‘Bright Spots’ research project: call for exceptional SMEs

What are the ingredients that enable certain small businesses to achieve outstanding success with technical education and skills?

That’s the question at the centre of a research project Gatsby is undertaking.

Most research in this area takes a deficit-based, “find-and-fix” approach – tending to lead to solutions that focus on overcoming the barriers and challenges. For this project we are employing a positive deviance approach, looking to those SMEs who – despite facing the same constraints as other businesses – have found ways to thrive. By starting with what’s working (rather than what’s not), we hope to uncover fresh insights and potential new ways of engaging SMEs that builds on their strengths.

The research will identify ‘bright spot’ small businesses achieving outstanding success with technical education and skills as a key part of their workforce planning and recruitment. We want to understand the specific knowledge, experiences and hyper-local factors that have made the difference to their success.

Gatsby has commissioned researchers Lucy Proudfoot and Ben Caspersz to lead this work, identifying and analysing ‘bright spot’ SMEs (with 10-50 employees) across our focus areas: Engineering & Manufacturing; Construction; Agriculture, Environmental & Animal Care; Digital; Health & Healthcare Science; Science.

The study will mainly consist of in-depth interviews with business owners and leaders, arranged flexibly around their time commitments.

The research is underway and will be published in 2026, but we are actively recruiting more brilliant businesses to participate.

• Do you know a ‘bright spot’ company that may be a good fit?  
• Or other organisations that work closely with SMEs and could connect us to the ‘bright spots’?

All leads are greatly appreciated – you can email Lucy directly on lucy@bencaspersz.com

Or for more information on the project, please contact harriet.evans@gatsby.org.uk.