A helping hand for growing businesses

Knowing the next steps to take can often be the most difficult part of achieving growth.

Many times, it pays to take a step back and view your organisation as an outsider would, or to work through ideas with peers, mentors and growth experts.

Lancaster University Management School offers a complete suite of programmes available for businesses of all industries who want to grow but aren’t sure how.

Our services include the Lancashire Forum designed to inspire business leaders, the Family Business Excellence Programme, the Low Carbon Innovation Forum for environmentally-conscious companies, Productivity through People for those with larger workforces, Made Smarter Leadership Programme for owners and managers looking to embrace digitalisation, and EnginE which specifically supports advanced engineers and manufactures by future-proofing their workforces.

We offer the tools and techniques for you to apply to your business, plus the time away from your day-to-day duties to reflect and share experiences.

Ultimately, businesses that come to us walk away with new theories, new ideas, or simply the new-found confidence to make a fundamental change.

Support is delivered through workshops, masterclasses and events with leading academics and business experts. Inspirational speakers and leading business experts that have headlined our events on campus and around the North West include Vikas Shah, Michael Finnigan, James Whittaker, Marnie Millard, Loyd Grossman, Will Butler-Adams, John Timpson and Jonathan Warburton.

Our service is like a buffet - you can pick and choose what’s relevant to your business and its current needs. And we speak your language, we’re a university but our delivery isn’t ‘chalk and talk’ lectures.

We have supported more than 3,500 SMEs since 1999 and earned a world-leading reputation for research excellence in the field of business-growth and owner-managers learning traits. We work with all types of business including everything from bee conservation consultants to flat-pack tractor distributors, a company creating clever enzymes for cows to a company handcrafting individual terracotta tiles for the restoration of period buildings, design agencies, software, accountancy, legal, consultancy, plastics, cardboard boxes, interior design – the list goes on!

All you need to pick up the phone is a business whose growth needs some extra momentum. You don’t need to have circled the classes you’re most interested in, in fact more often that not it helps to begin with an open mind.

So if you’ve never experienced working with the university, let’s start the conversation and see how we can support you and your business. If you’re not sure what programme is right for you, call us and one of our team will be happy to discuss your options.