Projects
The Centre for Enterprise, Innovation and Growth is involved in the following projects:
Promoting Sustainable Performance West Midlands
Promoting Sustainable Performance (PSP) West Midlands is a comprehensive study of SME practice and its relationship to firm development and growth. PSP researches SME development using an inductive, mixed methods model and allows us to build a more comprehensive and detailed understanding of the how management practices, strategy, industry, and place affect growth for a firm.
PSP West Midlands is being progressed through four separate phases of survey data collection, SME manager interviews, case studies, and focus groups.
Further information on PSP West Midlands can be obtained by contacting Deniz.Yoruk@bcu.ac.uk
Business Innovation Workshops
Our series of three Business Innovation Workshops will help you identify, understand and assess your company’s strategic and cultural abilities and create a business environment of innovation and growth.
- Get free access to BCU business support specialist knowledge
- Understand your current business environment and culture
- Learn techniques for achieving business Innovation and growth
- Receive support with creating your business, marketing and sales strategies
- Network with other regional businesses with similar challenges
Business Innovation Workshops are funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and are part of the Innovation Vouchers project. Find out more on our business support service, BCU Advantage.
Business Growth Programme evaluation
The Business Growth Programme (BGP) was a £33m SME support initiative delivered by a partnership led by Birmingham City Council and funded by the European Regional Development Fund. The programme offered co-financing for SMEs seeking to invest in development projects improving their products, processes, and capabilities. It covered SMEs based in the Greater Birmingham and Solihull, Marches, and Stoke and Staffordshire areas.
CEIG undertook an evaluation of the BGP, and published this in March 2019. The evaluation examined the delivery process of the BGP and the performance and outputs achieved, alongside providing a series of recommendations for future interventions aimed at supporting SMEs.
Promoting Sustainable Performance Indonesia
PSP Indonesia is researching the development practices and processes of SMEs based in the province of Bandung, Indonesia. As a developing country, there is a growing interest in the area of business development in Indonesia, as a foundation for internal economic growth, an expanding market with export potential for the UK, and as an academic exercise in understanding how growth works in the context of an emerging economy.
Further information on PSP Indonesia can be obtained by contacting Deniz.Yoruk@bcu.ac.uk
Enterprise for Success / Growing You
CEIG is delivering support for SMEs looking to grow as part of BCU’s Small Business Service. The Enterprise for Success and Growing You programmes, funded by the European Regional Development Fund, provide support through workshop-based and one-to-one assists.
Support is for SMEs based in the Greater Birmingham and Solihull area.
Further information on Growing You can be found here
Further information on Enterprise for Success can be found here
The AHEAD Project
The Project AHEAD: African Higher Education Leadership in Advancing Inclusive Innovation for Development is a joint initiative of 14 Universities from Europe, Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania. It is co-funded by the European Commission through the Erasmus+ Programme - Capacity Building in Higher Education.
The project aims at building the capacity of universities in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania to lead and manage innovation and research that benefit societies and the national economies. In particular, it should create awareness and capacity for promoting inclusive innovation, entrepreneurship at the local level and community empowerment.
Project activities will support universities in intensifying knowledge flows between the academia and external organizations - industry, the public sector and the community. The idea of the project is to combine a traditional focus on developing entrepreneurship & innovation skills through teaching, with a more innovative focus on opening University research to more intense cooperation with external stakeholders. The project teams will establish and kick-start the operations of an Innovation Lab at each of the participating Universities from Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania, which will provide physical working space for collaboration and co-creation with stakeholders in the joint pursuit of innovation and research.
The successful implementation of this project will help make higher education more relevant to the challenges faced by societies and national economies, and will enhance the capacity of Universities to take leadership of open innovation and knowledge exchange in support of inclusive economic growth and community wellbeing.
Birmingham City University's activity is led by Dr Charlotte Carey and she is joined by Dr Thomas Domboka.
A core objective of this project is: Improvement of the good-practice and evidence base for delivering (social) entrepreneurship education, BCU are leading on this area of Entrepreneurship Education. BCU are leading on the entrepreneurship education aspect of the project. More information on this coming soon.
The BEST Project
The Project “Business Education for Sustainability: Teaching Corporate Social Responsibility and Social Entrepreneurship for Sustainable Local and Regional Development”(BEST) was supported by the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union, Strategic Partnerships addressing more than one field, with a focus on Higher Education.
Project objectives:
- To contribute to research and best practices exchange in the field of social entrepreneurship, social innovation and corporate responsibility, with special focus on the situation in the participating countries
- To develop innovative curricula and teaching materials that fully integrate the subjects of social entrepreneurship and CSR into business/economics education and pay attention to pressing challenges facing modern society
Dr Charlotte Carey was the principle investigator from BCU and other project partners included:
- International Management Institute – Bulgaria
- Varna University of Management – Bulgaria
- Birmingham City University – UK
- University College Birmingham – UK
- Utena University of Applied Sciences – Lithuania
- International School of Law and Business – Lithuania
- University of Thessaly – Greece
- Irmir University of Economics – Turkey
- INDICO – Instituto Internacional de la Innovación, el Conocimiento y Las Competencias – Spain
- SPI – Sociedade Portuguesa de Inovação – Portugal
- Polytechnic Institute of Bragança – Portugal
Entrepreneurial Intent
This is a collaboration with Coventry University and in its infancy. Here we have joined forces with academics from Coventry University to explore our student body’s entrepreneurial intent. More information to follow on this project. BCU’s contribution led by Dr Charlotte Carey. More info coming so