The latest Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) UK report, in partnership with NatWest, highlights significant progress and enduring challenges in the UK’s entrepreneurial landscape over the past 25 years.
GEM carries out survey-based research on entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial ecosystems around the world. It is the only global research source that collects data on entrepreneurship directly from individual entrepreneurs. The GEM UK national team is led by Professor Mark Hart at Aston Business School.
Reflecting on a quarter-century of entrepreneurial activity, the report contextualises the UK’s journey amid global and domestic upheavals, including the 2001 World Trade Center disaster, the Great Financial Crisis, Brexit, the COVID-19 pandemic and ongoing geopolitical tensions.
The report finds that, despite these challenges, the UK has become a significantly more entrepreneurial society since the turn of the Millennium.
For the first time since GEM records began, nearly 30% of working-age individuals in 2023 intended to start a business within three years, were actively trying to start a business, or were running their own business.
Early-stage entrepreneurial activity among women in the UK has surged from just over 3.5% in 2002 to 10% in 2023, a three-fold increase.
Immigrant and non-white ethnic populations remain the most entrepreneurial groups in the UK.
However, the report also highlights persistent deficiencies in the UK’s entrepreneurial ecosystem, identified by national experts over the past 25 years, that continue to hinder growth.
Mark Hart, professor of small business and entrepreneurship at Aston Business School, said: “The new Labour Government has inherited a more entrepreneurial society than when it left office in 2010 but still faces challenges to fully realise the potential of UK’s entrepreneurs in achieving its aim of stimulating growth in the UK economy.
“Prime Minister Starmer on taking office stated ‘Our work is urgent and we begin it today,’ and the findings of our report provide some indication of the work that lies ahead across his whole ministerial team and not just for Gareth Thomas, the new Small Business Minister.
“The conditions that allow entrepreneurs to sustain and grow their businesses have been weakening for a number of years now, and urgent action is needed in the areas of entrepreneurial finance, business support, and physical infrastructure to ensure the UK can facilitate the growth ambitions of thousands of small business leaders—the majority of whom are outside London.
“Entrepreneurial education at all levels continues to remain a relative weakness in the UK compared to many international comparators. Despite numerous public and private initiatives over many decades, the practice of teaching basic business skills is still insufficiently widespread.”
Darren Pirie, NatWest head of Accelerator, said: “As the UK’s biggest bank for startups, we recognise that entrepreneurs make a huge contribution to business in the UK. They create a wide range of employment opportunities and are often the first to innovate, spotting trends and pivoting their ideas.
“It’s pleasing to see that early-stage business activity is on the rise across all regions of the UK and that the motivations for starting a business are becoming multifaceted. Entrepreneurs are moving away from just opportunity or necessity as the key driver, with female founders especially valuing social considerations.
“At NatWest in 2023, 50% of support from our enterprise programmes went to women and 34% went to people from ethnic minority backgrounds, which backs up the GEM finding that non-white ethnic groups have become a cornerstone of the UK’s entrepreneurial activity.”
The full GEM UK report, along with individual reports for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland in partnership with NatWest, Ulster Bank, and RBS, are available for download here.
