The UK government announced today that Emma Jones founder of small business support group Enterprise Nation, and the co-founder of the national enterprise campaign ‘StartUp Britain’, has been appointed as the Small Business Crown Representative. Jones will also be a trade ambassador for the UK. Her new role is described as;
- working with government and the refreshed Small Business Panel to identify remaining barriers to SMEs in doing business with the public sector
- supporting the launch of a new campaign to help show that “Government is Open for Business” for SMEs and wants to help them bid for and win more contracts
- increasing awareness with smaller businesses of opportunities to deliver on behalf of larger private sector firms who are delivering government contracts
- working with the UK government to identify new opportunities to get the best value from SMEs
Thanks for your tweets re SME Rep role. I’d love to hear your stories of selling to govn via here or @smecrownrep Govn is #openforbusiness!
— Emma Jones (@emmaljones) July 17, 2016
A good portion of her mission is to connect SMEs to government contracts;
“I will be championing small business from within the heart of Government, but with a big emphasis on rallying the small business troops to connect and engage with government opportunities.”
Beyond that, Jones will be promoting ways to reduce bureaucratic red-tape that hinders SMEs.
Jones founded Enterprise Nation in 2006 and today the SME community has over 75,000 users. Jones was one of 8 co-founders of StartUp Britain which was launched in 2011.
The UK focus on the importance of SMEs to the economy is reassuring but what remains unclear is the support of the new government towards Fintech innovation and the growing number of firms in this sector of finance.