Partner Article

Event to reveal ‘untapped potential’

Results of a national enterprise research study that shows the North East’s ‘untapped potential’ will be unveiled later this month.

The Untapped Potential Survey was carried out by GfK NOP (a leading market research and consumer insight agency) amongst 1500 members of the public in England.

The aim of the research was to discover the general population’s attitudes towards enterprise and entrepreneurial behaviour. The results for the North East were improved by an additional sample added by One North East and Enterprise UK.

In total, seven clusters or ‘personality types’ were identified from the data, which will be unveiled at the event. The North East appears to have a smaller proportion of ‘Self Starters’ compared to the national profile.

Louise Kempton, Head of the North East region at Enterprise UK said: “Self Starters are incredibly entrepreneurial and represent the Holy Grail for enterprise agencies, coaches and other business support agencies. They are very positive about starting a business, believe they have the skills to set one up, and they tend to be less bothered by the chance of failure than others.

“Yet, achieving the number of start-ups to meet the region’s enterprise needs, requires a far greater contribution from other potential entrepreneurs – we have a great amount of untapped potential in the North East and we need to bring that out in people.”

Tim Pain, Head of Business, Enterprise and Skills at One North East said: “The results of the Untapped Potential research allow us to understand the different attitudes to enterprise so we can better target and tailor support. This research gives us a much better understanding of how we can promote enterprise and business to all kinds of people in the region, and therefore increase start up rates across all groups.”

The results will be unveiled at the ‘Beyond Self Starters’ event hosted in Newcastle on 29 January by Enterprise UK and One North East this month.

For more information about the event go to enterprisingplacesbeyondselfstarters.eventbrite.com/ or www.enterpriseuk.org.uk/epn.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ruth Mitchell .