The Lord Ashcroft International Business School (LAIBS) has established the Institute for International Management Practice (IIMP) to provide an impetus to, and a focus for, internationally recognised applied business research.

The mission has been chosen because:

• It builds upon some of the established strengths of LAIBS;
• It recognises the vital importance of innovative, growth-led businesses to the future of wealth creation and prosperity in most nations in the world; and
• It enables differentiation from other more generalist business school research activity.

The values which guide the IIMP are:

• A research agenda driven by the needs of business practice
• A focus on the extraction of knowledge from practice
• Sound theoretical underpinning of its knowledge transfer
• Multi-disciplinary and cross-disciplinary approach
• In tune with emerging and innovative approaches to business around the world
• Application of new technologies and techniques - especially for dissemination

IIMP receives substantial financial and personal support from Lord Ashcroft, which has enabled it to create a state-of-the-art new facility in Cambridge, and endow a number of Ashcroft Foundation Chairs to promote research into themes relevant to modern business practice.

The Institute engages with businesses and organisations to create new knowledge and insights into international management practices, helping understand their impact upon organisational performance and innovation and on economic and cultural development - at national and transnational levels. The IIMP translates this business insight and delivers it to the international business community in a way that has impact, relevance and added-value. Some of the specific themes being pursued as part of the IIMP's mission are:

• The creation and nurturing of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in developing nations
• The internationalisation of SMEs
• Open Innovation and its implications for small business
• A new approach to Enterprise and Entrepreneurship education at 1st degree level
• Development of an enterprise culture in Central European states (former Soviet communist states)
• The Financing of Enterprise and Early Stage Business

In support of these, the IIMP has created an international research centre for the Caribbean (in partnership with the School of Accounting and Management in Trinidad and Tobago), and supports two major research centres: The Centre for Enterprise Development and Research and The Centre for Innovation in International Business.

Interim Director of IIMP: Prof Keith Dickinson