13th Annual Ethnic Minority Business Conference - Save the Date

CREME is pleased to announce the date for this year's Ethnic Minority Business Conference. Click on the image above to read our announcement.

The conference will take place in the brand new stand of the Leicester Tigers Rugby Ground, Welford Road, on 14th October 2009.

Updates about speakers, the full programme and the delegate rate will be posted soon.

MEECOE Gets Engaged!

GETTING ENGAGED

Talk to any business support professional and it won’t be too long before the subject alights upon the challenge (and, less frequently, opportunity) of ‘engagement’. How do you engage with small enterprises in a way that is genuinely responsive to their needs? Much of the turbulence in the world of business support has been occasioned by a desire to address this central issue. The most recent manifestation has, of course, been the process of business simplification: the reduction of business support schemes from 3000 to less than 100. It is too early to asses how these new ‘business solutions’ fare. But it’s a racing certainty that better ‘engagement’ with small firms will be an important measure of their success.

The generic challenge of engagement is intensified when dealing with businesses with owners from diverse backgrounds (ethnic minorities, women, the disabled,...). Although such businesses will face similar challenges to any enterprise, a ‘one-size fits all’ approach will rarely be successful in reaching them. For example, research by CREME and many others has indicated that ethnic minority entrepreneurs require approaches to engagement that are sensitive to their particular context. Policy responses to this thorny issue have taken a variety of forms, from the encouragement of specialist support initiatives to an emphasis on catering for diversity within the ‘mainstream’. There are no easy answers.

It is right therefore to open up a debate on this question that reflects the changing policy climate, and indeed, the innovation that has occurred to date. That is why the Minority Ethnic Enterprise Centre for Expertise (MEECOE) is delighted to be hosting a workshop that presents a number of ways in which individuals and organisations have attempted to promote business engagement with entrepreneurs from diverse communities. We’ll address a number of key questions:

• What approaches are emerging to engaging diverse communities in business?



• How can ‘mainstream’ and specialist agencies work together to promote effective engagement strategies?



• Can new approaches to supporting diverse enterprises be developed in the context of business simplification?

The contributions of our four main presenters cast new light on these matters.

David Darlaston of Business in the Community discusses an exciting mentoring initiative involving the corporate sector and ethnic minority entrepreneurs. As David will highlight, a real ‘win-win’ situation can result from such linkages.

The rare occurrence of an ethnic minority business support provider successfully pulling off a ‘break-out’ to become a ‘mainstream’ provider is documented by Ilyas Munshi. Ilyas is the Chief Executive of Enterprise4All in the North West. His organisation has developed well beyond its initial niche of Asian businesses.

In contrast, Anne Francis describes how a generic business support programme, BizFizz (South East) can be made to work for ethnic minorities, particularly for new migrant entrepreneurs.

Too often, the contribution, and particular needs, of Chinese entrepreneurs are overlooked. Dr. Sylvia Sham of the Wai Yin Chinese Women Society addresses this gap by describing how her Centre provides an holistic approach to the Chinese community in the region.

Kay Greenbank, Director of Strategy at Business Link West Midlands draws the workshop to a close by offering some reflections on how many of these issues are being addressed in region. The workshop addresses an important debate. I hope you’ll get engaged.Watch this space for a report on the workshop.-Prof Monder Ram-

Working with New Migrant Businesses Workshop

Yesterday, MEECOE ran a successful workshop in Birmingham which focussed on working with New Migrant businesses. Starting point was filling a knowledge gap regarding entrepreneurs from New Migrant communities. Who sets up new businesses and why? In what sectors of the economy are they concentrated? What factors promote or retard business formation? How many new jobs are being created and what are these jobs like?

Attendees represented many different stakeholders from business owners, policy makers to business support networks. As such the lively debate brought up some key issues for the research to focus on.

To gain further insight some one-to-one interviews will follow. These will allow the research to be steered toward and focussed on the crucial issues which were brought up by stakeholder themselves.

CREME Director to Consult on ESRC Project

CREME Director Prof Monder Ram will be involved as a co-investigator in a prestigious new ESRC project which was awarded to two research centres at Newcastle University: the Centre for Knowledge, Innovation, Technology and Enterprise (KITE) and the Centre for Urban and Regional Development Studies (CURDS).

The 28-month long project will be overseen by Dr Simon Down (KITE), Dr Paul Richter (KITE) and Dr Jane Pollard (CURDS) and will compare firms in the North East and Cambridgeshire in the bio-processing, film and media and security sectors and intensively track a small number of firms to get a close-up picture.

Dr Simon Down, the principal investigator, explains:" Whilst we know that all entrepreneurs complain about the excessive burden of red tape, very little is known about how they really deal with it in everyday life. To ensure that government gets the extent and forms of regulation right, without unduly harming the development of small businesses, better knowledge is required. It’s all well and good simply saying reduce the regulatory burden, but as we have seen in recent years, too light a regulatory touch isn’t necessarily in everyone's best interest".

A Week in the Life of Prof Monder Ram

Lund is a lively University town in the south of Sweden. In contrast, Eslov is a quiet vilage situated a few miles from the town. It is home to the Herbert Felix Institute (HFI), which is named after a prominent 'immigrant entrepreneur' who did much to regenerate the area. Lund University and the HFI jointly support my visiting Professorship at Lund. It is an exciting assignment. My role is to stimulate research on ethnic minority entrepreneurship at Lund, and at the same time, engage in more practical and policy oriented activities with the HFI in order to raise awareness of the issue. This blend of research and practice fits well with the work of CREME at De Montfort University.

