Colin Bell Archives - North East Local Enterprise Partnership

The breadth of work carried out by the North East LEP’s Business Growth team over the last decade has been exceptional. From the creation of the North East Growth Hub through to engagement with our Business Board and partners, we’ve made huge strides towards levelling up by increasing the business start-up rate, business productivity, and the number of companies scaling up. While hard to choose, it’s our scaleup achievements that stand out most to me in terms of overall impact. By Colin Bell, Business Growth Director

Roll back the clock to 2016 and here at the North East LEP we were underway with a refresh of the Strategic Economic Plan (SEP). This needed updating to reflect a changed economic environment and renewed focus on our target of 100,000 more and better jobs by 2024.

Most of our European funding had been committed so our Business Growth mission was to figure out how to get the biggest bang for our buck in terms of making a difference. As ever, we started with the data.

At the time, wider UK evidence pointed to scaleup businesses having a disproportionate impact on productivity and job creation. Unfortunately, analysis showed that the number of scaleup businesses in the North East was lower than most other regions.

It made our work very clear. The goal had to be to increase scaleup business density by 50%, which would bring an estimated £260m GDP and create around 6000 further jobs in the region. Supporting a fairly small number of companies would deliver a big impact.

Research into the region’s scaleups to understand their journey over a three-year period was eye opening. We discovered that just a handful had scaled to £3m. The majority reached around £1m and then stopped. Also, only a few of these fast growing businesses were in the sectors of strategic importance identified within the SEP, which meant our intervention would have to be sector agnostic.

Our target became companies with scaleup potential, moving as many as possible from £1m to £3m, working with partners who had experience to do this. Part funded by European and Local Growth funding, RTC North was appointed as our delivery partner for Scaleup North East, who we worked with to recruit a team of Scaleup Partners all of whom had experience of scaling their own businesses.

We secured investment from Government and expanded the team to deliver a mentoring programme designed to connect those with Scaleup Potential with business owners who has broken the next phase of growth. These people weren’t previously in place within the business ecosystem so it took a lot of work to identify them and recruit them.

Next, we developed a Scaleup Leaders Academy with the Entrepreneurs’ Forum, primarily to tap into its membership base of directors with the potential to build a scaleup business.

Getting the narrative around scaleup and explaining what a scalable business model looked like was crucial. We encouraged awards organisers to introduce a scale up award bringing the concept into the mainstream.

A breakthrough moment came when the Scaleup Institute ran a course educating those in regional economic development about the importance of scaleup businesses to the economy.

All of a sudden there was a movement within the North East, with partners creating a more aligned provision and the introduction of events such as the North East Scaleup Summit. The thinking and the research carried out led to the development and launch of our High Potential Startup accelerator programme, creating a pipeline of the future.

Today’s evidence shows that this activity enabled the North East to really turn a corner. We are now one of the regions with a growing scaleup base whereas we have in the past been either stagnant or declining. The North East’s progress has been recognised nationally by the Scaleup Institute highlighting the region as a national exemplar.

The North East Growth Hub has also had a significant impact, starting with business turnover. Companies interacting with the Growth Hub have seen an average increase of £378k (22%) after a year, compared with £81k (6%) for those without support.

In terms of productivity, businesses have reported an average increase of £8.8k per employee 12 months after receiving support, compared with £0.3k for non-supported businesses.

As responsibility moves across to the new North East Combined Authority, this legacy feels good. It opens the door to a new ambition for the future: to scale up the scale up activity. Watch this space.

When the Strategic Economic Plan was first introduced by the North East LEP in 2014, no one could have foreseen the UK’s forthcoming exit from Europe – or the fact a global COVID pandemic would hit in 2020, needing simultaneous management by the Business Growth team. The LEP’s unique position between the business community and government placed our role very visibly to the fore. By Colin Bell, Business Growth Director.

Panic. In the early days of the Coronavirus pandemic there was panic everywhere, partly because of the threat to life, to business and fear of the unknown. At the North East LEP we knew how much the business community, more than ever, was going to need our support.

We used the panic to galvanise action. In the first instance, we concentrated on figuring out a remote provision. We immediately introduced a cloud-based phone system and video conferencing and before long we had an infrastructure allowing us to operate and respond as needed.

People were ringing up crying because they were going to lose everything. What was important then was how we coordinated as a Growth Hub network nationally to gather intelligence across the ecosystem and fed that evidence into government so they could rapidly respond to this quickly evolving environment.

