The Enterprise and Diversity Alliance: Promoting Knowledge Exchange in the New Era of Business Support

This project aims to establish the Enterprise and Diversity Alliance (EDA) as the United Kingdom's leading knowledge exchange network for entrepreneurship and minority businesses (that is, small enterprises owned by ethnic minorities, women and young people). It brings together researchers, corporations, the finance sector and professional bodies in order to pursue one central ambition: to 'make diversity and enterprise everyone's business'.

The EDA is the culmination of extensive research and practitioner activity. It has had a successful first year, marked by growing interest from corporations and the development of innovative support initiatives for minority business owners. A further year's support from the ESRC would enable the EDA become: the 'go-to' body for guidance on research and practice on minority enterprise; larger in scale; and fully self-financing. It is also is well-placed to fill the policy vacuum that has arisen in the business support world. The profound changes to business support policy mean that the there is a real danger that the learning accumulated from previous initiatives to support minority enterprise will be lost. The EDA will guard against this possibility, and will ensure that insights from research and practice are applied to new initiatives.

Three strands of work will be undertaken to ensure that knowledge on minority enterprise is shared widely with relevant stakeholders. First, two innovative peer mentoring initiatives with minority entrepreneurs will be launched. They build on the successful 12/8 network, and will be supported by A. F. Blakemore & Son Ltd and National Grid. Minority business owners will receive direct and high level support for their growth ambitions. Minority entrepreneurs across the UK will also be the target for a regular electronic newsletter on key developments and sources of business support.

Second, the project will integrate knowledge on diversity and enterprise in the practices of large organisations. This activity will focus on the EDA's new members, A. F. Blakemore & Son Ltd., National Grid and Leicester City Council. The proposers will ensure that key initiatives (for example, the leadership development programmes of A. F. Blakemore & Son Ltd., National Grid, and procurement practices at Leicester City Council) apply the knowledge gained from EDA research and practice on diversity and enterprise.

Finally, knowledge and insights from the implementation of the EDA project will be shared with the wider peer, professional and policy networks of partner organisations. In effect, EDA members will be ambassadors for diversity and enterprise amongst their peers. This provides an opportunity for the EDA to influence major national initiatives. For example, our finance sector partners will work with the British Bankers' Association to ensure that diversity issues are integrated in key areas, notably data-gathering and the implementation of the national mentoring proposition. Business in the Community will introduce its corporate members to the benefits of supporting peer mentoring networks with minority business owners. Good practice in relation to diversity and procurement will be promoted by CIPS and Leicester City Council.

The 16th Annual Ethnic Minority Business Conference, scheduled for October 2012, will be dedicated to highlighting the impact of the EDA.

Our approach
Explicit engagement with the concept of 'impact' is central to the proposal. Theoretically, our approach is informed by Van de Ven's (2007) concept 'engaged scholarship' and the method of action learning. Such approaches call for the fusion of practice and academe, with the aim of generating 'knowledge integration' so they are no longer two separate domains. These perspectives also have strong affinities with the key factors that the ESRC (2009) regard as vital for impact generation: pre-existing relationships and networks with user communities; involving users at all stages of the research; well-planned user engagement strategies; and portfolios of research activity that build reputations with research users.

Impact pathways
The multiplicity of pathways to secure 'impact' is a unique feature of the proposed activity. A wide range of sectors, organisations and agencies are represented in the proposal. They are all committed to developing activities for the benefit of minority entrepreneurs, as well as their own organisations. However, in addition to the pursuit of individual organisational objectives, participants are keen to act as advocates for diversity amongst their peer organisations. Further, in some cases (ACCA, BitC and CIPS) partners are membership based organisations, and therefore will utilise the intervention for the benefit of their respective constituencies.

The use of action learning ensures that a genuinely collaborative approach to impact is central to the implementation of the project. Participants themselves are responsible for being active group members; delivering collectively agreed activities; and initiating change within their own organisations. The action learning approach allows for periods of 'critical reflection', the purpose of which is to assess the nature and degree of impact.

Participants will also be invited to explore the impact on themselves as individuals. It is worth emphasising that many of the individuals concerned occupy senior positions within their organisations, and are often in a position to exercise considerable influence. Hence they can utilise the experience and insights gained from the project to make changes to practice. Reciprocally, they are also able to share knowledge from practitioner communities which will be of great value to the practice of research. The significance of such interactions in relation to 'impact' will be assessed.

Types of Impact
Using the ESRC's own guidance, we anticipate 'instrumental', 'conceptual' and 'capacity-building' impacts:

Instrumental
Each participant is willing to explore concrete ways in which they can improve the way that they engage with business owners from minority backgrounds. For example, Barclays and Lloyds TSB wish to develop a mechanism to establish a dialogue with ethnic minority firms. The EHRC is looking for examples of good practice that could inform guidance on procurement and diversity. The Access to Finance Task Group (represented by Lloyds TSB) is keen to ensure that its national mentoring proposition is as 'inclusive' as possible.

Conceptual
It is evident that participants have different approaches to diversity. The project will actively facilitate exchanges of these varying perspectives. The action learning approach will contribute to a 'reframing' of the issue, as participants share their experiences and reflect on concrete actions that they have collaboratively developed and delivered.

Capacity-building
We anticipate a deepening of the participants' knowledge base on diversity issues in respect of minority entrepreneurship. The implications of this knowledge for the practice of partner organisations will be explored, and enacted through concrete initiatives, during the course of the project. Based on the experience of the 12/8 Group, the two new peer mentoring initiatives will strengthen the capacity of participating minority firms to pursue their growth ambitions.