in Spain and finally settled in London, United Kingdom, after a few years of personal growth. Hernaldo finished his Journalism bachelor degree in the University of Seville, Spain, and began working as reporter in the newspaper, Europa Sur, writing about Politics and Society. He also worked as community manager and marketing advisor in Los Barrios, Spain. Innovation, technology, politics and economy are his main interests, with special focus on new trends and ethical projects. He enjoys finding himself getting lost in words, explaining what he understands from the world and helping others. Besides a journalist, he is also a thinker and proactive in digital transformation strategies. Knowledge and ideas have no limits.

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State of UK Businesses: 700,000 New Firms And Net Record Funding

Hernaldo Turrillo — Fri, 17 Jan 2020 14:02:18 +0000

700,000 New Firms were created in 2019 while high-tech start-ups attracted net record £10bn in funding

The state of UK businesses can be described as healthy as almost 700,000 new firms were launched in the UK last year, as growing high-tech firms snapped up more than £10bn in venture capital investment

Last year 681,704 new businesses were launched in Britain, a 2.8 per cent rise compared to a year ago, according to information gathered by LearnBonds.

The record number of start-ups in 2019 is noteworthy considering the UK was in its third year of prolonged Brexit negotiations, which has hit business investment and confidence.

UK tech firms attracted £10.1bn from private equity firms last year, a 44 per cent jump compared to a year ago which broke the industry’s all-time high set in 2017.

This UK figure topped global digital new business funding, including in the US and China, where investment fell 20 per cent and 65 per cent respectively, according to research this week from UK digital lobby group Tech Nation and data body Dealroom.

Top ten UK business regions – by new firms registered in 2019

Greater London – 221,373

Birmingham – 14,509

Manchester – 9,064

Leeds – 7,492

Glasgow – 6,733

Bournemouth, Poole, Christchurch – 5,627

Bromsgrove – 5,522

Liverpool – 5,421

Edinburgh – 5,155

Leicester – 5,060

Across Europe, the UK picked up a third of Europe’s £30.4bn total tech funding. It attracted more cash than Germany and France combined, which came in second and third place at £5.4bn and £3.4bn across the region.

More widely in the UK, new firms were launched in over 700 different industries, according to the Centre for Entrepreneurs’ research. This included ten companies which registered their main activity as raising llamas and alpacas, as well as the formation of 429 driving schools in 2019.

“It is encouraging that despite a politically turbulent year in which business confidence hit new lows, business formations continued to set records,” said Matt Smith, director of policy and research at the Centre for Entrepreneurs.

Britain’s 5.9 million small firms employed 16.6 million workers at the start of 2019, turning over £2.2trn in annual sales, according to the Federation of Small Businesses.

LearnBonds news editor Roger Baird said: “The rate of new firms starting up in the UK is remarkable, considering how global trade tensions and Brexit have knocked business confidence. Napoleon once dismissed the British as a nation of shopkeepers. France now longs for the same level of entrepreneurial zeal that drives Britons to be their own boss.”

Hernaldo Turrillo

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The National Cost Of ‘Binertia’ Or Why UK Businesses Throw Away Billions By Stockpiling Rubbish

Hernaldo Turrillo — Thu, 03 Oct 2019 12:11:20 +0000

The National Cost Of ‘Binertia’ Or Why UK Businesses Throw Away Billions By Stockpiling Rubbish

164,000 houses’ worth of space are being wasted by people storing rubbish and old junk
Cost to UK SMEs alone of storing junk could be as high as £34 billion per annum nationally in wasted rent

Homes and businesses across the UK are storing rubbish and old junk that is wasting space, rent and rates, according to research by Censuswide for Skoup, a ‘pay-as-you-throw’ service for surplus clutter and waste.

Research by Skoup indicates that homes and business are wasting space and money on storage for bulky items that they’ll never use, such as sofas, filing cabinets, old equipment and general junk that can’t be recycled at the kerbside.

The data also found that the average home is wasting six square feet of living space, storing rubbish because the items are too large or too difficult to recycle or dispose of. The scale of this waste at national level is reaching startling proportions. Collectively, the national “waste of space” in UK homes amounts to 3,444 acres of living space, equivalent to the entire floor space of 164,000 average sized UK houses, 1,722 football pitches or ten Hyde Parks.

