Digital Business Academy

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The Digital Business Academy (DBA) was a government-supported online learning platform designed to provide business and digital skills to UK residents.
What are the main aims and objectives?

The primary aims and objectives DBA were to empower individuals with essential business and digital skills needed to thrive in the modern economy. By providing free access to high-quality online courses developed in partnered with reputable educational institutions and industry experts, the DBA sought to bridge the skills gap, foster entrepreneurship, and support career advancement. The initiative targeted a broad audience, including aspiring entrepreneurs, small business owners, and professionals seeking to enhance their digital competencies, thereby contributing to economic growth and innovation within the UK.

How does the program work?

The DBA offered free online digital business courses covering key skills needed to start a business such as:

  • Setting up a digital business
  • Sizing an idea
  • Developing and managing digital products
  • Making a marketing plan
  • Understanding digital marketing channels
  • Running a marketing campaign
  • Building a brand
  • Grokking business finance

Lessons include accessible videos with practical advice from experts and entrepreneurs as well as tools like self-assessment tests. To incentivise people to complete the course, the DBA offers rewards, such as startup loans, free coworking space, paid internships and free mentoring. Offering free or highly subsidised online learning courses potentially means reaching a wider range of students, while also keeping the costs relatively low.

Upon completing courses, participants become eligible to apply for various rewards such as paid internships, mentorship opportunities, free co-working spaces, specialist content, and startup support. These rewards are provided by over 35 industry partners, including BBC, O2 Think Big, Unruly, and Microsoft Ventures. 

What is the overall cost?

The DBA received £400,000 from the UK government for its first year of funding, coming from the Business, Innovation and Skills department budget. 

How was it implemented?

The program was overseen by Tech City (now Tech Nation) working alongside a range of education institutions and tech mentorship organizations including Cambridge University Judge Business School, University College London (UCL), and Founder Centric, which in turn works with tech accelerators such as Seedcamp and others. Tech City is a publicly funded organization that initially concentrated on supporting the tech cluster in East London but now broadly promotes entrepreneurship across the UK.

What impact has been measured?

Almost 20% of graduates reported that they are starting digital companies after finishing at least one skill.

Over 60% of the Academy's alumni were reported to start, join or grow a digital business.

Notes + Additional Context

About entreprise education:

Schools, colleges and universities are sometimes criticised as being too theory-oriented and lacking connection with the ‘real world’. Indeed, the rise of the accelerator movement can be seen, in part, as due to a lack of practical entrepreneurship training. Fortunately, this has changed rapidly in recent years, with many schools and colleges offering students the courses and tools needed to start their own business.

From a policy point of view, the focus is typically on persuading educational institutions to embed enterprise education within the curriculum (rather than offering as an ‘add-on’); building multiple initiatives and types of support (such as physical space, IP advice, mentorship, business plan competitions, hackathons, pitching days, student enterprise societies, connections to VCs, in-house funds, networking sessions, and so on); and nurturing an ecosystem around the institution itself (which may involve alumni, local businesses, and so on).

Read more about this type of policy instrument in Nesta's Idea Bank for policymakers.

CURATED BY

Siddharth Bannerjee

Researcher, Digital Startups
Nesta
United Kingdom