By Adam Lent, Director of the Action and Research Centre, RSA
By Adam Lent, Director of the Action and Research Centre, RSA
Nicole Vanderbilt, Managing Director for Europe, Etsy
The rise of the very small business seems unstoppable. Over the last forty years the total number of businesses in the UK has grown from around 800,000 to almost 5 million. Over 95% of these employ less than nine people meaning they are officially ‘micro-businesses’. That’s an awfully rapid growth in this type of company and a very big shift in the way our economy works.
And the trend only seems to be accelerating: the number of micro-businesses has grown by 40% in the last decade alone.
These micro-businesses may be small but they are powerful. They now account for a third of all employment in the UK (almost 8 million people) and a fifth of private sector turnover. It is also clear that smaller companies have generated more jobs in recent years than big business.
Strangely, however, we do not know much about this increasingly central part of our economy. Why has there been such an explosion of micro-businesses? What does it mean for the future of the economy? What impact has it had on our society’s values and politics? We can speculate but there has been little hard thinking or rigorous research.
We also know surprisingly little about the motivations and hopes of the people who run micro-businesses. How many, for example, run a micro-business primarily because it gives them greater autonomy and the freedom to be creative and how many are looking to make their fortune? We simply do not know.
This is why the RSA and Etsy have teamed up to launch a research project - called The Power of Small - to answer these and other questions. Over eighteen months, we will run surveys, conduct interviews and analyse data to understand as much as we can about micro-business in the UK. Our findings will be presented through a series of reports, public events and on the RSA and Etsy blogs.
A central part of the project will be to find out as much as we can about the many Etsy sellers in the UK. We’re particularly interested in the connections they form with each other, their customers and the world outside Etsy.
The aim is not just to find out more about micro-business for its own sake. Ultimately, we want to help government, support organisations and, of course, micro-businesses themselves understand how small-scale enterprise can build the more creative society for which both the RSA and Etsy are aiming.
If you’d like to know more about The Power of Small project and want to be kept up to date with developments contact Ben Dellot by emailing him at benedict.dellot@rsa.org.uk
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Thanks for sharing this wonderful article. It's great to know that small businesses are getting their foothold in the UK. Small businesses can also benefit greatly from serviced offices, which you can read more about on:http://www.theoffice-uk.co.uk/....
Hi Adam,
I have given my co-founder of the Enterprise Rockers, Tina Boden, a report for you, which we did in 2009. It includes survey results of 2600 telephone interviews of micro enterprise owners and many focus groups. The results and recommendations remain relevant today.
This report partly informs this recent article of mine http://media.freeola.com/other... and a similar one that appeared in the Daily Telegraph this summer, also available on my website. You can see that the last paragraph contains structural recommendations to help micro businesses. Certainly Chuka Umunna/Labour BIS team appear to have listened to this as per their recent announcements at Conference.
Founding the Enterprise Rockers Global Community, independent of Government and the Banks, was our response to Doug Richard's pre election reports on micro enterprises and call for a 'union'.
All the Best
Tony
Carol, Thanks for the comment. Etsy sellers will be a key part of the project but we will be doing much wider research on the full range of micro-businesses. Indeed, we are thinking very hard about how we reach as many and as diverse a number as possible. I'm sure Ben would be happy to have a chat about whether you can help. Thanks for the offer.
Great to hear of Etsy and RSA collaboration and research. However Etsy is very focused on products and business to consumer. There are thousands of service and business to business micros that should also be included. As an RSA fellow, I am happy to help you reach out via other small business networks.