Two visiting research Fellows began this month to join the wider research team of the Centre for Employment, Competitiveness and Growth (cECG) helping to further the work being carried out on SME performance and growth.
Hary Febriansyah
Hary Febriansyah is the Managing Director of The Centre of Knowledge for Business Competitiveness (CK4BC), School of Business and Management, Institut Teknologi Bandung, Indonesia. He is working with cECG on comparative research for SME growth in Indonesia and South East Asia under The Lotus Unlimited Project-Erasmus Mundus Action 2. Hary is also here to work toward signing a memorandum of understanding for research and postgraduate teaching between the two business schools. Hary arrived on Monday and will be working with the cECG and Dr Mark Gilman for the next month on a comparative literature review of SME growth and the building of an international model to compare the subject area in China, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Singapore and Korea. Hary commented ….”Thank you Mark and cECG. It is an honour for us to be building and collaborating on joint research with you. We hope this will develop into a long-term relationship through which we can exchange knowledge and expertise on Human Capital Management, Performance and SMEs. This will help to strengthen the relationship between Indonesia and United Kingdom toward ASEAN and Great Britain…”
Kazmi Azfar
Kazmi Azfar first visited the university in October 2013 for an introduction to UK Business studies for some of Italy’s most promising postgraduate business students. As one of the top students Kazmi was awarded a further 3 month CRT Fondazione scholarship which he will be spending working on the development of a BIG Ten Business Growth Diagnostic tool. The BIG Ten are a set of Growth Characteristics identified from research carried out by cECG on high growth SMEs. A new diagnostic tool will enable SMEs to track their progress towards building key growth characteristics. Kazmi commented…”I came across the BIG Ten in October 2013 during a week workshop at the Kent Innovation Centre delivered by cECG. Since then I became further interested in the model and decided to work with cECG to develop this tool. I hope my work will add value to the existing features of this amazing tool and together with cECG, we will be able to achieve our goal which is to enable SMEs to improve their performance and sustainable growth.”
For further information please contact Dr Mark Gilman on M.W.Gilman@kent.ac.uk or by telephone 01227 823797.