{"id":3240,"date":"2014-04-25T12:10:31","date_gmt":"2014-04-25T11:10:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/kbs-news-events\/?p=3240"},"modified":"2014-04-25T12:10:31","modified_gmt":"2014-04-25T11:10:31","slug":"business-boost-for-kent-economy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/kbs-news-events\/2014\/04\/business-boost-for-kent-economy\/","title":{"rendered":"Business boost for Kent economy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><em>Business school project helps SMEs perform better and leads to \u00a32.8m boost to Kent economy and creation of new jobs<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>A project by the University\u2019s\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.kent.ac.uk\/kbs\/research\/research-centres\/ecg\/projects\/psp.html\">Kent Business School\u00a0<\/a>(KBS) has led to significant improvements in the performance of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Kent \u2013 helping to add \u00a32.8m to the county\u2019s economy and create more than 100 new jobs.<\/p>\n<p>Now KBS is inviting every SME in the county to become part of the programme of research, known as\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.kent.ac.uk\/kbs\/school\/news_full.html?view=3168\">Promoting Sustainable Performance<\/a>, as it moves into a new phase.<\/p>\n<p>The research programme helps SMEs achieve sustainable improvements in their performance by inviting owner-managers to take part in a development programme \u2013 known as The BIG Journey \u2013 as well as attend networking events to share best practice on growing their businesses.<\/p>\n<p>A recent survey of the impact so far of the BIG Journey programme has shown that it has already had a remarkable impact on SMEs taking part.<\/p>\n<p><img style=\"float: left;margin: 5px 10px 5px 0\" title=\"Toby Lindsay\" alt=\"Toby Lindsay\" src=\"http:\/\/www.kent.ac.uk\/newsimages\/lindsay_toby.jpg\" \/>Toby Lindsay, Research Associate at KBS\u2019\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.kent.ac.uk\/kbs\/research\/research-centres\/ecg\/\">Centre for Employment, Competitiveness and Growth<\/a>\u00a0(cECG), said: \u2018This project has been steadily gaining momentum but when we evaluated the improvement gains that businesses had made we were astonished to find just how great the impact has been.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018Our findings indicate that participants have increased their sales turnover by just over 18% and their employment by nearly 14%, adding around \u00a32.8m to Kent\u2019s economy and creating 111 new jobs.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018In addition to these startling figures, we\u2019ve had excellent feedback from SME owner-managers who have attended our events and benefitted from the sharing of best practice.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>The project will now enter its next phase and cECG is looking for SME owner-managers to complete its latest survey on performance and growth. Register\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.kent.ac.uk\/kbs\/research\/research-centres\/ecg\/projects\/psp.html\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Contact:\u00a0<a href=\"mailto:M.J.Herrema@kent.ac.uk\">M.J.Herrema@kent.ac.uk<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Business school project helps SMEs perform better and leads to \u00a32.8m boost to Kent economy and creation of new jobs A project by the University\u2019s\u00a0Kent &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/kbs-news-events\/2014\/04\/business-boost-for-kent-economy\/\">Read&nbsp;more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2357,"featured_media":3170,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[9890,19204,124,17588],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/kbs-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3240"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/kbs-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/kbs-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/kbs-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2357"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/kbs-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3240"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/kbs-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3240\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3241,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/kbs-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3240\/revisions\/3241"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/kbs-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3170"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/kbs-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/kbs-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/kbs-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}