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SME Finance and innovation

Looking out for SMEs

SMEs are the life-blood of economies and innovation. In the UK, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), with less than 250 employees, account for 99.9 per cent of the UK’s 5.5 million private sector businesses and employing 16.3 million people with a combined annual turnover of £1.3 trillion (Federation of Small Businesses, 2022).

Research that matters

Over 30 years, CEEDR’s academics and students have earned international recognition for their SME research. Recently, our work on potential high performance, sustainable innovative SME finance and support policy has contributed to major policy, support practitioner and SME impacts to key UK business finance programmes, contributing to our top tier UK REF university impact rating. Our clients include the British Business Bank, Innovate UK, Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS), Greater London Authority, Research England and international public policy makers.

To find out more about our contract research scoping and evaluative work and grant research, including city and rural enterprise and equality and just transition work for a low carbon and nature positive economy, follow this link to find out more about the impact of our important work in this area.

Some recent, ground-breaking grant and contract research projects include:

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