27 july 2011, from gazelles to gorillas

I knew nothing at all about "business support" when I arrived back in manchester 3 years ago, but now I am overly burdened with the rather too public sector-esque menu of options and interventions for bringing money to bear in helping local firms prosper. An excellent paper, launched this morning helped tilt that investment more towards the high-value, high-tech, sustainable end of the operation, focusing on stimulating and supporting, with innovation - everyone's favourite buzzword - high on the agenda. Best comment came from john leach who echoed the panel's plea to do more for decent sized "foundation firms". In a world of ever decreasing resource, you can't do something for everyone, so this was a call to focus not just on the small high-growth firms, so-called gazelles, nor on the small, weaker, about to go out of business, firms but on helping turn those that are solid and sustainable from merely that to the more bulky firms we so lack. Many great ideas in the report. Now we just need to implement them, which won't be easy given the weak and deteriorating economic climate we're still in - and likely to be for some time according to the armageddon project.