Rural enterprise support: evaluation report

7. Conclusion: Towards place based business support

Key Points

This evaluation has demonstrated that an integrated, placed based approach to business support (which was provided by Growbiz) has a range of benefits for participants operating rural micro-businesses.

Participants gave clear indications that they perceive this sort of support as valuable, and in several cases find it preferable to other current methods for providing business support.

GrowBiz largely delivered on the KPIs included in the project.

The regional collaborations and digital platform components of the project failed to be fully delivered, mainly due to an agreed refocus of support during the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.

7.1 Principles of Place Based Business Support

This research has demonstrated that, in the context of rural micro-businesses, support focused on high-growth enterprises may not be appropriate for all. However, supporting these businesses remains a crucial priority for Scottish Government, particularly in the context of the recovery of the rural economy from the effects of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. We recommend that future business support in rural areas incorporates the following four principles:

The social dimension of business support was emphasised by participants in the evaluation. This relates both to the potential isolation involved in running a business in a rural context, and the sense in which participants saw themselves as benefitting from the networking opportunities provided.

The research showed the importance of increasing their confidence of participants in their business abilities over the course of the intervention. As many of these participants were starting businesses for the first time, the importance of this should not be under-estimated. Providing a welcoming atmosphere, and ensuring that participants have the opportunity to meet others in their position, were emphasised by participants as important parts of the intervention. A recurring theme within the interviews and benefits cited was that participation with the provider involved being listened to and that subsequently support was tailored to the needs of the business. This was clear both in relation to the less positive experiences participants had had with other forms of business support and what they cited as beneficial about the approach. As noted above, for some participants, there was a strong sense that the provider understood where a rural business was coming from and sensitive to the needs of participants.

A key feature of the support was that it was extremely responsive to individual need and practical. Participants emphasised that, unlike other contexts where they may be expected to undertake a more structured processes, the place-based support was tailored and flexible. This has various advantages, including the fact that needs constantly evolve and can be challenging to plan in advance.

As several participants emphasised, supporting the community as a whole was an important goal for business support. In this context, participants emphasised that while individually small businesses may make a limited contribution, a thriving community of businesses could mutually support each other and collectively contribute to the wellbeing of the community. The broader context of this principle is that, in the context of rural businesses, there may be a range of benefits that accrue from business development that do not necessarily translate into immediately measurable economic gains, but can nonetheless have important benefits for community wellbeing.

7.2 Recommendations

There are a number of recommendations to come out of the evaluation.

Rural micro enterprise support should include:

1. Developing virtual services. Future business rural support should be digital by design. Respondents reported significant benefits associated with video-conferencing technology necessitated by the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and the opportunities this provided for them in challenging geographical contexts.

2. New rural business support should be highly practical, tailored to needs and pitched at the appropriate level, supportive, and provided for multiple needs. This has been delivered through one on one training, as well as peer-led network training and other approaches. Previous topics provided have included IT skills, social media and practical business support such as intellectual property claims and tax.

3. Rural business support should include elements of peer support and networking. This has helped businesses feel closer to their local business community. This, in turn, created opportunities for collaboration, learning from others and mutual support.

4. Rural business support needs to be inclusive, welcoming, and effective, particularly at the early stages of the business process when participants were developing their confidence.

5. Improved equality monitoring should be a standard condition for future rural business support schemes and

6. Impact measurement: A wide range of impact measures should be collected as a part of future rural business support schemes. Both economic and social indicators should be considered at the outset given the different growth and community aims sometimes associated with micro-business activities.