Newcastle University has a long track-record of researching the role and impact of rural enterprise hubs. These are physical infrastructures designed to support rural businesses by providing workspaces, meeting rooms, kitchen facilities, networking groups and learning seminars.
NICRE has extended this research to explore the role these hubs play in integrating rural areas into wider regional systems and considered alternative models for business support provision to these places.
Rural enterprise hubs bring a range of benefits to their tenants.
By increasing physical proximity between rural businesses, organisational, cognitive, social, institutional and market proximities are also gained. Separation from the home environment was also highly beneficial for tenants.
Tenants’ well-being improves by entering the hub, including increases in relatedness, autonomy and competence (the three factors of self-determination theory).
Improvements in well-being, alongside increases in productivity, is seen among tenants who chose to move into the hubs as they were previously home-based and unsatisfied with their working environments and patterns.
‘Honey pot’ hubs welcome members of the public onto the premises and often have a focus on the creative industries and retail.
These bring an additional set of benefits to their creative tenants and could be an important mechanism for tourist and heritage sites.
Hubs are one part of a wider entrepreneurial ecosystem which can help raise the productivity of rural economies.
Hubs provide a direct link into the business support system and provide a range of opportunities to tenants (access to networks, collaborations and knowledge exchange).
The role of the manager in providing these opportunities and encouraging tenants to interact is a vital determinant of success.
Having been a Research Fellow at NICRE, I am now an Associate Fellow after joining Scotland’s Rural University College (SRUC) in autumn 2022 as a Research Fellow, focusing on the rural economy, rural communities and land reform. I am a multidisciplinary qualitative researcher and have expertise in rural and regional development, rural sociology, governance, innovation and economic geography.
In addition to NICRE, I have worked at the Centre for Rural Economy, the Centre for Urban and Regional Development Studies (all Newcastle University) and the Centre for Rural Policy Research Centre at the University of Exeter on a variety of projects. These included sustainable rural tourism, the innovativeness of land-based sectors and SMEs, and policy nexus work.
I gained my PhD at the Centre for Rural Economy, focusing on rural enterprise hubs which are physical infrastructure aimed at bringing rural businesses into closer proximity to share knowledge, network and collaborate. The PhD also critiqued (urban-centric) Territorial Innovation Models (TIMs) and analysed the role the hubs played in contributing to these systems and providing rural businesses with access to these.
While at NICRE, I was sponsored by the ESRC to write my PhD findings on rural enterprise hubs into journal articles and I collaborated with colleagues to plan new research agendas around the Centre’s objectives and goals.
I'm Director of NICRE and Professor of Rural Development at the Centre for Rural Economy, Newcastle University. I have research interests on: the development needs of rural economies and fishing communities; expertise exchange within rural land management; the integration of social and natural sciences in resource management. I'm an adviser to government through my membership of Defra Science Advisory Council Social Science Expert Group, Defra Rural Academic Panel, Scottish Government Rural Economy Action Group. I'm also a member of the Northern Uplands Leader Local Action Group. Previously, I was Assistant Director of the UK Research Council's Rural Economy and Land Use Programme.
I’m Deputy Director of NICRE and Professor of Marketing at Newcastle University Business School. My research on rural business began with a PhD on the performance of small and medium-sized enterprises in rural England. For the last twenty years, I have worked at Newcastle University. I have been involved in several projects related to rural enterprises, food supply chains and food marketing. I teach marketing and collaborate extensively with colleagues in the Centre for Rural Economy. I am currently the coordinator of the EU Horizon 2020 project Strength2Food. This project considers the economic, social and environmental impacts of food quality schemes, public sector food procurement and short food supply chains.
I was a Research Associate in Rural Development at NICRE until my retirement in December 2022. My research interests focused on rural policy development and evaluation.
I was involved, as part of Newcastle team, with the Centre for Evaluation of Complexity across the NEXUS CECAN. It aimed at transforming the practice of policy evaluation across the food, energy, water and environmental domains. I was also interested in the rural creative economy and how creativity and culture contribute to rural place-making and innovation and the potential for natural capital and ecosystem services to create new opportunities for rural businesses.
Before coming to academia, I was a rural development practitioner for many years. I'm also former chairman of Northumberland National Park and a board member of the former Countryside Agency.
Hubs and coworking spaces may prove even more popular as a result of the drastic effects Covid-19 has had on work patterns and therefore further work is required, especially quantitative research on the economic effects of hubs for their tenants and wider economy.
Two managerial strategies can be pursued – to become a honey pot (business to customer-focused) or hive (business to business focused) hub, each with their own set of advantages.
Key recommendations of the research are:
Having been a Research Fellow at NICRE, I am now an Associate Fellow after joining Scotland’s Rural University College (SRUC) in autumn 2022 as a Research Fellow, focusing on the rural economy, rural communities and land reform. I am a multidisciplinary qualitative researcher and have expertise in rural and regional development, rural sociology, governance, innovation and economic geography.
In addition to NICRE, I have worked at the Centre for Rural Economy, the Centre for Urban and Regional Development Studies (all Newcastle University) and the Centre for Rural Policy Research Centre at the University of Exeter on a variety of projects. These included sustainable rural tourism, the innovativeness of land-based sectors and SMEs, and policy nexus work.
I gained my PhD at the Centre for Rural Economy, focusing on rural enterprise hubs which are physical infrastructure aimed at bringing rural businesses into closer proximity to share knowledge, network and collaborate. The PhD also critiqued (urban-centric) Territorial Innovation Models (TIMs) and analysed the role the hubs played in contributing to these systems and providing rural businesses with access to these.
While at NICRE, I was sponsored by the ESRC to write my PhD findings on rural enterprise hubs into journal articles and I collaborated with colleagues to plan new research agendas around the Centre’s objectives and goals.
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