The Role of Higher Education in Regional Economic Development Through Small Business CoPs

Smith, Susan orcid iconORCID: 0000-0002-3152-2149 and Smith, Laurie (2016) The Role of Higher Education in Regional Economic Development Through Small Business CoPs. In: Communities of Practice. Springer, pp. 381-402. ISBN eBook: 978-981-10-2879-3; Hbk: 978-981-10-2877-9

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Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-2879-3_18

Abstract

The focus of this chapter is the learning experiences of a group of small business owner-managers on a leadership programme called LEAD. Small business leader-ship development is an ongoing aspiration of government to achieve regional economic development. LEAD was established to test this model and explores the need for governments to continue to support small businesses on this agenda through initiatives such as LEAD. LEAD was underpinned with Community of Practice design principles and the aim of the programme was to develop a learning community of small businesses with a focus to develop the leadership capabilities of the owner-managers. The chapter takes the point of view of the course de-signers and looks at the LEAD programme’s development from the initial ideas which inspired it, through to the learning experiences as the programme Community of Practice developed. It explores how this learning influenced changes made to the programme which resulted in nearly 3,000 SMEs participating in LEAD programmes based on this learning.


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