The worst part of the country for storing rubbish is Norwich, where the biggest hoarders store a colossal 7.36 square feet on average in their homes. In the South East a staggering one in 50 homes have more than 20 square foot dedicated to junk storage. Age was also a factor in hoarding – the baby boomer generation (age 55+) store more than twice as much junk as Gen Z (age 16-24).

“Many of us wish that we had more space in our homes and businesses, and often we overlook the rubbish that has literally become part of the furniture,” said George Pearce, Commercial Development Manager, who is leading the national launch of Skoup.

To gauge pent-up demand, Skoup placed a skip in a street in Solihull and filmed what happened next. The Skoup skip was filled within just three hours.

“If you replicate what we did with this experiment nationally, it’s clear that there are thousands of skips’ worth of rubbish that UK homes are desperate to get rid of, not counting the extra waste that they tolerate,” George added.

Businesses are also housing unwanted desks, chairs, old equipment and more, according to Skoup polling. The average office of a small business has enough space taken up with rubbish to seat an additional two employees and most say they have been hoarding for a matter of years rather than weeks or months.

Office floor space equivalent to just one employee’s work area can cost around £6,000 per annum, based on a per square foot rental fee of £4 per month.

“When you consider the cost of business rent and rates for storing rubbish, clutter and junk, the total national bill for SMEs alone stretches into the tens of billions of pounds per annum, which is simply staggering,” George added.

Skoup is a simple ‘pay-as-you-throw’ rubbish and waste collection service for items that are too big or unusual to be added to usual roadside collections. Items collected by Skoup are handled by Biffa, which has the largest waste management and recycling infrastructure in the UK. The name ‘Skoup’ comes from the Greek ‘Skoupídia,’ meaning junk, litter or refuse. It is also linked to the English ‘Scoop,’ meaning to remove or gather something up.

Hernaldo Turrillo

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SMEs Recruitment: UK Businesses Battling The Unseen Costs Of Recruiting

Hernaldo Turrillo — Wed, 02 Oct 2019 11:49:23 +0000

SMEs Recruitment: UK Businesses Battling The Unseen Costs Of Recruiting

Businesses employing up to 250 people are losing 14% of their staff each year, only to see 39% of their new employees leave within six months, according to new research by Oleeo, the leading global provider of innovative talent acquisition technology. This amounts to small to medium enterprises wasting an average of £125,347 a year on failed recruitment. The ‘See the Unseen’ research report examines the myriad of challenges HR teams are battling with in a bid to find people who are right for both their roles and organisations. These result in considerable, and often unseen, costs that need to be understood and addressed.

Charles Hipps, CEO and Founder at Oleeo, comments: “People often think of recruitment as a cost centre. They typically focus on the things they can see, such as agency charges or the cost of running the internal team. Far less attention is paid to hidden factors, such as staff churn, time taken for new recruits to start performing or an organisation’s effectiveness at attracting talent that both stays and performs. Yet these unseen costs have a fundamental impact on a business’ bottom line, its performance and the workload facing its HR team.”

According to Oleeo’s research, composed from viewpoints of over 100 leading HR heads, finding the right talent is a major concern for UK businesses, with two fifths in a constant battle with people leaving. Almost half (47%) of those questioned expect to lose over a tenth of their workforce in any given year. When this is combined with 14% of HR heads expecting new hires to leave within just 30 days, and 39% estimating it will be within the first six months, the scale of the problem is clear to see. Indeed, 31% expect a ‘long-term’ employee to remain in their role for just 18 months or less, which means excessive amounts of time and money are being spent on recruitment which is failing in the long-term.

Oleeo’s research suggests the recruitment process itself brings with it a plethora of problems. There are now 91 touch points in the average recruitment process making it unbelievably complex, yet HR teams are increasingly being judged on their speed to hire.

On top of this, 72% feel that competition for top talent is greater, or at least the same, as it was three years ago, whilst 94% have a problem with reneging – where people pull out of the process after accepting an offer. In terms of reneging, more than three quarters feel it is as bad, if not worse, when compared to five years ago. The report also suggests that recruiters are struggling to find the talent to fill certain roles, with managerial, STEM and IT positions being the most difficult to recruit for. This means that the hiring process can be long, drawn out and resource-sapping.

