New business creation and economic development: a comparative analysis of the role of brokers in linking entrepreneurs to regional innovation systems

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It is widely recognised that entrepreneurship contributes to economic growth and new employment opportunities. Since David Birch's work in the late 1970s it has been accepted that the majority of new jobs are generated by small firms. Therefore, it is important to understand the impact of public sector funding and policy initiatives on the creation of new businesses and the growth of existing small firms. This research will examine this issue from both 'supply' and 'demand' perspectives. First, the intention is to focus on the nature of regional policy initiatives which provide support and brokerage services to encourage entrepreneurship and promote growth in established small firms. Second, the research will explore the challenges and difficulties that face entrepreneurs (especially graduates) and owner-managers in accessing resources from regional policy and funding initiatives. Hence, the research will be concerned to evaluate the extent to which regional policy is effective in promoting entrepreneurship and small firm growth. The work will have a comparative focus by comparing a number of city-regions in the UK and elsewhere in Europe. First, in the UK, the focus will be on Greater Merseyside in the Northwest which has achieved significant levels of regeneration since Liverpool became the European City Culture in 2008. There are, however, still areas of very high deprivation and the region is also notable for having low levels of business start-ups despite being the recipient of considerable amounts of European funding over the last 15 years. Second, the Leeds city-region in Yorkshire has had relatively higher levels of business start ups in a range of sectors although it has suffered during the recession along with other cities in northern England. On the continent, interviews will be carried out with EU officials and other relevant stakeholders in Brussels to analyse the ways in which European small firm and entrepreneurship policy is developed. In addition, a range of other case study regions will be studied; these include Wallonia, Belgium, which is a region that has undergone significant deindustrialisation since the 1960s but has received considerable European and domestic funding to try to encourage small firm entrepreneurship and innovation. Lombardy, northern Italy, on the other hand, is a dynamic region which performs consistently well on European innovation rankings even though in recent years the Italian economy has been in recession. This work will adopt an interdisciplinary approach by combining ideas from human geography, regional development and theories associated with entrepreneurship and the dynamics of SMEs. In carrying out the research it is intended to adopt a 'mixed methods' approach including critical discourse analysis of academic and policy documents; the analysis of secondary data (including ONS and Eurostat) and interviews with key actors within each of the city-regions. Those actors will include leading policy-makers as well as entrepreneurs and small firm owner-managers. In summary, this research will open-up the 'black-box' of regional development by adopting a comparative approach and by the collection of both quantitative and qualitative data. We are particularly interested to evaluate the role of those who act as 'brokers' between policy-makers and the small business communities. Existing studies of regional development are generally based on the analysis of econometric data which provide information of the outcomes but have little to say about the processes associated with policy interventions and particularly the ways in which entrepreneurs engage with and benefit (or not) from public sector support. Also, the comparative nature of the research means that the findings will be of interest to academics and policy makers alike.