How does business growth and export performance vary between businesses where leaders have different personal characteristics, for example ethnicity, language, culture, gender or disability? What are the best methods and approaches to measure this?

Background

DBT is committed to driving a mission-led Industrial Strategy that empowers businesses, including SMEs, to invest, grow and thrive. To do this, we must continually ensure we know which factors support or hinder growth. A sector-specific approach will enable us to apply evidence-based lessons effectively, fostering innovation and scaling-up across priority sectors.

The topics covered in this theme relate to enabling government to seize the most significant opportunities and create the most favourable conditions in the UK to support companies to emerge, grow, and thrive here. We have included questions that pertain to the Industrial Strategy sectors (the IS-8), clear and achievable regulation for safety and success, and productivity and efficiency.

The Industrial Strategy Advisory Council (ISAC) is an independent body responsible for reviewing the Industrial Strategy and making recommendations for improvements based on high quality research and evidence. ISAC plan to publish a list of ARIs in 2026. DBT will continue engaging with ISAC going forward.

It is important to continually ensure we have the best understanding of local and overseas markets and how they contribute to UK economic growth. This includes, but is not limited to, measuring impact of trade agreements, mapping trajectories and predicting evolution of trends and outcomes. For businesses to make the best decisions about investment, across various sectors and demographics, we must understand:
- the steps in decision-making processes
- drivers shaping the market and market dynamism
- enablers and barriers for technology adoption that can impact productivity and growth procurement and its impact
- how regulatory policy can enable the channels that lead to success

Increases in technology adoption and diffusion is central to our work, and we seek evidence on how artificial intelligence (AI), automation and digitisation can accelerate productivity and competitiveness.
The ability to make the UK a great place to do business includes:
- tackling high industrial electricity costs
- promoting fair and free trade
- expanding access to finance
- capitalising on the value of UK data