An evaluation led by Frontier of business innovation support services in England, Wales and Northern Ireland has found strong evidence of benefits from ‘soft’ business support

Frontier Economics recently led an evaluation of the Enterprise Europe Network (EEN) business support programme delivered in England, Wales and Northern Ireland between 2015 and 2020, the findings of which have just been published.

The EEN programme offered ‘wrap around’ support to businesses to help them navigate an ‘innovation and growth journey’ from adopting and investing in ideas, testing and developing them, to launch and scale, including forming partnerships abroad. The specific support given to each business varied but may have included: general information, advice and guidance on topics such as trading in the EU and intellectual property; finding and facilitating partnerships (for example, with manufacturers, distributors, co-developers or suppliers); face-to-face coaching on innovation management and investment readiness; support and guidance on accessing funding and finance.

The programme was delivered by a consortium of 21 regional delivery partners, drawn from a mixture of universities, regional chambers of commerce and private sector business service providers, with Innovate UK (IUK) acting as the co-ordinating partner.

Giving innovators the tools for growth

While much of the discussion around innovation support for businesses focuses on funding and grants for innovation, the findings of our evaluation suggest that there are also substantial benefits to be had from providing ’soft’ support that gives businesses the tools and advice they need to grow and commercialise their ideas.

We found strong evidence of benefits from EEN support in a number of areas and across a range of evidence sources:

• Over three-quarters of supported businesses surveyed reported an overall positive impact of EEN support on their business.
• The majority of supported businesses reported a positive impact of support across a wide range of capability areas, including capabilities in strategic decision making, knowledge of how to access funding and finance, and capabilities to develop new products/services.
• Supported businesses were also significantly more likely to rate their capabilities in these areas as ‘good’ or ‘very good’, relative to a control group of unsupported businesses.
• In interviews, supported businesses described how EEN support created opportunities for networking and collaboration, helped them improve their innovation management capabilities, and helped them secure access to funding, promoting growth.
• Econometric analysis of business administrative data showed that supported businesses were significantly more likely to have increased their employment following support, relative to a control group of similar unsupported businesses.

Our economic evaluation found that, even on a conservative basis, EEN represented good value for money, with a benefit to cost ratio ranging from 1.4 to 3.4 under different assumptions, even before a wider range of benefits that could not easily be monetised were considered (for example, environmental impacts, impacts on innovation culture, knowledge sharing and collaboration).

Drivers of successful business support

Our evaluation identified that having bespoke offer was critical to success. Initially, EEN support had a greater focus on global partnering and internationalisation. Over time, innovation support became a more central part of the EEN offer. Innovation-focused programmes offered by EEN, such as ‘Innovate 2 Succeed’ and ‘Scaleup’, provided intensive, bespoke coaching and support to the most innovative businesses. Going forward, this type of innovation and growth support is intended to be a key part of IUK’s wrap around business support offer, through the IUK EDGE programme.

This transition appears to be validated by the findings of our evaluation. From both our survey and econometric analysis we see evidence that innovation-focused support generated greater benefits than other forms of EEN support.

Other factors identified in the evaluation include:

• Quality of the relationship between the business and its advisor. A number of interviewees described the importance of having a good relationship with their EEN advisor, including having similar attitudes to innovation management.
• Sector of the business being supported. Our econometric analysis suggests that businesses in two sectors benefitted significantly more than others: ‘information and communication’, and ‘professional, scientific and technical activities’.
• Stage of the supported business on its innovation and growth journey. We find some limited evidence that more mature businesses benefited more from EEN support, compared to pre-seed businesses.
• Complementarities with other forms of support. We find some evidence that businesses receiving other forms of support at the same time were more likely to report a positive overall impact from EEN support.
• Alignment of expectations. Where businesses reported limited outcomes or less positive experiences with EEN support this often reflected a misalignment between their expectations and the EEN programme’s offer. This suggests that it is important at the start to ensure expectations are aligned on the needs of the business and the nature of the support being offered.

Read the full report here: Enterprise Europe-Network-Impact-Evaluation

For more information, please contact us media@frontier-economics.com or at +44 (0) 20 7031 7000.