We worked round the clock to gather data and get it to the right people. This included weekly reporting that fed into COBRA. Each week we were seeing responses from government based on the data we’d shared. It was a relief to see interventions like CBILS, the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme, Bounce Back Loan Scheme and other provisions come to life to counter the issues facing business owners, as each one was announced.

Every day required a highly agile, adaptive way of working. Our focus had to be on creating a framework of support based on what the business community needed because the standard provision couldn’t meet people’s needs.

We rapidly developed a plan and where support providers needed to deviate from the norm, we engaged with their funders to ensure this wouldn’t become problematic. As soon as we could, we doubled the number within the Business Growth team.

Securing over £7m of funding allowed us to breathe out for a short moment but even this was problematic. The money needed to be reallocated as grants for businesses to ensure they could continue to operate throughout the restrictions. To make the allocation fair we introduced funding rounds. Of course not everyone was successful and the need was so great, the website went down.

Regular communication was a priority and I found myself on BBC Radio Newcastle every week providing an update.

To complicate things further, the UK’s exit from Europe was well underway. At the Growth Hub, we knew businesses had woefully little time due to the deal being agreed so late.

Our answer to this unique combination of events was the introduction of a hugely successful virtual peer networks programme which drew money into the region and pulled companies together online to discuss challenges faced. Members of each Peer Network were able to put forward questions and issues and work with each other to develop practical solutions.

To complement this, we offered one-to-one support and guided businesses through the latest government support available to them as part of the COVID-19 recovery package.

This Peer Network programme led to 34 sector-specific networks being formed in the North East, catering for businesses in a range of areas, from leisure and hospitality to advanced manufacturing.

Looking back now, the majority of support was as much about mental resilience as business resilience. I know I speak for the whole of the Business Growth team in saying that while helping businesses navigate the dual storms of COVID and Brexit was a challenge, above all it was first and foremost a real privilege.

Change brings the opportunity to innovate and improve. Colin Bell, Director of Business and Sector Growth at the North East Local Enterprise Partnership (North East LEP), explains how business support in the region is evolving.

The North East LEP and the North East Growth Hub are recognised as national exemplars, with many others learning from and adopting our methodologies, tools and systems.

Our team have worked tirelessly throughout the pandemic and the EU exit with over 57,000 engagements with businesses to help them survive, revive and recover and in doing so improve the productivity performance of businesses receiving intensive support by over £9,000 per employee (measured as GVA per employee).

In addition, we have led sector growth in energy, tech, health and life sciences, working with partners to create and deliver ambitious plans and claim a global foothold. As businesses continue to face economic headwinds, we will continue to support the development of an ecosystem that will help them to tackle the issues of today, to chart a route to the future and to achieve their ambitions.

The role of the North East LEP is however changing and we are transitioning to a new environment set out by Government in the Levelling Up white paper. As the exact parameters of this landscape are still emerging, it’s critical that we adopt an agile and flexible approach that can be quickly adapted to the changing environment.

Within this is an opportunity to sharpen our focus and to drive forward a more impactful and modern approach that delivers more for less.

A key opportunity in the emerging landscape is to embed innovation across all aspects of strategy and delivery. It’s our collective innovativeness that builds regional competitiveness, that drives business and sector growth and claims our foothold in emerging global markets.

We also recognise that if innovation lies at the heart of our economic competitiveness, then as a LEP and through our partnerships we too must embody an innovative approach and culture. We therefore see change as an opportunity on which to build on our strong foundation and to reimagine and realign our approach to add maximum value.

Opportunities include:

Refocusing the one-to-one support available through the North East Growth Hub’s triage team, meaning that any person or business requiring information, support or guidance can access it.
Adopting modern and innovative business models to create a flexible platform to deliver a more streamlined, cohesive, and impactful customer journey.
Boosting our sector leadership by applying more resource to work closely with businesses to lead the development and delivery of ambitious sector strategies in energy, tech, health and life sciences, advanced manufacturing and knowledge-intensive business services, including the introduction of specialist sector-focused Growth Hub Connectors to support businesses.
Embedding innovation across all of our activities to ensure that we spread a culture of challenge-based and collaborative innovation and focusing partnerships on capturing first mover advantage in global emerging markets in which the North East demonstrates competitive strength.

In addition, we look forward to continuing our close working relationship with Government to shape the forthcoming Enterprise Strategy and to deliver national initiatives locally such as Made Smarter and the Net Zero Hub on behalf of the Department of Business Energy and Industrial Strategy.

