Invest in Nottingham teams up with business leaders to help firms get back on track for expansion with Accelerating Growth programme

Invest in Nottingham will help the city’s businesses get back on track for expansion in 2021 with a series of seminars which help them identify the people, environment and funding they need to exploit new opportunities.

‘Accelerating Growth: The tools you need to drive your business forwards in 2021’ has been launched to help firms overcome some of the key hurdles they face as they build momentum and try to scale-up their operations.

Starting in mid-January, the events will take place online and feature panels of business leaders able sharing their own experiences of tackling key challenges with audiences of businesses owners and managers looking to grow.

Taking place monthly between January and March, the free Accelerating Growth seminars will examine three key challenges associated with:

Diversity in business – building workforces which reflect your markets and harnessing the potential of creativity and change.

Talent for growth – how to attract, develop and lead the talent you need to become an employer-of-choice.

Finance that fits – identifying funding options which fuel growth and accommodate your business needs.

The first event will take place at 1pm on Wednesday 20^th January. Panellists will include Debbie Bestwick MBE, the CEO of games developer Team 17, Melanie Currie, the Deputy Dean of Nottingham Business School – now one of the top business schools in the UK – and Natalie Gasson-McKinley, branch chair for Derbyshire & Nottinghamshire of the Institute of Directors in the East Midlands.

Delegates can register for free on Eventbrite here.

Debbie said: “We’ve spent 30 years building a world-class business based on expertise, creativity and inventive thinking. We’ve done that by creating a diverse and invigorating environment which allows our people to harness and grow their own knowledge, skills and passion for games.

“We’re also big believers in helping others and giving back to the places that have enabled us to thrive and we’re delighted to help Invest in Nottingham deliver this programme.”

Melanie Currie added: “Nottingham Business School has just celebrated its 40^th anniversary and during that period two themes have endured: building teams with the knowledge, resilience and adaptability to overcome challenge, and putting in place systems which enable people to achieve their best.

“Diversity is an increasingly important component of business growth and I’m really looking forwards to both sharing our own experiences and finding out more about the next generation of expanding businesses in Nottingham.”

Invest in Nottingham is part of Marketing Nottingham. It promotes inward investment into the area and supports the growth of key sectors that have the capacity to expand and attract new businesses.

Lorraine Baggs, Head of Inward Investment at Invest in Nottingham, said: “This has been a challenging year for so many businesses in Nottingham, but we know that the appetite to chase new opportunities remains undimmed. So there’s no question that 2021 will be about getting back on track for growth.

“Businesses in the scale-up phase are critically important to the future of Nottingham’s economy. They have real potential to grow at pace, create new jobs, new business opportunities and add value to the city economy.

“We know there are significant numbers of them in and around the city because we have historic strengths in areas like fintech, digital and creative, and we’re committed to working with our partners to create the right environment for them to thrive.”

She added: “Nottingham has a national reputation for strengths in industries which will drive the UK’s future growth and we want to build on our existing business base and attract more companies to come and grow here.”

Businesses going through the scale-up phase have been highlighted by government as critical to economic growth. Often driven by opportunities enabled by digital technologies, they are identified as firms that have progressed beyond the start-up phase and have the potential to grow quickly.

The Accelerating Growth programme, which is supported by the European Regional Development Fund and the D2N2 Local Enterprise Partnership, will examine the challenges associated with issues which can slow momentum amongst scale-ups.