Adding another layer of complexity to the situation is the diversity conundrum, which is still an issue for one in five, with 48% actively looking to improve the ethnic diversity of their employees. More than a third are striving to increase gender diversity, with 33% wanting a more diverse workforce in terms of their employees’ education and background.

Even when a candidate is found and becomes an employee, there is a considerable delay until they deliver, and according to Oleeo’s report many never do. 71% of HR professionals say it takes a new starter three months or more to be fully up to speed and producing the same level of work as the person they are replacing, with 14% saying it takes between nine months to a year. Interestingly, almost half believe new employees live up to expectations less than 20% of the time. Having staff underperforming for such a significant period of time inevitably impacts colleagues, and the company’s bottom line.

The Hidden costs

All these factors put a significant, often hidden, cost burden on organisations. The data shows that the average cost per hire, based on a £25,000 per annum role, considering all of the associated costs – HR team’s time, recruitment costs, software, training and onboarding costs, and loss of productivity – is £9,183.

Hipps comments: “As a practical example, let’s take an SME that employs 250 people. It is losing 14% of its staff each year, plus 39% of its new employees leave within six months. When you combine these figures with the £9,183 cost, we can assume that it is wasting £125,347 on failed recruitment each year. According to our research, 54% of senior decision makers spend 5% or more of their turnover on recruitment. This can either be viewed as substantial backing from UK businesses keen to find new ways of attracting top talent, or as precious revenue being needlessly spent.”

Those questioned see technology as the answer, with many of the more proactive companies feeling that it helps them find top talent faster, keep candidates more engaged and identify those most likely to succeed and stay. 41% think automated decision-making will speed up their time to hire, and one third feel it will make the decision process more consistent. 39% feel AI will reduce the risk of missing out on ‘hidden gems’, others believe it will be key in removing bias and predicting the likelihood of someone accepting a role.

Hipps concludes: “As the research shows, the hidden cost of recruiting is more than we initially imagined. With greater volumes and an increased need for diverse workforces, if people don’t embrace technology things are never going to get better. Technology allows HR teams to have both quality and quantity when it comes to searching for top talent. With the right systems in place, they can effectively and quickly pick their way through large amounts of applicants, finding just the right people that are going to be successful and stay.”

Hernaldo Turrillo

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Over A Quarter Of Businesses Plan To Relocate Outside The UK

Hernaldo Turrillo — Tue, 21 May 2019 08:30:24 +0000

Over A Quarter Of Businesses Plan To Relocate Outside The UK

Better amenities, talent pools, tax breaks, affordable real estate and increased odds of success are just a few of the reasons businesses choose to relocate. A new address has the potential to improve profitability, provide access to new markets, increase employee happiness and even lower the overall costs of doing business.

With Brexit uncertainty in the UK, a survey by Instant Offices had found 28% of businesses are gearing up for relocation as they identify opportunities both in and outside of the EU, putting a possible move on the cards for many workers in the UK. Specifically, research also found the tech and finance sectors are under the most pressure to offer relocation opportunities to top talent or risk losing them.

However, in addition to logistics, moving costs and operational disruption, a lack of an effective relocation strategy can also increase the risk of losing valuable employees. Backed up with research, Lucinda Pullinger, Global Head of HR at Instant Offices gives a breakdown on how business owners can retain their most valuable talent during their plans to relocate.

What Encourages Employees to Relocate?

According to a study by YouGov, geography plays a major role in the willingness of talent to relocate, with more workers likely to move to a location if it is relatively close.

Fortunately, top talent is on board, and most of the millennial and Gen Z workforce say financial incentives are not as important as experience and cultural understanding, with 33% saying they would likely leave a company if relocation opportunities weren’t offered as an option.

UK employees rank the following cities as destinations they would most likely relocate to for work:

Cambridge
Brighton
Edinburgh
Bristol
Manchester

With Cambridge shown as the top destination that employees are most likely to relocate for work, a report by Bidwells also indicates Cambridgeshire remains a magnet for Science and Technology companies that are looking beyond the current Brexit Uncertainty.

When it comes to crossing borders, Sourcing Focus, one of the largest relocation surveys, covered 28,000 employers across 27 countries. The survey revealed that 78% of people are willing to relocate within their national borders or abroad for increased pay, to advance their careers or to learn another language.