We look to the future with confidence and are embracing the opportunities that comes with change to continue to drive the creation of more and better jobs for the people of the North East.

We are here to support businesses to start, innovate and grow. Find out what support is available for your business via NorthEastGrowthHub.co.uk.

Colin Bell, Business and Sector Growth Director at the North East Local Enterprise Partnership, explains why evolution is key to simplifying the business support landscape to be meaningful for businesses

It won’t surprise anyone when I say that the business support landscape is too confusing and overly transactional. There are many reasons for this but perhaps the biggest contributor is the way funding is administered and governed.

If we truly want the UK to be the best place in the world to start and grow a business, then we need to grasp the once in a generation opportunity represented by the current LEP reform. This will allow us to break with the status quo while building on what works, creating regional ecosystems that deliver economic and business transformation while strengthening our global competitiveness.

However, there is a real and present danger – if we don’t act now then we risk merely evolving what’s gone before, and even worse, creating a post code lottery of locally focused small scale schemes that will result in limited impact and increased fragmentation; and inefficiencies that will exacerbate rather than address the weaknesses of the current funding and fragmented landscape.

Addressing the frailties of the system is relatively simple. We need to develop a way of working that effectively connects the essential pillars of regional economic development, which are Governance, Strategy, Funding and Delivery infrastructure.

Where these don’t work hand in hand, it leads to many of the existing issues that we are experiencing, such as inefficiency, confusion, duplication and unhealthy competition between stakeholders.

Modernising the landscape requires:

Creating systems that connect the essential pillars (Governance, Strategy, Funding, Delivery infrastructure) without dictating a one size fits all approach.
Developing regional strategy and frameworks that are built around businesses operational and competitive horizons.
The creation of a long term regional economic development ‘system’, backed by long term strategy and long-term funding.
A system that is focused on delivering impact and transformation rather than box ticking and transactional approaches.
The modernisation of the business support landscape by a) rethinking how we segment the business base to identify those with real underlying potential, and b) structuring support that directly tackles business pains and helps business to deliver the gains they’re striving for.
Building on the existing and proven ability of LEPs and Growth Hubs to align collective energy and resources towards clear and common goals and strategy.

The evolution of LEPs and Growth Hubs should be welcomed as a much-needed chance to modernise business support.

I know I’m joined by many in the belief that this is an opportunity to develop a landscape that enables genuine business and economic transformation. Through meaningful change, we can deliver powerful and integrated customer journeys and focused resource and energy on the businesses, programmes, and initiatives that make a real difference to the business community.

Get this right and it could be a powerful and effective way to support the government’s agenda to level up our regional economies.

Colin Bell is Business and Sector Growth Director at the North East Local Enterprise Partnership.

Ammar, you are a North East LEP Board member and the newly appointed Chair of the Business Growth Board. What is your ambition for this role?

The LEP is made up of individuals with significant experience, expertise and endorsement, representing the public, private and academic sectors, all with a shared ambition of making the North East a better place where we create more and better jobs, which is clearly even more important now.

Being the chair of the Business Growth Board is a privilege given the other members of the Board and the enthusiasm of Colin and his team to bring our strategy to fruition. My ambition is for our work to help our communities realise their goals and raise aspirations, ultimately making a sustainable, meaningful and measurable impact.

Colin – your Business Growth Board has had a bit of a shake up, with Ammar joining as Chair alongside five new people, and a number of long-standing board members supporting a strong executive team. How important it is to have a strong relationship between the board and executive and what are you most excited about for the future?

Having a strong and active board who keep me and my team on their toes, provide constructive challenge, are prepared to be active in supporting and promoting the North East’s business community and who bring ideas to the table is what I look for.

It’s therefore fantastic that Ammar is the new Chair of the Business Growth Board as that’s exactly what he brings. His approach is all about channelling energy, action and being a champion of the North East.

Ammar is supported by some fantastic new Business Growth Board members including Darren Laybourne , Director at Turner and Townsend who brings a wealth of experience in scaling a global business; Liz Bromley, CEO of the Newcastle College Group who runs one of the UK’s largest college businesses; Paul Butler, CEO of North East Automotive Alliance who brings an expertise in in business support and industrial clustering; Yvonne Gale, CEO, NEL Fund Managers, providing a vital insight into the investor community; and Steve Underwood, Director, Dentsu Aegis, one of the UK’s largest digital agencies. This formidable group of business leaders joins our existing board members: Toby Bridges, Chairman, NBT Group; Ryan Maughan, CEO, Avid Technology; and Kate Wickham, CEO, Gate 7.

