Business Link West Midlands and Warwick Business School launch 'pilot' to support high growth businesses

Business Link WM has announced a high profile Business Transformation pilot in collaboration with the University of Warwick Business School to support sustainable high growth and business transformation of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) across the West Midlands. The Business Transformation pilot is specifically designed for SMEs that have the potential to achieve high growth, or that wish to sustain a strategy of high growth, having already committed to this way forward.

The first companies in the region to have the opportunity to benefit from this business transformation service are Alumni of the BIG (Business Innovation and Growth) programme. The BIG programme has been specifically developed by Warwick Business School to support sustainable high growth for SMEs and has been running for over a decade. It provides inspiration, coaching, peer support and addresses all the key issues of strategic growth and planning.

The Business Transformation pilot was announced on 6 November at a networking event held for BIG Alumni, with the theme of Building your Business Beyond 2009, attended by over 40 owner managers of fast growth SMEs from across the West Midlands.

The aim of it is to support SMEs in their endeavours to transform their vision into a high growth reality, through providing on-going support to develop and implement a strategic action plan.

Warwick Business School, funded by Business Link West Midlands, will take on the provision of:

• Specialist mentoring and advice;
• Focused networking activity to share best practice and provide inspiration;
• Residential 'boot camp' workshops of two days duration focusing on key external critical success factors.

"This is an exciting initiative which will undoubtedly help hard-working and potentially successful entrepreneurs. The resulting growth of the participating firms will be of benefit to the West Midlands as a whole, and provide relevant, targeted and practical support to businesses which need this kind of assistance in the current challenging times," said Professor Roger Mumby-Croft of the Enterprise Hub at WBS.

Richard Crooks, Head of Sector Development at Business Link WM said, "Supporting the transformation of businesses to sustainable high growth is a key success factor for Business Link West Midlands. We are here to help businesses to grow the regional economy and high growth is a critical factor in closing the £13bn productivity gap across the West Midlands compared to the rest of the country. Working with the University of Warwick Business School on this important Business Transformation initiative will give potential high growth businesses the added stimulus they need."