Introduction
The drive for growth sits at the heart of the government’s agenda. Last year saw the welcome publication of the government’s Modern Industrial Strategy and Small Business Plan, which set out the strategic direction of policy to support economic growth. This roadmap from the government, together with the emerging Local Growth Plans from Combined Authorities, provides an important guide to those of us working in the business support sector involved in supporting local and national economic growth.
For over 30 years, my organisation, Exemplas, has specialised in delivering publicly funded business support on behalf of a range of public funders, both nationally and locally. During this time, we have worked with over 600,000 businesses, and Exemplas and our staff teams have gained a significant understanding of what effective business support looks like, helping SMEs, the bedrock of our economy, to grow, thrive, and contribute to economic growth. As commissioners consider how to invest their budgets in future business support programmes, I wanted to set down some thoughts on what they might want to consider based on Exemplas’ experience of what works.
The Challenge
Businesses of all sizes have, over the past five years, faced a series of almost unprecedented shocks, global conflicts, pandemics, Brexit, the cost-of-living crisis, and uncertainty, all compounding the effects of a slowing economy and the so-called Productivity Puzzle. Rapid changes in the external trading environment and unprecedented technological advancements arguably suggest that, while the government’s focus on macro-level growth levers such as infrastructure and investment is right, expert grassroots business support should play a complementary role in helping businesses navigate these challenges and thrive.
Exemplas has delivered many publicly funded grassroots business support programmes over the last thirty-plus years. A number of these have been subject to return on investment assessments and reviews by external evaluators. A review of the return on investment analyses from these external evaluations suggests that for every £1 of public investment in Exemplas’ business support programme delivery, the return may vary from £6 to £12.
Over the last three years, Exemplas, in collaboration with partners, has been delivering several business support programmes using academically validated tools and frameworks, which have proven indicators of effectiveness. We believe that the wider adoption of these frameworks across publicly funded business support programmes could be an important means of supporting future business growth and productivity for UK PLC, and when allied with the potential of AI, could have a transformative impact on the offer to businesses.
Business Support Today
Personally, I have worked in publicly funded business support for over three decades and have witnessed the rise and fall of many programmes. I was responsible for establishing and directing two regional Business Link programmes, the International Trade Adviser service in two regions and setting up some of the first Growth Hubs nationally. I currently oversee Exemplas’ delivery as part of the Innovate UK Business Growth service consortium, delivering expert advisory support to growth, high-growth and scaling businesses.
Government-funded business support programmes should aim to address market failures in the availability and uptake of support, generally by small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), and should be offered at subsidised or no cost to businesses. Such programmes must not displace or duplicate existing activity, nor fund ‘deadweight (i.e., outcomes that would have occurred regardless)’ activity, outcomes or support that would have occurred regardless. Effective publicly funded business support then operates in a space that catalyses and stimulates action by businesses that would not otherwise occurred, generating a return not just for the business itself, but the wider economy.
A common lament regarding the business support landscape is its complexity – often characterised as a confusing maze of entry points for businesses, duplicated services and inconsistent quality standards. The presence of multiple commissioners and competing brands means that, in practice, the business support ecosystem is difficult to navigate for most businesses that struggle to find their way between advisory, skills, finance, and innovation offerings at the moments that matter most. The opportunity cost is felt by both the business and the wider economy.
A key role for effective business support is to simplify this complexity for clients, ensuring their journeys are seamless, ongoing, and account managed, drawing on the best of both private and public provision to help businesses grow, invest, and generate additional value for local economies. However, given there are almost 6 million businesses in the UK, where should we invest resources to support businesses?
High-Growth and Scaling Businesses
The current policy consensus suggests that supporting growth requires us to focus investment on scaling and high-growth businesses, the rationale being that these businesses have an outsized impact on local and national economies.
