Why study this course?

According to the Department for Business Innovation and Skills (BIS, 2015):

  • there were a record 5.4 million private sector businesses at the start of 2015 – an increase of 146,000 since 2014 and 1.9 million more since 2000
  • small businesses accounted for 99.3% of all private sector businesses at the start of 2015; 99.9% were small or medium-sized enterprises (SMEs)
  • total employment in SMEs was 15.6 million; 60% of all private sector employment in the UK
  • the combined annual turnover of SMEs was £1.8 trillion, 47% of all private sector turnover in the UK
  • 76% of businesses did not employ anyone aside from the owner.

Small businesses are essential to the financial health of the UK and the opportunities to start up or work for a small or micro-business have never been greater.

The proportion of small businesses that stop trading within two years is high – anecdotal evidence suggests it is as many as 50%. This course is designed to help you decide if running a small or micro-business is worth exploring further. This course should be seen as the first step in the journey, leading to more research and self-reflection. It provides challenges and areas of reflection coupled with clear signposts to the help and advice that is available, most of it free.

Rob Moore, the author of this course, will now give you a bit of background into why you might like to study this course.

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We will be using the five short case studies [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)]   throughout this course – you may wish to familiarise yourself with them now. You would find it helpful to have the case studies page open in a separate tab whilst working through the sections.

As you start this course, you may have a business idea in mind or might even be running a small business. Each of these is fine. This course will ask you to apply the different ideas to a business idea of your own – this could be one you are running or thinking of running, or one you will create.

This is a good point to consider your business idea. If you have not considered one yet, the Entrepreneur Handbook website has 100 business ideas to consider (Pursey, 2014).

Throughout course you will find activities that ask you to write down your thoughts and feelings based on the issues being discussed. There will be a few simple questions which encourage you to focus your thinking. It would be helpful for you to you spend some time thinking about what you have learned within each section, and how it relates to your current role. We encourage you to record your answers and thoughts as you go along. We will not be using these in the course but they will be very helpful if you wish to take your ideas further.

The activities are not there to test you. They aim to help you reflect on what you have read in more depth. These activity spaces are entirely for your own use to help you recognise what you have learned, even if you haven’t yet encountered it within your role. Nobody else will see what you write here. The aim is to help you become more reflective, by bringing together aspects of both your personal and professional experience so you can review and learn from them.

Structure of the course

Learning outcomes