Enterprise news and opinion from Cobweb

Lord Young has made a number of recommendations for the Government to encourage micro-business growth…

This week we’re going to take a look at some common, and occasionally fatal, mistakes that are made by new business start ups – and sometimes by their supposedly more experienced counterparts…

This week, we are revisiting one of those perennial discussion topics that is of natural interest to enterprise support practitioners and professionals, and of obsessive fascination to the wider business media, ministers and ‘experts’. The topic is – what exactly is an entrepreneur?…

A couple of years ago we published an article on a subject that many people new to business struggle to understand. So we thought it would be timely to revisit the real world of small business ownership.

At first glance this may seem like a strange question, but what exactly is meant by ‘enterprise’ in terms of an activity – in other words to ‘be enterprising’? And why is it important and useful to be clear about this in relation to starting, running or supporting a small business?…

Some recent research by business software provider Sage has indicated that less than 5% of small business owners consider themselves to be an ‘entrepreneur’, and most prefer not being referred to in this way. However, thinking of yourself as a business owner or sole trader rather than as an entrepreneur is one thing, but being an entrepreneurial business owner is a different matter altogether…

Having a business plan is not the be-all and end-all for anyone setting up, running, or aspiring to grow a small enterprise. In the real world of start ups and entrepreneurship it’s not actually having ‘a plan’ that’s important, but having a number of distinct ‘plans’ for your business, and lots of them…

One particular debate which has become a perennial cause of divided opinion among enterprise professionals relates to whether entrepreneurship can or cannot be taught in a classroom setting. In the light of these differences in opinion the answer to the question is clearly yes, no, and maybe…

The results of a fascinating study published by the Kauffman Foundation look into the reasons why government intervention programmes to support entrepreneurship either consistently fail or don’t work…

Typically, small business owners spend considerably more time on process activities than they do on being enterprising, and this, in the majority of cases, is an issue that will need to be addressed…