Microbusiness Britain

“英国微型企业”项目将由Stephen Roper教授（ERC）和Mark Hart教授（ERC）领导，Katherine Hathaway负责管理。Katherine是一位经验丰富的项目经理，直到2016年3月担任ERC的副主任。在与ERC合作之前，Katherine是BEIS企业理事会的副主任。该项目的核心将是对微型企业（覆盖约8-10万家企业）进行大规模调查，这将提供基于地点的数据，以确定这些微型企业在增长和提高生产率方面面临的具体挑战。这种规模的样本是必要的，以确保母国之间的有力比较，并为围绕雄心、技能、创新、国际化和规模扩大的基于地方的政策和国家举措提供信息。它将建立一个基准，以衡量未来的政策行动，并通过数据链接，允许监测和比较基于地方的政策影响。在美国和爱尔兰进行的小型（1.5- 2000年）配套调查将提供有关雄心和增长意图（美国）以及供应链和国际化（爱尔兰）的基准信息。所建立的数据库将以不记名的形式存入ESRC数据档案，因此可供研究界和政策界使用。该项目的重点将是开业三年以上的微型雇主（即拥有1-9名雇员的公司）。这将排除自雇企业（没有员工），也排除交易历史很少、失败率特别高的初创企业。每个国家都将使用市售的抽样框架，允许有组织的随机抽样。电话面试将与每家公司的领导团队的一名成员进行。该方法在以前的研究中被团队广泛使用，并在紧迫的时间框架内提供高质量的信息。问卷设计对这个项目的价值至关重要，我们将与BEIS的同事和其他相关方合作，确定调查的主题和指标。除了企业及其领导团队的详细信息外，重点领域（反映工业战略的主要关注点）将是：雄心-公司在增长、盈利能力、生产力等方面的战略目标。弹性-应对未来不确定性的态度和策略市场概况（买方和卖方）-国际化、供应链地位、公共部门客户（采购）绩效-增长、盈利能力、生产力（每位员工的增加值）创新和扩散-创新活动（产品/服务、流程）、知识产权、与科学基础的联系培训和技能-劳动力，管理和领导技能融资-外部融资-债务，股权，替代融资；投资概要文件。生态系统因素——竞争、基础设施、商业网络和政策支持（lep、增长中心）、其他建议来源。该项目将在2018年3月底之前交付两项成果：调查数据库(3)，可供地方和国家层面的其他学者和政策分析人员使用；一份标题报告草案（约20-30页）“英国微型企业”概述了来自英国和国际基准调查数据集的关键见解。根据标准ERC发布协议，可能会在2018年4月发布。进一步的统计和计量经济学分析将继续作为ERC第三阶段研究方案的一部分，使用“英国微型企业”数据和数据匹配。

The "Micro-business Britain" project will be led by Professor Stephen Roper (ERC) and Professor Mark Hart (ERC) and managed by Katherine Hathaway. Katherine is an experience project manager and was until March 2016 a Deputy Director of ERC. Prior to working with ERC, Katherine was a Deputy Director in the Enterprise Directorate in BEIS. Central to the project will be a large-scale survey of micro-firms (covering c. 8-10k firms) which will provide place-based data to identify specific challenges these micro-businesses face in terms of growth and raising productivity. This size of sample is necessary to ensure robust comparisons between the home nations and inform both place-based policy and national initiatives around ambition, skills, innovation, internationalisation and scale-up. It would create a baseline against which future policy actions could be measured and, through data-linking, allow place-based policy impacts to be monitored and compared. Small (c. 1.5-2k) companion surveys in the US and Ireland will provide benchmark information on ambition and growth intentions (US) and supply chains and internationalisation (Ireland). The databases created will be deposited in anonymised form in the ESRC Data Archive and will, therefore, be available for use by both the research and policy communities. The focus of the project will be micro-employers (i.e. firms with 1-9 employees) which have been in business for more than three years. This will exclude the self-employed (with no employees) and also exclude start-ups with little trading history and which are liable to particularly high failure rates. Commercially available sampling frames will be used in each country permitting structured, random sampling. Telephone interviews will be conducted with a member of the leadership team of each firm. This approach has been used extensively by the team in previous studies and provides high quality information within a tight timeframe. Questionnaire design is crucial to the value of this project and we will engage with BEIS colleagues and other interested parties to identify topics and metrics to include in the survey. In addition to detailed information on the enterprise and its leadership team, key areas of focus (reflecting the main concerns of the Industrial Strategy) will be: Ambition - the strategic objectives of the firm in terms of growth, profitability, productivity etc.Resilience - attitudes and strategies for dealing with future uncertaintyMarket profile (buy side and sell side) - internationalisation, position in supply chains, public sector customers (procurement)Performance - growth, profitability, productivity (value added per employee)Innovation and diffusion - innovation activity (product/service, process), IP, links to science base, barriers Training and skills - workforce, management and leadership skillsFinance - external finance - debt, equity, alternative finance; investment profile.E-business and digital adoption - digital profile of business, ITC access and useEco-system factors - competition, infrastructure, business networks and policy supports (LEPs, Growth Hubs), other sources of adviceThere will be two deliverables from the project by end-March 2018:Survey databases (3) which are usable by other academics and policy analysts at local and national level;A draft headline report (c. 20-30 pages) "Micro-business Britain" providing an overview of key insights from the UK and international benchmark survey datasets. Publication is likely to be April 2018 given standard ERC publication protocols. Further statistical and econometric analysis will continue as part of the ERC Phase 3 research programme using the "Micro-business Britain" data and data-matching.