News and insights
Interviews, reflections and commentary on key issues affecting small and micro businesses.
TPT publishes guidance on securing transition finance
- Article
- 11 Apr 2024
Expert body’s final batch of advice provides companies in every sector with insights on how to attract investment to support their journey to net zero.
New HMRC guidance on R&D tax relief
- Article
- 05 Apr 2024
HMRC has published additional and updated guidance on the new regime for R&D tax relief. The new regime is discussed in the Tax Faculty’s latest podcast.
New revenue recognition model for FRS 102 and FRS 105
- Article
- 28 Mar 2024
The FRC has issued its latest amendments to UK GAAP, introducing a five-step model for revenue recognition and on-balance sheet recognition for most leases by lessees to FRS 102.
HMRC clarifies tax treatment of training costs for sole traders
- Article
- 26 Mar 2024
Tax relief may be claimed for training costs incurred to keep pace with advances in technology and practice in the person’s trade.
New £7.4m AI training fund open to accountants
- Article
- 19 Mar 2024
ICAEW is urging accountancy firms to sign up to a new £7.4m funding pot to help staff at small and medium sized businesses boost their artificial intelligence (AI) skills.
Government aims for Year of the SME in 2024
- Article
- 07 Mar 2024
The UK government has relaunched the Help to Grow campaign, which offers resources to help SMEs get started, devise growth strategies and identify funding options.
ICAEW Member Insights: February 2024
- Article
- 28 Feb 2024
Despite the emergence of hopeful signs for the UK economy, regulation and employment challenges dominate member concerns.
Baker Tilly investment puts partnership model under spotlight
- Article
- 20 Feb 2024
The private equity investment will reshape Baker Tilly US into two separate organisations – but this latest foray by PE into the accountancy market doesn’t yet mark the end of the partnership model.
Industry press
The ICAEW Library provides access to leading business, finance and management journals. These journals are available to logged-in ICAEW members, ACA students and other entitled users subject to suppliers' terms of use.
Exclusive
Unattended retail options pegged as a secure saviour for small businesses, survey reveals
- Article
- 01 Nov 2023
Vending machines and unmanned retail services are growing in popularity with UK consumers, giving small businesses a lifeline to much needed ancillary revenue, according to the results of a newly released survey. For the consumer, it’s clear that convenience and availability are the primary drivers of unattended retail usage, with consumers increasingly relying on these services to meet out-of-hour or unplanned needs - and also to avoid social interactions.
Exclusive
Who learns fastest, wins: Lean Startup and Discovery Driven Growth
- Article
- 01 Oct 2023
- Rita Gunther McGrath
Most entrepreneurial ventures and startups fail. Against this backdrop, Lean Startup and Discovery-Driven Growth (DDG) are methods that emphasize rapid learning, resource parsimony, and focus on validating assumptions as ways of reducing the cost and risk of failure. Rita Gunther McGrath looks at the benefits of both methods, suggesting that they are a major advance over traditional planning processes because they both emphasize rapid learning. She also provides a 'flops file' of massive corporate failures and analyses the mistakes made.
Exclusive
Should companies launch new products in a recession?
- Article
- 01 Sep 2023
A look at the pros and cons of launching new consumer products during a recession. The authors explore how products introduced during a recession perform, examine how the severity of the recession can impact the product's performance, and scrutinize whether the timing within the recession matters. The authors' research included analysing 8,981 product launches in consumer goods categories within the UK from 1995 to 2012.
Exclusive
How generative AI can expand human innovation and creativity
- Article
- 01 Jul 2023
- Tojin T.Eapen, Daniel J.Finkenstadt, Josh Folk, Lokesh Venkataswamy
Five ways in which generative AI can assist organisations by amplifying the creativity of employees to help them generate and identify innovative ideas - and build on the quality of raw ideas. The article is illustrated with images of potential product ideas created using prompts in Midjourney and Stable Diffusion, two popular AI text-to-image tools.
Exclusive
Human creativity can be augmented by generative AI
- Article
- 01 Jul 2023
- Tojin Eapen, Daniel J Finkenstadt etc
Article discusses how generative AI can promote divergent thinking, challenge expertise bias, assist in idea evaluation, support idea refinement, and facilitate collaboration among users
Exclusive
A business continuity plan for leading a Ukrainian start-up during a year of war
- Article
- 01 Jul 2023
- Roman Rodomansky
A Ukrainian software development company co-founder shares lessons learnt around the importance of scenario planning, flexibility, decision-making, and guiding customers and employees through uncertainty.
Exclusive
China enhances tax relief for innovation and small businesses
- Article
- 08 May 2023
- Lewis Lu
Lewis Lu of KPMG China discusses enhanced tax measures to support innovation and small businesses.
Exclusive
Startups stung by UK delay in awarding tax credits to innovators
- Article
- 13 Apr 2023
- Aisha S Gani
Some UK startup businesses have been waiting upwards of six months to receive research and development tax credits from HMRC, forcing some to take out loans to plug the gap in funds. The Fintech trade body Innovate Finance said it has member firms worried about lengthy delays that make it difficult to predict their cash flows. HMRC has acknowledged that it had extended processing times.
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Latest Business news from Insights
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Ukraine hub
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Visit our Ukraine hub for the latest on sanctions, ethical guidance and reputational risk.
Brexit – impact on ICAEW members
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Find a range of resources to help you navigate this new chapter.
Business Spotlight
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