You’re both at the forefront of the fight against COVID-19. How has this manifested into support for the North East business community?

Ammar: People are understandably confused, concerned and cynical of the future, which in turn demands a response that is relevant, responsive and regionally focused. The support led by the LEP and supported by a whole host of partners including the SME Centre of Excellence means that SMEs can get the right support at the right time to survive.

Colin: We are speaking with businesses every day to understand the practical challenges that they are facing and feeding intelligence to Government to inform them about what’s needed in terms of support.

At a regional level we are working closely with our partners to introduce initiatives to fill the cracks, such as Crowdfunder North East and the enhanced grant funding for the supply of PPE via Supply Chain North East. We are increasingly looking to the future and are currently working with Ammar and the Business Growth Board to develop a plan of action to support businesses through the restart phase so as many as possible bounce back strongly from the current situation.

The North East Growth Hub has seen a huge increase in businesses engaging with it and is becoming the go-to hub for information relating to not just COVID-19 but all business support and access to finance in the region. What impact is this having and why is it important?

Ammar: Having a single source of credible and up to date information is critical to help individuals access the support they need, especially in challenging times. The Growth Hub has always been a rich resource to help SMEs thrive. Given the substantial number of service providers that feed into the Growth Hub, together with the Connectors who are able to provide one-to-one support, everyone accessing the service will benefit.

Colin: Businesses want access to simple and impartial support and guidance. The Growth Hub brings all support into one place and does not have any vested interests or targets to refer businesses to particular schemes – we are 100% focused on what’s right for the businesses.

Our highly experienced Growth Hub Connectors are there to have open and honest discussions with business owners. During the crisis they’ve been able to help remove some of the anxiety by helping them to see a path through the confusion and engage them on support and funding options of which they were perhaps unaware.

The North East LEP and the North East Growth Hub have been combining forces with other organisations to deliver support. Why is that partnership approach important?

Ammar: The North East is renowned for being the friendliest place in the country, and never has friendship and partnership been more important. The LEP has always acted as an enabler, recognising that we must create a community underpinned by a collaborative campaign to develop an effective eco-system that will help our region restart, revive and ultimately thrive. It is this partnership approach that will help us progress to a better place.

Colin: The Growth Hub is an impartial and trusted broker and we work with businesses to understand challenges and opportunities and then connect them with the people, organisations and solutions that we believe are best for them.

The delivery of support is carried out by our partners who are national and locally based and from the public, private and education sectors. We work closely with our partners through the Business Support Provider Network, which provides a forum to align their collective efforts to the delivery of economic strategy and to inform the development of business support and finance solutions that will deliver the greatest impact to businesses.

What should businesses be thinking about now in terms of recovery and readying for a recession?

Ammar: The three biggest enablers to success for any organisation are digital transformation, innovation and new markets. These factors are even more critical to the recovery of our economy and that is where the Business Growth Board is focusing all its attention and efforts. This includes working with the Michigan Institute of Technology Team and key stakeholders to develop an eco-system that gives our whole region a competitive advantage and an accelerated recovery plan.

Every business should be planning and preparing for the future in an innovative, inclusive and industrious manner. Especially as the North East started the industrial revolution.

Colin: Businesses need to consider what they have learnt through the pandemic that they can use to give their business an edge moving forward. This may be things like honing into new market opportunities, developing new ways of working, harnessing technology and unearthing new capabilities within their teams.

People are pulling together to support one another through the current situation. How can business leaders follow this through into the recovery and harness the fire in people’s bellies, their collective energy, passion and creativity to deliver a better future – it’s by no means going to be easy but it’s our fighting spirit, grit and determination that will help the North East to bounce back.

ENDS

Aspirational businesses owners from across the North East are accelerating their growth thanks to mentoring from some of the region’s most successful business people.

Fulfilling the North East’s strategic economic aim of creating 100,000 ‘more and better jobs’ is reliant on more businesses making the jump to their next level of growth. Many businesses in the region have a turnover that typically fluctuates between 750k and £1.5million with few breaking through to the next stage of growth. This scenario can be driven by many reasons; some decide that this is the right level for them and accept that some years are better than others, whilst others aspire to grow but for various reasons can’t quite make it happen.

