Business Stay-Up is a campaign to raise awareness of the pressures and challenges businesses face as they seek to sustain and build upon start-up success. Based on an independent analysis of 10,500 business owners across 21 countries, the campaign highlights the role that appropriate management education can play in increasing the probability of sustainable entrepreneurship. It is a collaborative initiative backed by the British Government's All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for Entrepreneurship, The Entrepreneurs Network (TEN), and the Centre for Education Economics (CEE). You can read more about the Entrepreneurs Network research here.
Why is Business Stay-Up a critical issue?
As a global leader in business education, ABE has found that governments worldwide have used different policy tools to increase entrepreneurship rates in their countries. This is a worthwhile goal. Recent research indicates that new businesses create a disproportionate share of new jobs.
However, more needs to be done to raise the probability of firm survival – or Business Stay-up. Of all firms started in the UK in 2010, only 41 per cent remained active five years later (ONS 2016). With recent challenges caused by the coronavirus, this figure is likely to be far worse and there is a similar picture globally. ABE believes that future entrepreneurship policy should not merely focus on increasing the rates of entrepreneurship – but also identify and stimulate factors that help to spur high-quality, sustainable entrepreneurship.
What are we doing?
Our report, Human Capital and Business Stay-up: How Education Can Increase the Probability of Firm Success will be a platform for media discourse, awareness-raising, and potential policy development.
It’s true that business survival depends on a number of factors, but an expanding body of evidence suggests the growing importance of human capital, education and resources. In other words, education and skills are not only crucial for securing high rates of start-ups – but also to then help start-ups survive and grow into flourishing businesses.
World-class research
ABE has commissioned research led by an independent think tank, the Centre for Education Economics (CEE). The Centre studied evidence on the role of education and human capital in ensuring higher-quality entrepreneurship and business survival/growth around the world. The report examined the role of different types of education, including general human capital levels, entrepreneurship education, learning on the job, and business education.
Armed with a compelling evidence base, the report formulates relevant lessons for policymakers and stakeholders with the goal of stimulating higher rates of business survival and growth.
Parliamentary Events
The campaign was supported by three roundtable events in the House of Commons through the APPG for Entrepreneurship. These were led by prominent politicians and made up of a mixture of relevant political figures, entrepreneurs and experts.