We asked the UK’s fast-growth businesses to name the biggest obstacles to growth they’re facing.

Key findings

• The state of the economy is the main obstacle to growth facing UK firms, but high-growth firms are better at overcoming this.
• Finance is a disproportionately important obstacle for high-growth firms; 18 per cent consider funding to be the biggest barrier to growth they face.
• One in five high-growth firms report that finding the right staff is their biggest barrier to growth.

Fast growth businesses are particularly important to the economic recovery. Our previous research (Vital 6%) shows they generate more than half of new jobs and are much more likely to innovate than other companies. Providing the right conditions for business growth is therefore an important goal for policymakers.

This report offers new evidence on the biggest barriers to growth facing UK businesses, based on views from high-growth businesses themselves, as well as firms that have the potential to become high-growth but haven’t yet managed to do so. It is a summary of the findings of Free to grow?, a research paper funded by Nesta and written by Dr Neil Lee from the Work Foundation.

Author

Nesta