Research, evaluation and insight

The overall aim of SE Ayrshire’s innovation related assistance activities was to promote a culture of innovation amongst organisations by: raising awareness of the importance of innovation and creativity; providing opportunities to learn from world class experts in innovation and creativity; providing support to reduce cultural barriers to innovation; and increasing levels of innovation and creativity skills.

Arbroath Employment and Training Initiative, run by Claverhouse, aimed to: provide a range of activities for long term unemployed residents to enhance employability; identify suitable job vacancies in the area for clients; and match clients to these vacancies thereby helping both employers and the unemployed.

The Financial Services Access to Call Centre project was a pilot, stand-alone project which aimed to raise awareness of job opportunities in and increase the pool of skilled labour for financial services call centres in the Edinburgh and Coatbridge areas.

In response to anecdotal evidence of local recruitment problems, the evaluation aimed to: assess the extent of recruitment and retention issues among Tayside food and drink manufacturers; determine the nature and extent of skill shortages and hard-to-fill vacancies; evaluate the impact of those skill shortages on business performance; identify the existence of market failure issues and assess the rationale for public sector intervention; examine potential sources of suitable labour in both loca…

Scottish Enterprise Grampian launched a food production efficiency programme with six Grampian food and drink companies in 1998, the aim of which was to encourage companies to assess and amend their manufacturing processes for maximum efficiency, thereby increasing profitability.

The Food Sector New Product Development (NPD) programme aimed to provide training, advice and guidance to businesses in the food sector and to establish a systematic process for NPD and a greater understanding of the NPD process.

SEDG contact management system aimed to assist Dumfries and Galloway’s Food and Drink Processing sector.

Get into ENTERPRISE, a Scottish-wide personal development programme, aimed to help tackle barriers that contribute to social exclusion.

The Get Ready for Work (GRfW) Exit Pack aimed to improve positive outcome rates and job sustainability; provide ongoing support for GRfW clients once they have left the programme; encourage them to re-engage with Careers Scotland; and re-engage negative leavers and encourage them to return, if appropriate.

Get Ready for Work (GRFW) is the enterprise network’s national labour market access intervention for young people aged between 16 and 18 with additional support needs (ASN).

The Glasgow Challenge pilot projects helped to move Glasgow’s social excluded, mainly people on ‘non-Job Seekers Allowance’ (JSA), into employment.

Glasgow Exports (GE) aimed to provide bespoke support to the international business development needs of Glasgow-based businesses.

Glasgow Works aimed to tackle Glasgow’s problem of long-term unemployment.

The Glasgow Works programme aimed to introduce an Intermediate Labour Market (ILM) approach, with a wider range of activities available to the long-term unemployed, and the devolution of project delivery to community-based and training organisations.

The Go for Tourism initiative aimed to identify and address the key skills and labour market challenges that the tourism sector faced in the Forth Valley area.

Graduates for Business (GFB) was set up with the aim of helping businesses become more competitive by accessing the skills of graduates from Scotland’s universities.

Graduates for Growth (GfG) was established in January 1998 as a means of bringing together graduates and SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) employers.

Waterfront Edinburgh Limited (WEL) was formed in March 2000 to facilitate the development of the Granton Waterfront.

The Hillington Park Innovation Centre (HPIC) aimed to support the creation of new knowledge-based, technology, product and process enterprises, providing low displacement, high value add businesses and jobs in Central Scotland.

The St Andrews World Class (SAWC) was launched as a partnership initiative in 2003 to recognise and build on St Andrews’ existing international competitive advantages of golf, tourism and university research.

Lanarkshire Economic Forum’s (LEF) updated local economic strategy, ‘Changing Gear: Towards 2010’, and the subsequent Monitoring and Evaluation Framework, aimed to assist partners to identify key issues and challenges, and to help design and prioritise interventions to improve economic performance.

The Biotechnology Business Advisory Service (BBAS) is one of the key interventions available to the Scottish Enterprise network to support the emergence and growth of a SME base in the life sciences/biotechnology sector.

This interim evaluation provided an overview of 8 business development programmes consolidated into a ‘Growing Business’ group within the Forth Valley Business Gateway.

The Computer Network Training (CNT) programme aimed to offer retraining in computer skills to unemployed residents of Forth Valley and to provide a supply of scarce information and communications technology (ICT) skills to the market.

The Community Regeneration Fund aimed to rebuild confidence within local communities after the Foot and Mouth Disease (FMD) outbreak and to initiate lasting processes of community economic development in the region.