What is the Enterprise Catalyst?

 The Enterprise Catalyst (ECAT) is a FREE online self-assessment and coaching tool that gives insight into the individual’s enterprising attitudes and behaviours. www.enterprisecatalyst.co.uk 

At the same time, it captures data on the aspirations, attitudes and activities of thousands of individuals which will measure the impact of enterprise investment and interventions. 

It is an enterprise intervention as well as an evaluation tool. 

Originally developed by Dr David Johnson, Innovas has been working with ECAT since 2007 providing it to education and also using it to evaluate the impact of enterprise education on behalf of the Welsh Government, BEIS, local government, Universities, Colleges and Schools across the UK. Over 200,000 people have now completed this test which provides a comprehensive baseline and benchmark. 

How easy is it to use – very easy!

Who can use it?

What does the end-user get?

A 5-7 page personalised emailed report summarising their attitudes towards enterprise including their:

  • Enterprise fuel – motivation and drive, capacity to self-determine, willingness to learn
  • Personal enterprise style
  • Encouragers and Barriers to enterprise
  • Preferred Team role
  • Personal Learning and Thinking styles

It is both a stand-alone enterprise intervention that individuals can access and benefit from, and also an effective tool for teachers and providers of enterprise and business start-up support to build personal development and team building into their activities.

For more information please contact: enterprise.catalyst@innovas.co.uk

How is ECAT used for Evaluation of the Impact of Enterprise Education?

enterpriseThe Enterprise Catalyst creates a dataset that draws on reference case data on over 200,000 individuals across the UK from a range of demographic groups to ensure a high degree of accuracy and confidence level on the key indicators.

ECAT uses a consistent series of questions based on robust psychological research, and models of enterprise development, to measure the enterprise culture of individuals and populations and capture data on the aspirations, attitudes and activities of individuals in relation to the following factors:

1. Enterprise fuel – motivation & drive, capacity to self-determine, willingness to learn 

2. Entrepreneurial intentions – awareness, feasibility, desire and self-efficacy toward entrepreneurship

3. Entrepreneurial capacity – self-confidence, skills and social support networks

4. Engagement in entrepreneurial behavioursparticipation in current enterprise activities

5. Engagement in entrepreneurial learning – interest and participation in enterprise educational activities

6. Entrepreneurial style – attitudes toward seeking opportunities, managing risk, exploring new ideas etc

This allows differences to be tracked longitudinally and comparisons
to be made by geography, demography, gender and ethnicity. 

  • Benchmarks and evaluates the impact of enterprise education activity 
  • Maps enterprise strategy on the basis of hard evidence
  • Highlights areas of change against each of the six Enterprise Factors
  • Provides insight to inform future programmes and support 

For more information please contact: enterprise.catalyst@innovas.co.uk 

Where has this been used in Evaluation? 

The Enterprise Catalyst has been used widely to support enterprise education and also to assess its impact. Some of our current and past projects include: 

Evaluation of Big ideas Wales (formerly called Dynamo) for the Welsh Government 2010 and ongoing
 
This is a 10 year ongoing evaluation of this Welsh Government ERDF initiative which seeks to encourage young people to raise their aspirations and realise their own potential for creating new business opportunities. The research uses Enterprise Catalyst to provide impact assessment data at cohort level. Over 15,000 people have completed this assessment each year for the past 10 years. 

University of Huddersfield – Student Engagement in Knowledge Exchange Programme 2020 – 2022
 
This will see over 750 students work in inter-disciplinary teams on real-world business problems with actual companies to develop their enterprise and innovation skills, raising their levels of employability in established companies or equipping them to start up their own enterprises. The programme is using Enterprise Catalyst as a self-audit tool which will measure their entrepreneurial and enterprise mindset at the start of the project and also when they have been through the cycle working with businesses. 

Evaluation of the Kirklees Youth Enterprise Centre for Kirklees Council 2013 – 15 
Enterprise Catalyst was used in the two year evaluation of this ERDF project targeted on young people aged 14-19, which sought to stimulate new businesses via a combination of new facilities and dedicated support. 

Yorkshire Forward & the LEGI Programmes in Leeds, Bradford, Doncaster, Sheffield & NE Lincolnshire to evaluate the Impact of each programme’s investment in Enterprise Education 2009-11
The aims of the study were to understand what difference the investment in enterprise education was making to regional culture and the influence on and causal links with long-term changes in the economic environment; and to share learning, so deliverers of enterprise education can benefit from each others’ experiences and improve the impact of enterprise education. ECAT was used to ensure a lasting legacy of enterprise education by demonstrating impact and influencing policymakers. 

In addition many individual education establishments have commissioned reports on their cohort of students, allowing Innovas to take the test results from two different periods and compare and analyse the differences as well as benchmarking them against the national dataset. This has been used to evidence the impact of enterprise education, as well as to inform future plans and activities.