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This study examines the effects of technology business incubator (TBI)'s funding, technical support and entrepreneurial mentoring on the graduation performance of new technology-based firms in China's three tier cities. Using new dataset on all TBIs and incubated new technology-based firms from government surveys conducted over five consecutive years from 2009 to 2013 combined with archival and hand-collected data, we find the effects of incubator services on the early growth of new technology-based firms vary according to the local context. Technical support facilities and entrepreneurial mentoring from TBIs are found to have significantly and positively influenced the early development of the firms in the four most affluent tier 1 cities, whilst these effects become less pronounced for the tier 2 and tier 3 cities. These two services are also found to influence graduation performance in the government and university types of TBI respectively. Results support the notion that the effectiveness of an incubators services is shaped by the level of a city's socio-economic development and that the city location of a TBI does impact the graduation performance of its incubatees.

International audience ; A policy focus of the New Labour Government in the UK has been upon attempts to tackle problems of concentrations of deprivation at the neighbourhood scale. This paper presents evidence from five local authority districts to consider how issues of scale matter in seeking to address such problems and the institutional arrangements and policies currently in place to improve their economic prospects. The results demonstrate that for economic deprivation to be tackled more effectively requires both a clearer specification for the rationale for the kind of intervention and improved integration and co-ordination of strategies and actions at various spatial scales.

A policy focus of the New Labour Government in the UK has been upon attempts to tackle problems of concentrations of deprivation at the neighbourhood scale. This paper presents evidence from five local authority districts to consider how issues of scale matter in seeking to address such problems and the institutional arrangements and policies currently in place to improve their economic prospects. The results demonstrate that for economic deprivation to be tackled more effectively requires both a clearer specification for the rationale for the kind of intervention and improved integration and co-ordination of strategies and actions at various spatial scales.

To improve SME growth and competitiveness, governments often encourage business owner-managers to make use of external sources of support. Whether they seek this depends on the degree to which they perceive themselves to need assistance. Additionally, its use can be constrained by market failures. In this paper, we model whether SME owner-managers seek information and advice from formal sources, including public and private providers. In 2011, the researchers conducted a telephone survey of 1202 SMEs (1–249 employees) in England to assess the use and non-use of external support between 2008 and 2011. Using a contingency approach, we model various influences on the use and non-use of formal support and identify those owner-managers who face more concerns but have less confidence in their capabilities. We find that the demand for support, especially from private providers, is fuelled by a firm's objective to grow and a size threshold, although this is moderated by various concerns which increase the likelihood of using public sources. The willingness to take informal advice can act as a stepping stone to using formal sources. Whilst market failures affected less than a fifth of firms, those with women directors were particularly affected as were newly founded firms.

This is an original manuscript / preprint of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Venture Capital on 4-7-13, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/13691066.2013.804755 ; This paper presents recent research assessing the impact of the financial crisis on young and established Technology-Based Small Firms (TBSFs) and considers whether their ability to contribute to economic growth is being affected by ongoing problems in obtaining external finance. It reports on original findings from a survey of 100 TBSFs undertaken in late 2010 as well as 20 in-depth interviews with a range of finance providers. The surviving TBSFs exhibited considerable demand for external finance since 2007, particularly for working capital and early stage R&D, sought mainly from banks, but also with younger TBSFs seeking business angel finance and innovation grants and more mature TBSFs seeking venture capital finance. However, both debt and equity finance have become harder to access for TBSFs, particularly for early stage funding and for more R&D intensive firms, hampering their growth potential. Where external finance has been available, the terms and conditions set by providers were often unacceptable to business owners. The paper concludes that the smooth operation of the finance escalator has proved difficult to achieve under recent financial conditions and identifies a number of breakpoints relating to TBSFs which government policy needs to address.

Spatial concentrations of worklessness remained a key characteristic of labour markets in advanced industrial economies, even during the period of decline in aggregate levels of unemployment and economic inactivity evident from the late 1990s to the economic downturn in 2008. The failure of certain localities to benefit from wider improvements in regional and national labour markets points to a lack of effectiveness in adopted policy approaches, not least in relation to the governance arrangements and policy delivery mechanisms that seek to integrate residents of deprived areas into wider local labour markets. Through analysis of practice in the British context, we explore the difficulties of integrating economic and social policy agendas within and across spatial scales to tackle problems of concentrated worklessness. We present analysis of a number of selected case studies aimed at reducing localised worklessness and identify the possibilities and constraints for effective action given existing governance arrangements and policy priorities to promote economic competitiveness and inclusion.

This paper is concerned with small business development in rural areas and the policy approaches currently being used to support them. The key question underlying the paper is the extent to which small businesses located in rural areas have distinctive support needs, associated with the characteristics of rural businesses themselves or their owners, and/or the characteristics of the external operating environment for business in rural areas. A related question concerns the possible influence of enterprise characteristics and the characteristics of rural areas on how the business support needs of rural businesses are best addressed. The study comprised a desk-based review of existing literature relevant to the support needs of rural enterprises and/or the means of addressing them. It also included primary research on policy initiatives and programmes concerned with enterprise development in rural areas. Telephone interviews were conducted in 2001 with representatives of Business Links with catchments that included rural areas, as well as other key agencies (for example, the Countryside Agency). In addition, twenty-four case studies were completed of rural policy initiatives, based on face-to-face interviews. Following a brief review of key literature, an overview of the policies currently being operated by Business Link is described, based on the survey. This is followed by an identification of good-practice principles of rural business support, based on an analysis of the case-study support initiatives. The paper concludes by identifying the implications of the analysis for future enterprise support policy.