Rural resilience through continued learning and innovation

Abstract

The article investigates how rural businesses demonstrate resilience when faced with adversities and the processes they utilise to survive. The work explores rural resilience through the use of learning and innovation in small rural enterprises. Drawing on case study work from rural England the results indicate that individual businesses find ways to overcome adversities and, through learning how to cope with them, create a resilient culture. Individuals businesses use various resources, and in some cases innovate, in order to continue business operations during difficult times. Continual learning becomes an important aspect of incremental innovations which are required merely for the business to survive. The work is timely as many small enterprises face difficulties in the wake of instability in the economic world.