The Growth Company in Manchester has teamed up with data intelligence platform, Red Flag, to release a “game-changing” online tool.
Growth Flag has been designed for public sector and private sector use.
It states that public sector organisations will be able to use the platform to inform policy making, investment strategies and bids.
At the same time, the private sector can use the data to understand emerging markets or to offer tailored solutions based on where clusters of businesses are on their growth journey.
“We’ve established an incredibly important partnership to create Growth Flag. We’ve brought together Red Flag Alert’s tech-data capabilities with The Growth Company’s deep knowledge and understanding of what the economic community, and local and combined authorities need. We’ve created something really unique,” explained Richard Jeffery, National Director, GC Business at The Growth Company.
“It will help you unlock huge opportunities in your local area – to find those companies that have got growth potential and be future stars. But it’s not just at the company level that’s going to be interesting. When you start to look at groups of businesses, you start to understand the dynamics of a place and perhaps find growth where you’ve not found or looked for it before. It’s a game changer and something that will absolutely drive change in economic development.”
Growth Flag will pull live data from a comprehensive dataset which can then be analysed by the user, to understand where growth potential exists in individual businesses across the UK.
“I have looked at the problem of differential subnational economic growth from every angle. The differences between places and the reasons for the crazy inequalities we see in the UK are complex and there is no one fix or tool that can magic away regional and local disparities,’ explained Dr Nicola Headlam, Chief Economist and Head of Public Sector at Red Flag Alert.
“Having said this, people making enormous decisions about the future of the north are doing so using data which is time-lagged, out of date, or biased or just wrong and this makes the challenges so much harder.
“Growth Flag puts the best data in the hands of decision makers, activists, change agents and entrepreneurs and builds up from firm level microdata to create unique views of growth even within the uncertain macro climate. I am so proud to combine our analytics with the economic development networks of the Growth Company in a platform designed for economic development specialists by economic development specialists at an affordable price for the very first time.”
