About CREME

The Centre for Research in Ethnic Minority Entrepreneurship (CREME) is based within Leicester Business School at De Montfort University in the brand new Hugh Aston Building. Led by Professor Monder Ram, CREME engages with practitioners and policy-makers to further the understanding of the needs of ethnic minority businesses and to help influence policy.

CREME routinelyworks with business support agencies, local authorities, ethnic minority business groups, public and private sector organisations, and ethnic minority entrepreneurs to develop informed approaches to enterprise support. CREME brings together these stakeholders in a variety of ways, ranging from international conferences on key policy issues to small workshops for local entrepreneurs, as well as throughhigh-level academic work.

‘Impact’ is central to the work of CREME. The Centre is committed to the production and promotion of knowledge that is useful to academic and practitioner communities. The fusion of research and practice is a key feature of CREME.

In recent years, CREME’s contributions to debates on ethnic minority entrepreneurship have produced a number of important reviews of the field. CREME has outlined the principal theoretical developments emphasising the UKs contribution to academic debates, synthesised the evidence base for academics and policy-makers, and analysed key policy developments in the UK.

CREME collaborates with entrepreneurs, community groups and business intermediaries on activities of mutual interest. These collaborations often promote change in the practice of partner organisations. For example, procurement practices in order to promote greater engagement with minority engagement with minority entrepreneurs.

Over the last few years, CREME has also been the catalyst for innovative and sustainable business support measures involving networks of African-Caribbean, Bangladeshi, and New Migrant entrepreneurs. One of these involved the creation and development of the ’12/8′ network; a peer-mentoring group for African-Caribbean entrepreneurs. Established in 2003, the 12/8 network continues to thrive, and has acted as a catalyst fro business improvement. Local policy-makers are keen to apply lessons from this initiative to their wider activities.

What people say about CREME…

“In working with Monder Ram and the team at CREME, both myself and my colleagues have been able to gain greater understanding of the true opportunity agenda in working with minorities’ businesses. We have been introduced to, and been able to construct, effective networks. These give us the building blocks to contribute to making a mutually beneficial commercial and sustainable impact in working with minorities’ businesses in the Midlands and UK. In my opinion, this would not be possible without the role that Monder and the team at CREME play.”

– Simon Leggett, Sales and Marketing Director, The Consortium

“CREME has enabled organisations like Business Link West Midlands to learn from and share good practice. CREME have also developed valuable business support initiatives, to promote supplier diversity and help increase access to markets for ethnic minority entrepreneurs.”

– Kul Sanghera, Business Link West Midlands

” CREME was and invaluable partner in authoring ‘The Handbook on Supplier Diversity in Europe’. Together, we were able to access and pull together more information, resources and ideas from around Europe than we ever could have done alone. CREME’s recent work on the minority ethnic businesses of the West Midlands provides a step-change in our understanding of such enterprises and allows us to shape supplier diversity activity in a much more nuanced way. This provides greater benefits for both suppliers and procurers.”

– Liz Holford, FSquared Ltd