ABSTRACT
This chapter is an examination of the birth rate strategy employed by Scottish Enterprise which aims to improve the stock of companies within Scotland. The launch of the strategy can be dated from 1993 with the publication of Scotland’s Business Birth Rate (Scottish Enterprise and Scottish Business Insider 1993). This has been updated to Improving the Business Birth Rate: A Strategy for Scotland (Scottish Enterprise 1993). The document identifies three ways in which the birth rate can be increased: first, increasing the number of new businesses created in Scotland; second, increasing the number of new starts that survive; and third, increasing the number of new starts that subsequently achieve significant growth. It is claimed that the relatively low stock of firms within the Scottish economy is one of the major obstacles to the achievement of significant economic growth and job creation within Scotland.1
