A think tank for making Britain the best country in which to start and grow a business | Secretariat: @appg_e | ✍️ @Philip_Salter, @MannVirdee and @iannghh
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📥 Read this week’s Three Big Ideas and subscribe to have the next issue land directly in your inbox:
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🌱 @iannghh argues argues that @TenThinkTank’s proposed £3,000 Youth Enterprise Grant could help young people start up, just as the Enterprise Allowance once backed Tracey Emin and Alan McGee
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🛩️ @MannVirdee asks whether a modern Royce still needs a Rolls, as new research finds AI doubled solo launches while teams tightened their grip on the top spots
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🍄 @Philip_Salter says universities can no longer leave entrepreneurship to mushroom by accident, as new research finds leadership and strategy are the biggest gap in the literature
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Our latest Three Big Ideas roundup is now out!
This week:
🍄 @Philip_Salter on why entrepreneurship can’t be left to chance
🛩️ @MannVirdee on why teams can be more resilient than solo entrepreneurs
🌱 @iannghh on making self-employment a route into work
The Entrepreneurs Network retweeted
I spent yesterday at @RollsRoyce in Derby learning how jet engines work and how they're made.
I was there with this year's cohort from @FoundSciTech, and saw the evolution from early piston aero-engines named after birds of prey (Eagle, Hawk, Kestrel, Merlin) to the more familiar gas turbines and jet engines named after rivers (Avon, Trent, Derwent, Nene).
In this edition of Three Big Ideas, I look at the partnership between Charles Rolls, Henry Royce and Claude Johnson (the 'hyphen in Rolls-Royce') and ask whether the rise of the solo entrepreneur and AI means a modern day Royce wouldn't need a Rolls.
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🎓 As the payroll route into work is narrowing for young people, we believe that the Government should give those who create their own job a clear route.
📝 We recommend:
1️⃣ Pilot a Startup Allowance for under-25s, built around mentoring
2️⃣ Create a £3,000 Youth Enterprise Grant, matching the Youth Jobs Grant
3️⃣ Launch a youth strand of Help to Grow focused on using AI to start a business
🩺 Christina Davis qualified as a doctor, then went full-time on her marketing business Presell Studio in Newcastle. She matched her salary within three months: "AI gives me access to capabilities that would previously have required a team."
🧽 Olivia Regan left school without GCSEs and launched Crystal Clean in Solihull in 2024. It now brings in up to £10,000 a month and supports a team of freelancers: "Starting a business can be a real route into work."
🧾 Government support has been built around payroll routes. Employers get £3,000 through the Youth Jobs Grant for hiring a young person. A young person who creates their own job gets no equivalent and the New Enterprise Allowance was closed in 2022.
💷 @Cebr_uk modelled what would happen if 5% of NEET young people (around 50,000) started businesses between 2027 and 2029. The answer: almost £4bn in additional output by 2029.
⚖️ Self-employment isn’t filling the gap on its own. For every five fewer young employees, there's roughly one more young self-employed person. Close to a million young people are now NEET.
🚀 Meanwhile, around 193,000 16–24-year-olds are now self-employed, 27,500 more than in 2022/23 and the highest level in more than a decade. The youth self-employment rate rose from 4.5% to 5.4%.
🍽️ The fall is concentrated in the jobs that usually give young people their first experience of work. Hospitality and other services account for 55% of the drop in under-25 payroll jobs in Sage's data.
🧶 Young people are finding it harder to get a first job. More are creating their own instead. Our new report, Starting Out and Starting Up, with @sageuk, looks at what has changed and what the Government should do about it…
This afternoon we launched Job Creators 2026, our annual report on the foreign-born founders building Britain's fastest-growing businesses, with @Penningtonslaw
We were delighted to be joined by @JoshReynoldsSL6, Matthew Martin and @pat_saini.
