The UK Government's Department of Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) launched two reports co-authored by Professor Jonathan Levie of the Hunter Centre for Entrepreneurship at its annual Small Firms Research Conference, co-organised by the Enterprise Research Centre at the Shard in London, on March 3. Professor Levie said, "The presentations for both reports were scheduled for the same time in two different rooms. As I was introducing one of the reports in one room, my co-author Mark Hart of Aston Business School introduced the other next door!"
The two reports were "Business Growth Ambitions amongst SMEs – changes over time and links to growth (Interim Report)" and the "2014 Global Entrepreneurship Monitor United Kingdom Report" (See New generation of entrepreneurs riding UK's economic recovery).
The first report presented first results from a 30 month follow-up study of the owner-managers of 1,250 SMEs designed to measure the link between ambition and realised growth. It demonstrated that the link between ambition and growth is complex and involves trade-offs between survival chances and growth chances. The second report provided more evidence of the step-change in entrepreneurial activity in the UK since 2010.