Top 10 work destinations

Retaining Talent During a Relocation

Finding and keeping top talent is crucial for business success, so whether moving one city away or setting off abroad, there are ways to retain your top workers during a big move.

Offer a Relocation Package

Replacing an employee can cost up to six times their salary, on average, in recruiting and training expenses, and impact morale and overall productivity, according to research by Accounts and Legal. If aiming to retain talent, relocation packages can be negotiated and may include things like assistance with moving costs, legal fees, travel costs or temporary accommodation. In the UK, some relocation costs up to £8,000 are exempt from reporting and paying tax and national insurance, according to Gov.UK.

Support the Transition

Whether by helping financially or curating a list of resources to assist with a stress-free move, ease the concerns of your talent by providing a clear, step-by-step road map of what the move entails, what it means for their career and how the business is willing to assist.

Encourage Flexibility

Support employees who have loose ends to tie up and agree on a realistic time frame for moving. By introducing flexible hours and providing an agile work environment, employees can ease into a job in a new location while balancing the act of settling into a new location.

Consider Remote Work

According to OddsMonkey, Business owners predict around 50% of the UK workforce will be working remotely by 2020. With the growth of technology and the increase in flexible office space and co-working options in major cities around the world, your workforce can connect from anywhere.

Hernaldo Turrillo

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Digital Transformation: This is Why UK Businesses Struggle to Totally Embrace New Tech

Hernaldo Turrillo — Thu, 07 Mar 2019 11:51:55 +0000

New study finds leaders lean too heavily on technology understanding in digital transformation decisions
Digital transformation-driven financial rewards difficult to show
UK organisations report gap between digital transformation priorities and performance
Whole-of-business approach required for digital transformation success

Digital Transformation: This is Why UK Businesses Struggle to Totally Embrace New Tech

By placing an all-encompassing focus on the role of technology when making digital transformation decisions, UK businesses are ironically reducing their chances of success.

This was one of the main findings of Telstra’s Disruptive Decision-Making research, which surveyed 3,810 senior decision-makers from 12 industries in 14 markets around the world to uncover insights into strengths and weaknesses around their digital transformation programs.

Leaning too heavily on technology

When rating decision-making across four factors for success – people, processes, technology understanding and partnerships – British businesses ranked ‘technology understanding’ as the area where they feel by far the most confident.

Seventy-seven per cent of UK respondents felt their organisation makes technology decisions ‘well’ or ‘extremely well’. While the understanding of technology and its performance is important, other factors are equally significant.

Telstra’s Managing Director for EMEA Tom Homer said that organisations that are highly digitally mature (22% in the UK, compared to 21% globally) show greater focus on people and processes.

“I believe that digital transformation is technology-enabled, but people-led. Yet our research shows employees are not being given the attention they warrant,” Mr Homer said.

“Successful digital transformation relies on more than the right technology. It requires the right culture, the right people and the right processes to support them. Digital transformation should be a company journey that involves upskilling and changing employee mindsets, adapting structures and ways of working, and creating teams that can maximise the new technologies being introduced.”

Whole-of-business approach needed

The research found that a company-wide approach to digital transformation is significantly more likely to result in success. However 53% of UK organisations are allowing business departments to drive individual digital initiatives.

A further 15% said they outsource as much as possible and only 31% have an integrated, whole-of-company digital transformation strategy.

“Globally, organisations that have a whole-of-business digital transformation strategy are significantly more likely to be highly digitally mature, make extremely good digital decisions, and see the impact of digital transformation across the business,” Mr Homer said.

“The research demonstrates that UK organisations have an opportunity to integrate digital transformation activity across all areas of the business, but this needs to be led by a clear company strategy from the C-suite and board level down.”

Companies like https://cavendishwood.com/ also help companies with the digital transformation of their businesses.

Digital transformation steps. Source: mitechnews.com

Priorities and performance rankings are inversed

The research also revealed a substantial gap between digital transformation priorities and performance.

Organisations in the UK rated their top three digital transformation priorities as (1) optimise technology to move faster, (2) manage risk and compliance, and (3) protect digital assets from cyber threats.

However when it came to decision-making performance, these priorities ranked as among the lowest.

“One of the most interesting findings in this research was the gap between what UK businesses ranked as their highest priorities, and their performance in the same areas,” Mr Homer said.

