Simon is a founding member of the Centre for Employment, Competitiveness and Growth (cECG) at Kent Business School. Simon has focused his research on addressing the question “what drives sustainable SME growth and performance?” This is knowledge that Simon has since translated with colleagues into leadership and executive education provision for ambitious owner-managers, delivered under the banner of “Business Improvement and Growth (BIG)”. Over the last ten years Simon has attracted over a £1m of research funding, and in the past 3 years alone £250k of commercial income.
Simon is a practitioner at heart, who began his career helping to turn around the fortunes of a family owned and managed manufacturing firm. Simon is now a qualified coach, action learning facilitator and accredited practitioner in MBTI® and FIRO-B psychometric profiling tools, and delivers a range of coaching and consultancy interventions with organisations of all sizes.
Simon is a facilitator of the SME Growth Special Interest Group (SIG) supported by the Enterprise Research Centre (ERC) and ISBE, is a chair of the University of Kent’s SME SIG, and is on the editorial board of the International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behaviour and Research and regularly reviews for the International Small Business Journal.