The Growth Impact Pilot, launched in April 2014, is a research project on the impact of business advice (coaching), supported by the UK Government. The Growth Impact Pilot will assess whether the provision of Growth Accelerator coaching is the reason why firms on the service achieve high rates of growth, or whether this growth would have happened anyway. It is designed to assess the impact of coaching by comparing two groups:
Group 1: who receive a matched funding grant to spend on leadership and management training.
Group 2: who receive a leadership and management grant AND specialist business coaching services.
Once recruited, businesses will be divided into one of the two groups by a process of random selection. By comparing the performance of the two groups, it will be possible to identify whether coaching really makes a difference for the assisted businesses. We anticipate that the average intervention will be completed within 4-6 months. It may take several years for the economic impact of the trial to emerge, but monitoring and evaluation will be undertaken at earlier stages.