Transcript Presentation

Evidence based policy on
entrepreneurship in the UK
Ian Kay, 5 December 2006
Small Business Service (SBS), an
agency of the DTI
EVIDENCE BASED POLICY ON ENTREPRENEURSHIP IN THE UK
UK / England
DTI sets some laws which apply to all 60 million
people in UK; but within DTI, SBS only sets
entrepreneurship policy for the 50 million in
England
Entrepreneurship policy outside England is set by:
•
Scottish Executive
•
Welsh Assembly Government
•
Department of Trade, Enterprise and Investment
Northern Ireland
EVIDENCE BASED POLICY ON ENTREPRENEURSHIP IN THE UK
How will we measure success?
Statisticians, researchers and economists
discussed with our customers who decide
government policy:
•
What does success look like?
•
How will we know if we are achieving our goals?
EVIDENCE BASED POLICY ON ENTREPRENEURSHIP IN THE UK
Where will we get the data from?
Productivity of small
Office for National Statistics
Business Inquiry
Gap between male and
employment
Office for National Statistics
Force Survey
Equity investments in early
businesses
British Venture Capital
Businesses seeking external ?
before start-up
Businesses citing regulation ?
obstacle to success
EVIDENCE BASED POLICY ON ENTREPRENEURSHIP IN THE UK
Design new data collection
Annual Small Business Survey
•
~8,000 telephone interviews with
owner/managers of businesses from 0 to 249
employees
•
Stratified random sampling from Dun &
Bradstreet, weighted to represent UK SMEs
•
Can split by industry, employment, geography,
turnover, age, if part-time, sex, ethnicity,
disability, urban / rural, rich / poor district
EVIDENCE BASED POLICY ON ENTREPRENEURSHIP IN THE UK
An offer to share survey results
• Questionnaires and results
at www.sbs.gov.uk/asbs
• Over 200 questions
EVIDENCE BASED POLICY ON ENTREPRENEURSHIP IN THE UK
Problems we still face:
Longitudinal or cross-sectional?
•
Cross-sectional survey better at measuring
absolute value?
•
Longitudinal survey better at measuring change?
•
Longitudinal surveys can contaminate some
measures
•
If two surveys ask the same person “Have you
used this website”, the second survey will show
higher usage
EVIDENCE BASED POLICY ON ENTREPRENEURSHIP IN THE UK
Problems we still face:
Discontinuities
•
Contractor introduced ‘helpful’ wording to focus
the mind of the interviewee
•
But this made previous results inconsistent
EVIDENCE BASED POLICY ON ENTREPRENEURSHIP IN THE UK
Problems we still face:
Overall assessment
Which is better:
•
Increasing the proportion of businesses seeking
advice from 60% to 65%;
•
or increasing the proportion of businesses that
innovate from 30% to 35%?
Perhaps economic growth is the only thing that
counts as success – but this takes time
EVIDENCE BASED POLICY ON ENTREPRENEURSHIP IN THE UK
Ian Kay
Assistant Statistician
DTI Small Business Service
[email protected]
+44 (0)114 279 4439