An ambitious programme to help promising businesses with high growth potential in Suffolk and Norfolk accelerate their pace of expansion has been launched by New Anglia Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP) and delivered through the New Anglia Growth Hub.
Opening with an event focused on digital marketing in Newmarket in February, The ‘Scale Up New Anglia’ Programme will run over three years with a stated aim “to take growing businesses in the region to the next level”.
Our aim is to address ‘silver’ companies in the two counties – companies with a propensity to grow. They occupy a sweet spot between ‘Bronze’ which are Start Ups and ‘Gold’ which are Scale Ups, defined as growing in terms of turnover or FTEs at 20% per annum or more, over a three year period.
We will bring together in workshops a collective of interested companies with a propensity to grow. There will also be a website where members can gain the resources they need to help them excel in entrepreneurship. We aim the build an entrepreneurship ecosystem which works specifically for the New Anglia region.
Through Scale Up New Anglia, we aim to create an exclusive community of like-minded peers and industry and topic experts. Advisers from the Growth Hub will also advise New Anglia Local Enterprise Partnership on the nature and specific needs of the region’s ‘high growth ecosystem.’
The Programme is being run in conjunction with the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses Initiative, aimed at helping entrepreneurs realise their potential through access to education and business support services. For the past two years, the New Anglia Growth Hub has been working with the Goldman Sachs programme which is fully funded by the Goldman Sachs Foundation. This involves selected business owners following a rigorous course at centres in the UK. Twelve business owners from Suffolk and Norfolk have already successfully followed the course and qualified as ‘alumni’.
Members of the Programme will be invited on the basis of their propensity to grow and key benefits of the Programme include access to members only workshops, information tools, meetings and events attended by similar businesses from Suffolk and Norfolk. It will also provide access to experts and other bodies such as Tech East, the Cambridge Tech Corridor and Invest East, anew free initiative to provide bespoke training and mentoring for firms to become pitch perfect in dealing with potential investors.
The next Scale Up event will be on 26th March2019 at Barnham Broom Hotel, Norwich and will focus on manufacturing. If you are a growing company interested in becoming a member of ‘Scale Up New Anglia’, please contact Dr Morgan Potter at New Anglia Growth Hub on 0300 333 6536 or mailto:[email protected]
