Business Advisers' Survey - Learning and Sharing Ideas

During November 2009, Cobweb carried out a survey of subscribers to its BAD News bulletin for business advisers and support practitioners. This survey was carried out in partnership with the International Association for Enterprise Promotion, and was designed to find out levels of evaluation undertaken on support projects and programmes, and the extent to which lessons and ideas were being shared between project and programme managers.

There were 135 support practitioners and programme managers who took part in the survey, which was conducted by e-mail and answered online by participants.

Here's a brief overview of the survey results:

• Just over 80% of respondents carry out formal evaluation of all or some of their projects/programmes.
• Around 75% of evaluation reports are not made generally available (unless requested by interested parties) or are not made available for access at all.
• Some 73% of respondents are continually engaged in seeking new ideas and lessons. Only 10% do not look for ideas, or only occasionally do so.
• Half of respondents claim to visit other projects to learn from their success.
• Almost 90% of practitioners/managers regularly contact people in their professional network, and 76% participate in conferences and seminars.
• Just over 20% of respondents believe other support organisations are more willing to share experiences than five years ago.
• Some 30% of respondents believe it is easier to find new ideas to support entrepreneurs than five years ago, and 27% believe this is now more difficult.
• Two-thirds of respondents believe that business support in their region is not sufficiently innovative to provide effective to support to entrepreneurs.

The key standout results relate to the points about evaluation levels, which are encouragingly high, although the survey also indicates that one in five projects do not receive any formal evaluation, and almost 30% of evaluation reports are not made available for general access. The majority of evaluations are, however, claimed to be available upon request.

The most notable result in this survey is that two out of three respondents do not believe that business support in their region is innovative enough to encourage entrepreneurship.

If you would like to make any comments about the results of this survey then please e-mail us at surveys@cobwebinfo.com.