At first blush, this appears to be a reasonable rationale if the aim of public funding is simply return on investment. However, as the well-respected Enterprise Research Centre suggests, there are dangers in focusing business support programmes on a narrow stratum of high-growth firms or scale-ups (typically defined by the OECD definition of growing by 20% per annum over three years). SME growth is often non-linear, with businesses experiencing rapid periods of scaling followed by plateaus or declines. ‘Picking winners’ through a narrow definition has the potential to overlook a broader group of businesses and leaders with growth potential. This suggests that commissioners need to adopt a more refined approach to targeting businesses for funded support.
The Innovate UK Business Growth service, delivered by a consortium of partners including Exemplas, offers support for growth, high-growth, and scaling businesses. Through our work with these businesses, Innovation Growth Specialists employed by Exemplas and other partners have supported some incredible, cutting-edge businesses, such as PES Technologies, which have been assisted by our teams to secure a £1.3 million equity raise and have benefitted from close to £1.6 million in Innovate UK grant funding (case study). Some of these businesses might not have been viewed as high-growth at the point of initial support, such as ImmuOne, a spin-out from the University of Hertfordshire (Exemplas’ parent company), which advanced onto Innovate UK’s Scale-Up Programme and successfully secured a new £750,000 investment round with Mercia at the end of 2025. (video case study)
All of this illustrates that, whilst focusing business support on growth businesses is valid, we also need to view this through the lens of understanding potential, so that funding maximises returns for the economy and accelerates business growth that might not have happened without that investment.
What Does Good Look Like?
Conducting ‘gold-standard’ Randomised Controlled Trials (RCTs) to evaluate business support programmes is prohibitively expensive. As a result, identifying best practice approaches in this field requires relying on alternative forms of evidence. This includes drawing lessons from existing programmes and utilising methods such as contribution analysis and detailed case studies to assess what works effectively in supporting businesses and local economies.
It is noteworthy that the government’s Small Business Plan last year highlighted a significant gap in the sector: the limited dissemination and sharing of best practices. This lack of shared learning has hindered the development of a common understanding regarding the most impactful forms of support for businesses. Addressing this challenge is crucial for ensuring that business support provision is consistently effective and informed by robust evidence.
Since 2022, Exemplas and Leeds Beckett University have partnered to design and deliver grassroots business support programmes funded by the West Yorkshire Combined Authority. These programmes have been informed by research on effective principles of business support delivery and have involved deploying research-developed and validated diagnostics and frameworks designed for SMEs, combined with the expert support of Exemplas’ advisors and the technical expertise of university practitioners. The diagnostics and frameworks are intended to help businesses understand, measure, and develop robust, focused action plans that improve measurable productivity and growth, and embed these capabilities within the business for long-term impact, supported by expert advisory support.
So far, Exemplas and Leeds Beckett University have jointly delivered programmes for SMEs using frameworks designed to enhance business productivity, growth, and leadership of change, and are currently piloting a framework to support SME technology adoption. These programmes have now been delivered at scale to over 700 businesses in the region, and shown several indicators of success, for instance, through our productivity work:
- 6-12 months after programme completion, participating businesses have increased their measurable labour productivity on average by 12%
- 100% of businesses followed up after 6-12 months stated that their business productivity had improved
- Participating businesses welcomed the greater confidence it has given them to understand their business, set KPIs, and manage and monitor performance
- 98% of participants looked at productivity in other areas of their business because of the support, suggesting strong internalisation of productivity management practices.
