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Sarah Callender, Managing Director of Bdaily, gives her take on the Scale Up agenda

We have partnered with Bdaily, an online publisher of UK business news, to deliver the ‘Time to Talk Scale Ups’ webinar, taking place on 30 January 2017. Bdaily’s Managing Director Sarah Callender gave us her take on the scale up agenda:

 

The scale up agenda is fast becoming one of the hottest topics in business, with founders, investors, policymakers and other business leaders, fiercely debating how best to nurture and develop the UK’s scaleup landscape.

While entrepreneurial startups and founders play an important role in our economy, there is a growing body of evidence that suggests that directing more of our funding and policy priorities towards the UK’s scaleup companies would actually provide a far greater economic benefit.

Scale ups, that is companies that have experienced at least 20% year-on-year turnover growth over the last three years and who employ more than ten people, have routinely been
shown to boost job creation, economic prosperity and productivity, both within their respective regions and across the UK as a whole.

According to the Scaleup Institute’s Scaleup Review 2016 , the North East contributed 208 companies to the UK’s total of 11,575 scale up businesses, providing over 36,000 jobs and boasting a combined turnover of £5bn.

This figure is certainly impressive, but the potential for more of the region’s businesses to grow their customer base and expand their operations into new international markets would be boosted immeasurably if there was a clearer understanding of the issue and how companies can make the jump.

This isn’t just about the region’s thriving tech and digital sector either. Our scale up companies are drawn from a wide array of sectors and industries, with firms in manufacturing, construction and transport just as likely to be undergoing rapid growth as those in the digital economy.

While it is clear that more needs to be done at a political level to provide more joined up support and advice, we at Bdaily also believe that more light needs to be shone on how high-growth companies plot their journey from plucky startup to thriving scaleup and beyond.

Which is why last year we launched our Scale up Spotlight series, providing an ongoing focus on the region’s scale up businesses, celebrating their successes and investigating what more
can be done to help the North East’s ambitious firms scale up.

With our upcoming ‘Time to Talk Scaleups’ webinar, our four-person panel of the region’s influencers, including the North East LEP’s Business Growth Director, Colin Bell, will explore the role the North East’s scale ups play in shaping our regional economy and how more of our firm’s can be supported in their ambitions to scale up.

As a high-growth business ourselves, who saw 27% growth in revenues last year, not only do we love being able to share the region’s success stories, but we are also able to benefit from and put into practice some of the advice and guidance we canvass every day from our North East peers too.

Effectively, their story is our story, and could potentially be the story of hundreds of the region’s businesses provided the right support and investment frameworks are put in place. Not to mention the fact that, with Brexit’s economic and political uncertainty set to continue for the foreseeable future, the outward looking and international focus of our scaleups will be crucial in shaping the UK, and the region’s, future economic growth outside of the European Union.

Bdaily’s ‘Time To talk Scale Ups Webinar’, delivered in partnership with the North East LEP, is taking place on 30th January between 2 and 3pm.

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