The process of developing a business from the embers of an idea is a mammoth task and the majority of entrepreneurs will take as much help as is available. They call up business link, attend a few HMRC workshops, go to networking events and attend skills development programmes where available.

As newbie to being an entrepreneur you are not sure how long this take and therefore spending money and time on anything has to be seen in the light of moving the business forward.

In the previous years we have seen the simplification of business support and now a major reduction in the support is not making each industry sector look how they can support their own.

There has been a major amount of research done into business clustering and the benefits.

The tech clusters around Universities such as Cambridge, manufacturing in the North West and material engineering in Sheffield. Therefore both the regions and the industry itself needs these clusters to develop, grow and become the defacto region for this type of business. These self-regulating clusters should be the catalyst for regional growth based on local business developing a self help group.

Industry has a long industry of developing such organisations such as the traditional guilds (which still live on in Germany) and Chamber of Commerce, CBI and IOD. However their failure in the past to manage government funded projects is based on individual self-interest and not that of the group, seeing the one profit from helping others in the community.

This is because not all industry is the same! Having network of general business advisors creates a failure point as everyone has to be a generalist and not a specialist. If you are a specialist then providing your services as a consultant is not always done for money. However, if it’s a £50 million project, then who doesn’t want part of this pie.

The important aspect of this support is that those providing the support want to keep these young businesses as members, they know they have to provide the very best to benefit. One mistake and the relationship fails and that business move on without your support, never to be seen again.

So we should be developing our business networks to support start-ups and pay them on the success they have in clustering these businesses, growing them and then ensuring they are exporting. All things that many of our industry sector networks do so well.