Through our joint delivery, Exemplas and Leeds Beckett University have established a ‘triple-learning loop’, whereby research informs the delivery approach, data generated through delivery informs improvement, and insights inform research that, in turn, feeds back into future delivery approaches. Exemplas and Leeds Beckett University have published a series of four Insight Papers detailing our work together and the learning to date. The final paper sets out a Blueprint of the key features that should be included in effective business support programmes, based on research and delivery to date. One of the central findings from our work is the core need for business support programmes to focus on helping businesses navigate productivity and growth, which are interdependent (a nexus). This means that programmes need to help businesses balance the equation of increasing production throughput (at a greater rate than increases in inputs) while simultaneously increasing market demand for this increased output. This core focus on productivity and growth support requires programmes to help SMEs develop four key productivity and growth management practices:
- Awareness of all their potential growth paths and (productivity) throughput capability
- The measurement of what productivity means specifically in their business, and which business processes affect this
- The formalisation of plans to aid productivity and growth improvement as a precursor to managing strategic and operational change
- The identification and prioritisation of productivity and growth knowledge gaps based on those that will deliver the greatest value and impact for the business
Our work suggests there are four critical enablers of these productivity and growth management practices, which should be present in productivity and growth business support programme interventions:
- The deployment of rigorous, academically validated business diagnostic tools
- External expert coaching and account management
- An appropriate depth of engagement by personnel across the business to support organisational buy-in and collective implementation (rather than this being restricted to one or two leaders in the business)
- A structured interaction pattern and client journey that is high intensity.
Our analysis indicates that programmes need to adopt a holistic approach to helping businesses understand the productivity and growth drivers within their organisation, and to identify and plan their next steps. Typically, business support programmes tend to focus either on functional areas (e.g. exporting, technology adoption) or on short-term transactional support (e.g. grants). The conclusions from our work suggest that effective provision must facilitate learning for businesses, helping them understand the levers in their organisation that affect both productivity and growth, as a precursor to accelerating their potential, whether this be growing exporting, adopting new technologies or seeking investment.
New Approaches to Business Support
The innovative model developed by Exemplas and Leeds Beckett University serves as a compelling template for delivering business support that fosters regional economic development. By combining academic rigour with practical application, this approach bridges the gap between theory and real-world impact. We are actively collaborating with other regional universities, including our parent institution, the University of Hertfordshire, to develop similar models aimed at driving economic growth through support for SMEs. We welcome interest from commissioners and universities eager to explore or adapt this model in their own regions.
The rapid pace of technological advancement, particularly in artificial intelligence, is opening fresh opportunities for delivering business support.
Over the past year, Exemplas has partnered with Meganexus, a specialist in AI and digital solutions for the public sector, to develop an innovative triage tool for business support programmes. This marks just the beginning of our journey towards AI-enabled business support delivery. Crucially, our vision is not to replace the invaluable role of human advisers, but to enhance and complement it. AI can add significant value to the client journey by providing responsive, on-demand support, improving efficiency, and addressing longstanding challenges in the sector, like fragmentation of support.
Looking ahead, we aim to work closely with commissioners to explore how AI-enabled solutions can strengthen and add value to business support programmes and ecosystems. Our top priority is to ensure these digital tools are designed around the needs of our SME clients, delivering tangible benefits without compromising the personal touch that remains central to effective support.
Conclusions
2026–27 marks the beginning of the government’s spending cycle, presenting commissioners with the opportunity to renew their current business support offerings over the next three years. This is a timely window to consider how public funds can be used most effectively to achieve positive outcomes for businesses. As part of this process, we encourage commissioners to reflect on some of the lessons we have found from our current work, not least the importance of evidence-informed business and considering:
- How business support can deliver strong returns on investment and the greatest impact
- How the current fragmentation of local business support provision can be addressed
- Leveraging the expertise and resources of local universities at scale to benefit the local business community
- Integrating AI and digital solutions as value-adding enhancements to traditional business support models
- Developing new benchmarks to identify and share best practices in business support going forward
After three decades in the sector, I remain energised by the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead. I look forward to working with partners old and new to support business growth both nationally and locally, drawing on our collective experience and expertise to shape the future of business support. Exemplas would welcome commissioners and stakeholders looking to deliver impactful programmes to engage with us as they consider future models of support.
To discuss your business support needs, please contact David Moule, Chief Executive at Exemplas, at davidm@exemplas.com