My recent visit was typically hectic and varied. My first task was to catch up with my Phd student at Lund, Craig Mitchell. Craig is a year into his studies. He is trying to get to grips with literature on immigration, entrepreneurship, and the Swedish language (which is tough call for this affable Scotsman). But he has done well to navigate a path through the extensive and somewhat eclectic debates on the subject. Quite sensibly, he will be looking at the contribution that entrepreneurship studies can make to resesearch on ethnic minority studies. Wednesday (13 May) was an important day for him. His research proposal was scrutinised in public (that's the Swedish way), and he was interrogated on its contents by three academics from Lund and Malmo University. He acquitted himself extremely well, and moves on to the next stage of his academic journey.

My stint at the HFI was rather interesting. With barely any notice, I was asked to give a presentation to a group of visiting schoolchildren from Sweden and Germany. It is a real challenge to make the subject of immigrant entrepreneurship relevant to 16 year olds from different countries. Where do you start? Well, I suppose one might want to reflect upon the generic importance of entrepreneurship, immigration and human rights. And then hope for the best. I emerged (relatively) unscathed; although I was intrigued by the insouciance of one youngster who resolutely kept his ipod earphones firmly in place throughout my talk.

On the research front, much of my time was taken up with assisting to put together a major bid to undertake a large-scale study of immigrant entrepeneurship in Sweden. It involves a collaboration between Lund and Malmo University, as well as CREME. CREME's role in this multi-dsciplinary research project will be to provide international policy comparisions, which will be used to 'benchmark' the policy and research on immigrant entrepreneurship in Sweden.

Despite the tranquility of Eslov and the genial, pleasant setting of Lund, it is difficult to escape the hurly-burly of CREME's activities. We have been asked to be a partner in a bid to the National Lottery on new migrant social enterprises in the east Midlands. It has be to submitted in the next few days and I am expecting a frantic phone call in less than an hour. Never mind, I will be back in Lund in September!

-Prof Monder Ram -

Event Report: New Migrants Focus Group in Northampton

Focus Group for Eastern European Migrants in Northampton

Last Thursday, April 23rd 2009, a focus group event, co-sponsored by CREME, New Communities in Social Enterprise (NCISE) and Business Link, was held at Chata Polish Restaurant in Northampton. The 14 invitees represented established Polish businesses, prospective Polish businesses, NCISE and other Eastern European community organisations.

This focus group was specifically aimed at Eastern European businesses and community organisations within Northamptonshire.

After brief introductions, where the sponsors of the event introduced themselves to the participants and provided an overview of their activities, we went through several questions with the attendees covering people’s backgrounds, their businesses and experiences of business support. There were several immediate key findings:-

• A large majority of people are either planning on settling down in the UK or staying at least for a few more years
• Business activities focused on food related businesses, websites, arts and crafts, construction and import/export
• People started a business in order to gain more opportunities and to maximise their potential
• Main barriers people face are language barriers and not knowing where to access information
• Most participants have little help from family, business support organisation or religious organisations
• Credit crisis doesn’t have a big impact because Polish people are used to tough conditions
• People mostly use the internet to find business related information
• Most people lack information on legal aspects of running a business and where they can find sources of finance

Most of the attendees didn’t know much about Polish social enterprises. The event concluded with a question and answer session where attendees could pose their questions to Business Link and NCISE. Several people showed interest in making appointments to meet with a Business Link advisor at a later date and with NCISE, and declared a big interest in being involved with CREME’s future activities.

- Alex Kiselinchev-

Project News: Facilitating Entrepreneurship in New Migrant Communities

Prof Monder Ram in collaboration with East Midlands Business Ltd is overseeing this year long project commissioned by the Economic and Social Research Council.

Two dynamic researchers have gotten this exciting project off to a great start.
Alexander Kiselinchev has been engaging with new migrant business owners to raise awareness of business support, and develop detailed understanding of their particular needs through a series of interviews and focus groups.
Lovemore Muchenje is working with intermediary networks that support new migrant communities in order to explore opportunities for collaborative working.
The study is also aiming to increase knowledge transfer between CREME and EMB Ltd.

The project runs until October 2009 and updates will be posted here.

Project News: Facilitating Supplier Diversity

Facilitating Supplier Diversity: A Collaborative Approach to Engaging Underrepresented Suppliers and Large Firms

This year long project, commissioned by the Economic and Social Research Council, is nearing completion. Working together on this are Prof Monder Ram, Dr Nick Theodorakopoulos and Dr Olga Tregaskis in collaboration with Supplier Diversity Europe (SDE).

The focus of this project is trifold:

Knowledge transfer. CREME and SDE are sharing material that will support the implementation of supplier diversity in SDE members’ companies. The intention is to share the accumulated and synergistic expertise at special events for SDE members. Importantly, these experiences will help to shape broader policy debates in the UK and other European countries.

People transfer. CREME recruited two specialists who are ‘placed’ with SDE. One of these ‘placement fellows’ works with an SDE member to create a ‘Hub’, which is drawing together suppliers at different points in the supply chain. The other expert assists in the production of a ‘Handbook’ that will have resonance in a number of European countries.

Developing the business case for Supplier Diversity. CREME’s action research methodology will be used to develop an informed approach to supplier diversity in practice. This will be distinctly European in orientation.

A brief summary of this project's outcomes will be added here in July.