Having access to a mentor who has walked the path and has proven invaluable in helping businesses owners to reach their next level of growth. The North East Growth Hub’s Mentors offer their time voluntarily and are motivated by altruistic endeavour, giving back and making a positive contribution to the North East economy.

They have all experienced the pleasure and pain that comes with scaling a business, they’ve got things wrong and made mistakes and got things right and achieved success. It’s this insight and learning from experience that when passed on has enabled other business owners to short cut barriers and accelerate results. Mentees have typically benefited through:

Improving their leadership style
Developing a more sustainable business model
Accelerating their growth
Developing better business skills and planning
Achieving better sales and lead generation.

Quality of experience is key. We take great care in selecting suitable mentors and mentees and go to great lengths to ensure strong, trusting and effective matches are made. It would be great to think that this could be facilitated by a clever database, however, experience shows that a great match can only be achieved by gaining a good understanding of the business and the motivations, interests and personality of both mentor and mentee.

If you are interested, email us at [email protected] to book your space.

May I end by saying a big thanks to all our mentors and mentees – you are amazing! Thanks for helping others reach their full potential.

Colin Bell, Business Growth Director, North East Local Enterprise Partnership.

The number of fast-growing ambitious businesses with leaders hungry for success is increasing across the North East – new insights from the ScaleUp Institute reveal.

There are now 820 companies in the region that meet the definition of scaleup because they have increased turnover or employment by more than 20% annually. North East scaleups are employing a total of 74,000 staff and their turnover is worth £9.5 billion. This is according to new research by the ScaleUp Institute based on the latest 2017 ONS data.

In the area, the top five scaleups by employment growth are Fairstone Group, Barrier Group, Eden Farm, Connect Health and DW Support Services, while the top five for turnover growth are Barrier Group, The Trout Hotel, Partner Construction, Eden Farm and Crabtree.

Across the UK there are over 36,000 scaleups, an increase of 3.7% from 2016.

ScaleUp Institute Chief Executive Irene Graham said: “Scaleups are the engine drivers of local economies; they are twice as innovative as large firms, employ twice as many apprentices, are twice as likely to be operating in international markets, and, significantly, they create high quality jobs.

“Their aspirations remain high. According to our recent ScaleUp survey eight out of ten expect to scale again in 2019, generating £1.5 billion more in turnover and creating an extra 7,000 jobs.”

While they are ambitious about their growth, scaleups continue to face major challenges. In the North East they particularly highlight access to UK markets, access to talent and leadership development as key issues. They also want easier access to support from peer-to-peer networks, local professional services and public sector funding for innovation.

The ScaleUp Institute notes that the North East offers a number of services for scaleups. “This is encouraging and we will continue to monitor their impact,” said Irene Graham.

Colin Bell, the North East LEP’s Business Growth Director, said: “These results are a great reflection of dynamism and strength of the North East business community. Despite continued uncertainty around Brexit, our entrepreneurs are continuing to scale and drive the North East economy forward.

“Scaleups are critical drivers of economic growth, representing less than 1% of the economy, but generating one third of new economic and jobs growth. That’s why the North East Local Enterprise Partnership set an ambitious target in 2017 to grow the density of scaleups in the North East by 50% by 2024. We now have 17% more scaleups in the region than we did in 2017, which represents strong progress towards our goal – there is lots to feel positive about and the North East business community should look to the future with confidence.

“We have been working hard to ensure our scaleup and scaleup potential businesses have the support they need from within our ecosystem. Support has included the launch of the flagship Scaleup North East service, Supply Chain North East, that introduces businesses to new markets, the £120 million North East Fund, Growth through Mentoring, that introduces business owners to mentors who have scaled their own business and worked with partners such as the Entrepreneurs Forum to create the peer driven Scaleup Leaders Academy.”

Tag: Colin Bell

Evidence to impact – a scaleup success story

Helping business navigate the dual storms of COVID and Brexit was a challenge and a privilege

Leading business and sector growth in a changing landscape

A once in a generation opportunity to modernise business support

IN CONVERSATION WITH…Colin Bell, Business Growth Director of the North East LEP and Ammar Mirza CBE, newly appointed Chair of the North East LEP’s Business Growth Board, talk about their aspirations for the future.

Being mentored by some of the North East’s most successful business people is proven to unlock business growth

820 North East companies gain ScaleUp recognition