“Cyber security was identified as a particular focus area in the UK. But despite ‘protecting digital assets from cyber threats’ rating as the third top priority – it achieved one of the lowest performances score in terms of ability to deliver. This was the same for the UK’s top priority of optimising technology to move faster, which was ranked 16th out of 17 priorities for performance.

“The lack of alignment between digital transformation performance and priorities such as security and agility is symptomatic of the fact that UK businesses are not taking the whole whole-of-business approach necessary to address these priorities.”

Increased customer experience, but increasing profit harder

The research found that while organisations in the UK are increasing their investment in digital transformation, many businesses had yet to realise the financial impact of their efforts.

A quarter of UK businesses (25%) invested more than US$1 million in digital transformation products and services over the past year. This is set to increase as 24% of respondents said their company’s total spend on digital transformation would grow by more than 10% in the next three years. However, showing ‘hard outcomes’ of this investment was more difficult.

“In looking at measurement of digital transformation programs, we found that UK companies find it particularly tough to show financial outcomes. In fact, of all the business outcomes surveyed, increasing profit margins scored the second lowest, while the softer qualitative measure of increased customer experience ranked first,” Mr Homer said.

“Successful companies are clear on what digital transformation means for their organisation, they have empowered their people, strengthened their processes and identified their key partners.”

Hernaldo Turrillo

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R&D Tax Credits: How To Become ‘Innovative Active’ And Qualify For Them

Hernaldo Turrillo — Thu, 06 Dec 2018 12:13:53 +0000

R&D Tax Credits: How To Become ‘Innovative Active’ And Qualify For Them

When people think of research and development (R&D), they often picture large corporations or specialist science, tech or pharmaceutical companies. This explains why, despite the Government’s efforts to encourage innovation in UK industry through the introduction of R&D tax credits, only one in five (19%) of businesses that can be classed as being ‘innovation active’ have ever claimed money back for their time developing new products or processes.

This could be due to the complicated nature of processing the claims, as many business owners may not understand what qualifies as R&D or how to go about making a claim. To help companies to better understand the confusing world of R&D tax credits, industry expert Nigel Urquhart, Technical Analyst at MPA Group, has outlined four things businesses could be doing to qualify for R&D tax credits – simply by continuing the work you’re already doing.

Developing technically improved products

If you are a business that manufactures products and you’re constantly working to improve those products through research and experimentation, this qualifies as R&D. One surprising thing is that whether you’re successful or not in developing a new product doesn’t actually matter as, in the case of R&D tax credits, any time spent on the process still counts.

One company that has been successful in producing technically improved products and claiming R&D tax credits is Bee Lighting, which develops lighting for vehicles that are used on land, sky and sea. It has an innovative approach to work, investing in high design and engineering specialism to produce products that exactly meet a client brief for new bulbs. In one case, to create the right single small light for one client it developed and tested over 100 iterations of lens shape, 1000 frosting effects and four ways of fixing the lens. That led to a happy client, and the work that went into it qualified for a R&D tax rebate.

Most innovative companies in the UK

Creating new systems or software to improve your quality of service

When businesses see a new software or manufacturing development that would enable them to improve their product or service, it’s common to look at ways of integrating that technical advancement into what they do in order to improve service quality. The good news is that if you’re doing that you could qualify for R&D tax credits.

One example of a business that has done this successfully is Logistex, a leading logistics integration company, which worked in collaboration with Pharmacy2U, a pioneer in digital healthcare, to design and develop an automated system to accurately pick, pack and dispatch both prescribed and over-the-counter medicines, at a rate of over 600 prescription orders per hour. The new system integrates a range of technologies, including pick to light, an automated packaging solution and automated twin headed dispensing robots; all of which presented technical challenges in development. Bringing these new technologies into its offering helps move the industry forward and enabled Logistex to claim R&D tax credits.

Modifying existing systems to improve efficiency, capacity or performance

Almost every business, no matter which industry or market it operates in, will want to improve efficiency, capacity and performance. Looking at ways to improve this won’t only increase output, sales and, long-term, the profit of the business, it will also qualify the organisation for R&D tax credits.

