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BIS hosts Middlesex home businesses seminar

01/04/2015
Middlesex partners with Department for Business, Innovation and Skills to explore issues around home businesses

Professor Stephen SyrettA one-day seminar organised by Middlesex University Business School in conjunction with the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS),explored the challenges arising from the increasing use of homes as business spaces to identify areas for future policy development.

Delegates heard a range of expert contributions that examined critically the different impacts of regulation, housing types and design, technology, planning, employment and finance upon the possibilities for developing home-based entrepreneurship.

Findings presented suggested the need to radically refashion across a range of policy spheres, including business and innovation, communities and local development, housing and urban design and sustainable development, to nurture the positive benefits of a growing home-based business sector.

Commenting on the event, Dr Ian Drummond from BIS said: "This covers policy-relevant topics that are of great interest to the Department, particularly to the Enterprise Directorate and our 'Local Growth' team."

Professor Stephen Syrett, Director of the Centre for Enterprise and Economic Development Research (CEEDR) at Middlesex (pictured with Emma Jones from Enterprise Nation), said: "We have a strong history of working with government bodies such as BIS to ensure a high level of impact from our research as the strong REF results recently demonstrated.

"This seminar provided a high level exchange of ideas between academics, policy-makers and practitioners to identify current and future research needs and policy responses."

The event formed part of an ongoing ESRC-funded seminar series exploring the development of entrepreneurship in homes and neighbourhoods, which is being run jointly by the Universities of Middlesex, St Andrews, Glasgow and Delft.

The next event focusing upon entrepreneurship in neighbourhoods will be held at Delft in September. A first book arising from this series, Entrepreneurship in Cities: Neighbourhoods, Households and Homes, will be published by Edward Elgar this year.

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