This paper is concerned with small business development in rural areas and the policy approaches currently being used to support them. The key question underlying the paper is the extent to which small businesses located in rural areas have distinctive support needs, associated with the...

Using a longitudinal database, this paper compares the employment performance over the 1979-90 period of mature SMEs in three contrasting geographical environments—i.e. London, outer metropolitan locations in the South East, and remote rural locations in northern England. The performance...

Over the last few years a growing number of local authorities have set up Innovation Centres (ICs) as part of their repertoire of initiatives aimed at local economic regeneration. According to the recently formed Association of Innovation Centre Executives, ICs exist to provide assistance to...

Innovation support for SMEs is considered from the point of view of the "needs" of SMEs in the context of a specific regional economy--London's Lee Valley region. As identified in the literature and, more specifically, in a survey of 100 innovating SMEs in the study region, attention is focused...

Although much attention has focussed on the determinants of firms' innovation performance, the relationship between innovation and business performance is less well defined. In this paper we use data from identical plant level surveys conducted in six regions of the UK, Germany and Ireland to...

In this paper we are concerned with the nature and extent of product and process innovation and adoption of information and communications technologies (ICTs) in manufacturing plants and SMEs. The paper is based on extensive postal surveys conducted in southeast (SE) England, Northern Ireland...

Spatial concentrations of worklessness remained a key characteristic of labour markets in advanced industrial economies, even during the period of decline in aggregate levels of unemployment and economic inactivity evident from the late 1990s to the economic downturn in 2008. The failure of...

NORTH D. and SMALLBONE D. (2000) The innovativeness and growth of rural SMEs during the 1990s, Reg Studies 34 , 145-157. The paper summarizes the results of a study of innovation in rural small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) in England over the 1991-96 period. It is based on a survey of 330...