Brainomix, a world leader in imaging software for neurological and cerebrovascular diseases, identified that a lack of timely, available expertise for brain CT scan interpretation can delay stroke patients from accessing life-saving treatments. Building on the systems that are already out there, it has since developed the CE-marked, award-winning stroke imaging software, e-ASPECTS. This modification to the existing CT scan helped support stroke physicians deliver fast, consistent diagnosis. However, organisations don’t need to be saving lives to qualify, they just need to show how the work they have done has improved performance.

Brainomix, a world leader in imaging software for neurological and cerebrovascular diseases, identified that a lack of timely, available expertise for brain CT scan interpretation can delay stroke patients from accessing life-saving treatments

Developing bespoke solutions for particular problems

Every client is different and there won’t be many businesses that haven’t been presented with a unique problem by a particular client. Principally of course, the work that goes in to developing solutions for a particular problem is to meet your client’s needs. However, it also has the added benefit that it makes you eligible for R&D tax credits.

One business that has been able to do this successfully is 48.3 Scaffold Design Limited, highly skilled structural engineers who design and develop scaffolding systems for commercial projects throughout the UK. It believes that it’s not about generic scaffold designs, and want to create unique systems and challenging projects that develop new solutions. By taking this distinct approach and pushing the boundaries in its field, the business qualifies for R&D tax credits – like many others in the building sector which are looking for ways to improve current systems.

Nigel Urquhart, Technical Analyst at MPA Group, adds: “In our experience, UK businesses are some of the most innovative in the world when it comes to advancing their products, systems and services. However, relatively few are aware that this entitles them to make huge savings when it comes to R&D tax credits. Of course, most businesses develop new products and processes simply to meet the needs of clients and customers, yet this quality of service doesn’t only help improve reputation, it could easily save them tens of thousands of pounds each year too.”

Hernaldo Turrillo

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Birmingham Climbs Up to Become the ‘UK’s Most Entrepreneurial City’ in 2018

Hernaldo Turrillo — Fri, 14 Sep 2018 08:00:26 +0000

Birmingham Climbs Up to Become the ‘UK’s Most Entrepreneurial City’ in 2018

London may lead the pack when it comes to business start-ups in Britain, but the latest research from Instant Offices reveals the UK’s other major cities are making a significant contribution to entrepreneurialism in the UK.

Instant’s Entrepreneurial Index ranks the UK’s leading cities by analysing Companies House data and comparing average population in each city with the number of businesses launched there year on year. And this year, Birmingham has stormed to the top of the league for start-ups.

Despite uncertainty around Brexit, the UK’s start-up ecosystem saw record investment growth in 2017, as according to a report by Deal Room, UK investment grew by 87% to €7.1 billion, which is more than Germany, France and Sweden combined.

According to a Startup Outlook Report, UK start-ups are optimistic with 49% of entrepreneurs saying they are confident in better business conditions in 2018 while 42% said conditions would remain the same. Eight in 10 start-ups plan to expand their teams in 2018.

Source: Instant’s Entrepreneurial Index

Birmingham Tops London

London leads the pack for total number of start-ups, as would be expected, with 145,993 businesses launched in 2017. But, on a pro rata basis, Birmingham surpasses the capital as the Most Entrepreneurial UK City in 2018 with its impressive start-up to population ratio.

With significant growth over the past few years, Birmingham’s ability to attract and support early-stage businesses is attributed to its world-class support networks, accelerator schemes and significant infrastructure investment. The completion of HS2 is set to transform the West Midlands, and Birmingham’s sizeable metropolitan economy is predicted to see considerable benefits to boost growth.

Demand for Flex Space Soars in Birmingham

As more organisations opt for agile ways of working, the flex office market has seen explosive growth across UK regions, and interest in cities like Birmingham, Manchester and Liverpool is at an all-time high.

London continues to lead, as reported in Instant’s 2018 UK Market Summary. However, growth of a more agile working climate and new investment meant Birmingham saw some of the highest market activity in 2017.

Centre growth was up 13% last year, ranking fourth after Liverpool, Manchester and Leeds at 23%, 17% and 15% respectively.

Birmingham has an average workstation rate of £264 and offers a wide variety of office space.

John Williams, Head of Marketing and Research at Instant Offices, said that “While majority of demand still comes from companies looking for flexible office requirements for smaller teams, our data reveals that larger, corporate occupiers are also looking for flexible space in what is proving to be a very competitive market in Birmingham.”

Hernaldo Turrillo

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