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

人们普遍认识到，企业家精神有助于经济增长和新的就业机会。自20世纪70年代末大卫·伯奇的研究以来，人们已经接受了这样一种看法，即大多数新的就业机会是由小公司创造的。因此，重要的是要了解公共部门的资金和政策举措对新企业的创建和现有小企业的发展的影响。本研究将从“供给”和“需求”两个角度审视这一问题。首先，目的是侧重于区域政策倡议的性质，这些倡议提供支持和经纪服务，以鼓励创业和促进老牌小公司的增长。第二，这项研究将探讨企业家(尤其是毕业生)和业主管理者在从区域政策和资金倡议中获取资源方面所面临的挑战和困难。因此，这项研究将关注于评估区域政策在促进创业和小公司增长方面的有效程度。这项工作将通过比较英国和欧洲其他地区的一些城市地区来进行比较。首先，在英国，重点将放在西北部的大默西塞德，自从利物浦在2008年成为欧洲城市文化以来，那里已经取得了显著的复兴水平。然而，仍然有一些地区的贫困程度非常高，尽管该地区在过去15年里接受了大量欧洲资金，但该地区的初创企业水平也很低。其次，约克郡的利兹市在一系列行业中的创业水平相对较高，尽管该市与英格兰北部的其他城市一样，在经济衰退期间也受到了影响。在欧洲大陆，将在布鲁塞尔与欧盟官员和其他相关利益攸关方进行访谈，以分析制定欧洲小企业和创业政策的方式。此外，还将研究其他一系列案例研究地区；其中包括比利时的瓦隆尼亚，该地区自20世纪60年代以来经历了严重的去工业化，但获得了大量欧洲和国内资金，试图鼓励小企业创业和创新。另一方面，意大利北部的伦巴第是一个充满活力的地区，尽管近年来意大利经济一直处于衰退之中，但它在欧洲创新排行榜上的表现一直很好。这项工作将采用跨学科方法，将人文地理学、区域发展以及与创业和中小企业动态有关的理论结合起来。在开展这项研究时，打算采用一种“混合方法”，包括对学术和政策文件进行批判性话语分析；分析次级数据(包括国家统计局和欧盟统计局)，并与每个城市区域内的关键行为者进行访谈。这些参与者将包括主要政策制定者以及企业家和小公司所有者兼经理。综上所述，本研究将采用比较的方法，通过收集定量和定性的数据，打开区域发展的黑匣子。我们特别感兴趣的是评估那些充当政策制定者和小企业界之间的“中间人”的人的作用。现有的区域发展研究一般基于对计量经济学数据的分析，这些数据提供了有关结果的信息，但很少涉及与政策干预有关的过程，特别是企业家参与公共部门支助并从中受益(或不受益)的方式。此外，这项研究的可比性意味着，学者和政策制定者都会对研究结果感兴趣。

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.