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Community based Accelerators: The Grassroots of a Sustainable Economy

The grassroots of a sustainable economy is nurturing the entrepreneurial spirit. It is not the multi-national corporations that bind and build a society, but fast growth small enterprises.

Research by Clydesdale and Yorkshire Banks found that almost a third of Britain’s Small and Medium Sized Enterprises (SMEs) intend to recruit new staff in 2014 and those which plan to create new jobs expect to grow employee numbers by nearly 10%. If this figure is applied to Britain’s total SME workforce of 14.4 m more than 417,000 new jobs could be created across the UK.

That employment growth comes from SME’s and not from Multi-National Companies is globally recognised. In fact, outside of new businesses, job creation in the United States has been negative over the last three decades.

Recent research highlights the importance of new and young businesses—as opposed to small businesses generally—to job creation in the United States. To summarize, while older and larger firms are the major source of employment levels, it is new and young businesses that are the primary source of net new jobs. This is because businesses aged one year or more, as a group, subtracted jobs from the economy. In other words, the forces of job destruction were greater than the forces of job creation for businesses over one year old as a group[1].

The Kauffman research further shows that recent growth in high-tech startups is not simply a “tech centre” phenomenon. High-tech startups are being founded across the country, fueling local and national economic growth.

Indycube and Indycube Ventures provide key elements necessary to achieve sustainable economic growth in any population centre, from village communities to highly urbanised areas.

Indycube is Wales’ community of co-workers. It is a Community Interest Company (CIC) with currently over 300 desks in 13 locations and a further 10 planned. These include some of the most socially and economically deprived areas in the UK.

These co-working spaces provide meeting points and flexible workspaces for self-driven individuals. They promote creativity, independence, co-operation and collaboration.

Indycube has been funded entirely by the founders and the community with no Government support or funding.

Indycube Ventures helps businesses by:

• Nurturing entrepreneurial talent by mentoring from experienced individuals;

• Providing comprehensive support from our service champions (solicitors, accountants, book-keepers, software developers);

• Ensuring their sustainability; and,

• Making them investment ready and organising access to finance.

The outcomes of this are to:

• Raise the standards of Entrepreneurship;

• Boost the local and national economy;

• Improve the chances of business success;

• Create a climate of excellence;

• Create more valuable businesses; and,

• Develop role models.