Prioritising business support - who gets what?

Okay I am being lazy - this is work I am doing at the moment - about being a bit more clued up and systematic about who gets a slice of the meagre RDA budget for business support. One could ask, shouldn't RDA's be doing this anyway - why haven't they been doing it? well the answer is that yes they should be doing it but they aint. I am being paid to right the wrongs... (maybe not for much longer - another story sometime). But then again as part of this I am going to Chicago and NY to speak to folks about what they do for entrepreneurship so it can't be all bad, can it?

Why prioritise who gets government support, what support is given, and why?

- Some businesses, and types or groups of entrepreneurs have greater needs than others
- Helping some businesses will result in greater economic impacts and benefits than helping -others
- Helping some businesses will result in more successfully exploiting business and economic opportunities than others
- In the UK/your region, not all entrepreneurs require public sector support to be successful – enterprise support is neither suitable nor warranted for many individuals
- Some economic development activities will be more effective than others in the UK/your region
- There are methods of delivering business support that are more effective than others
- UK Government has limited resources and there are limits to what it can do especially in term of intensive support to businesses – it can help only a small number of businesses in a very intensive way
- Currently business support is not cohesively assessed or delivered according to UK’s priorities. It is has been designed in response to a mixture of priorities, many of them a legacy from before RDAs were created, and many of them from the national government or government office, some of them politician’s tinkering (Take note Mr. Brown)

Altogether, more effective prioritisation means that RDAs can achieve better results for their money and staff resources.

I have a nice framework which is in draft form for my particular client/employer. I will punt it on the web once its in a fit state for public consumption. Its all nice if its applied, but the biggest stumbling block has to be the pet projects of certain people, which, if put through my prioritisation framework would fall of the edge into the abyss!!!

I might have much more interesting things to say after my trip to the US.

I also have a typepad blog account under a personal name - I think I will merge it with this one once ADSL is up and running at home.

Chin chin.

The Angry Economist.