NESTA releases business report

Only six per cent of UK businesses are responsible for the majority of job creation and prosperity, according the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (NESTA).

The figure has been based on two reports commissioned by the organisation mapping the UK’s high-growth businesses. The reports revealed that just 11,500 businesses with 10 or more employees fell into the ‘high-growth’ category.

Over a period of almost a decade, these companies generated 54 per cent of new jobs in the UK. Around 70 per cent of the firms were at least five years old and a common trait among all of them was a high level of innovation.

The reports showed that the companies were spread across a variety of sectors. All major UK sectors contained between four and 10 per cent of high-growth firms with the companies equally present in the high-tech and low-tech sectors.

The sectors with the highest proportion of high-growth firms were financial services, real estate and business services, while the lowest was found in manufacturing with a share of only three to four per cent.