Impacting small business policy: the Enterprise Research Centre

The Enterprise Research Centre (ERC) is the UK's leading independent academic research centre focusing on growth, productivity and innovation in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The ERC's research explores what makes entrepreneurs and firms thrive, with the aim of spreading lessons from good practice to make the UK a more successful economy. Since it was established in 2013, the ERC has transformed understanding amongst policymakers about the factors affecting SME performance and productivity, directly shaping a range of policy decisions and initiatives. The ERC's distinctive approach to achieving policy impact has evolved through learning and experience over several years and is based on two main elements: a strategic approach to research communication, and high levels of soft engagement with key stakeholders. This has been underpinned by a flexible and pragmatic outlook based on developing a deep understanding of the needs of policymakers. This chapter shares some of the main lessons from the ERC's experiences of shaping small business policy. It extracts some generalisable, practical tips for researchers seeking to achieve policy influence and impact, with special relevance to those based in smaller research centres and institutes.