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How do you scale your business without scaling your workload?

6 January 2026

Businesses that grow quickly can face all manner of issues as their people, processes, culture and skills all struggle to keep pace. Staff find themselves spread too thinly and quality control can soon start to suffer, as can relationships with customers and internal communication. Once problems start to emerge, businesses can find themselves going backwards all too easily.

Putting in place the right approach to strategic thinking, innovation, increasing profitability and taking full advantage of AI are all ways in which businesses can maintain their growth trajectory – but it often takes the input of experts to implement appropriate strategies.

The High Growth Academy’s programme of events, workshops and forums, led by East Midlands Chamber, in collaboration with Nottingham Trent University, University of Derby and University of Nottingham seeks to provide access to expert advice to help businesses.

Here are some of the ways the programme of support can help businesses address their scaling challenges:

Increasing profitability

It is a common misconception that an increase in profit can only come from increased sales. There are many practical strategies that can help enhance business performance and profitability – and not just by raising prices!

Growth Builders: Increase Your Profitability through Productivity Gains & Pricing Strategies (15 January, Nottingham Trent University) will explore the psychology of pricing and assessing which of 50 different pricing strategies & tactics are right for delegates’ businesses. Guidance will be offered on measuring productivity and setting KPIs, as well as the pitfalls of commonly used pricing methods, communicating price increases to customers and how a mere 1% increase in price can yield a 10% increase in net profits.

Delegates are invited to bring along their own pricing challenges for discussion in a Q&A at the end of the session.

Thinking like a strategist

Strategic management frameworks assist organisations in analysing their current position, defining their goals for the future and creating actionable plans for success. They form the basis for quality decision making, the allocation of resources and performance measurement – all of which are designed to create and maintain competitive advantage.

Growth Drivers: Thinking Like a Strategist (22 January, University of Nottingham, Jubilee Campus) focuses on evaluating different strategic management frameworks and their effectiveness in navigating volatile and complex business environments. It explores how to evaluate risk and uncertainty in the modern world, strategic positioning and making strategic choices, managing strategic change in dynamic environments and implementing strategic decisions.

A company-wide approach to using generative AI

Generative AI is fast becoming a daily tool for many of us but moving from casual, individual use to a secure, company-wide strategy presents a significant hurdle.

Generative AI for Scaling Companies: Building teams with ChatGPT and Copilot (27 January, Nottingham) opens with an exploration of the current landscape of ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, Google Gemini and Claude to guide businesses on choosing the right platform for their security and integration needs. It will also outline real-world use cases (beyond chat) to demonstrate AI’s use in summarisation, data analysis, content generation, and process automation.

Delegates will also gain hands-on experience with Custom GPTs: building a role-specific assistant (e.g., "Sales Coach," "Marketing Assistant," "HR Policy Bot") live in the session.

Alongside building their own capabilities, delegates will be equipped with the knowhow needed to adopt a “train the trainer" model to create internal champions, and to build a governance policy and a checklist for a secure, company-wide rollout.

Adopting a more innovative approach

Innovation is key to any scaling business seeking to maintain its competitive advantage but if they are to make informed strategic decisions to drive business growth through innovation, they need insight into what works and what doesn’t.

High Growth Academy: Growth Forum: Driving Business Growth Through Innovation (29 January, Nottingham University Business School) is an interactive forum where business leaders have the opportunity to network with their peers and exchange ideas and hear from a panel of experts who will share their insights and practical strategies.

The panel includes:

Professor David Park, Dean of Nottingham University Business School: sharing lessons learnt from launching and scaling innovative ventures, raising investment, and supporting high-growth businesses through both academic and commercial channels.

Lewis Stringer, Senior Manager, UK Network Team at British Business Bank: drawing on his work with the British Business Bank and involvement in major regional funding programmes to guide businesses on tackling funding and finance challenges, understanding the funding landscape, accessing finance, preparing for investments and identifying available resources.

Professor Veronica Pickering, social entrepreneur and Lord-Lieutenant of Nottinghamshire: sharing her partnership experience of bringing together people and organisations with the aim of making a positive difference to the lives of people and communities in the UK and around the world.

Implementing processes that work at scale

Software and manual processes that were once fit for purpose may not be as efficient when it comes to working at scale. Operational bottlenecks are a real risk, particularly when knowledge sits with only a handful of staff or when an owner struggles to delegate approval processes.

AI automation is fast becoming a valuable resource when it comes to embedding AI workflows directly into business growth strategies.

Embedding AI Workflows into your Growth Strategy (30 January, Chesterfield) starts with exploring different workflow types to unlock scalable growth, identifying automation opportunities using an AI Opportunity Scorecard, and reviewing platforms and products to implement workflows. It also considers how to integrate workflows with CRMs, finance systems, emails, spreadsheets and third-party APIs.

Delegates will learn where workflows can deliver the biggest impact, how to design and build their first workflow, and how to test, refine and deploy it. They will identify and map bottlenecks and friction points in their processes and learn how to use triggers, extraction and analysis in the creation of their workflows. Importantly, they will leave knowing exactly how AI can scale their business without scaling their workload, armed with a practical 90-day roadmap, templates, scorecards and patterns to begin embedding AI across their organisation.

Upcoming High Growth Academy events

The High Growth Accelerator project runs until the end of March 2026 and is open to scaling businesses located in Derby, Derbyshire, Nottingham and Nottinghamshire that can demonstrate 20% annual growth in revenue, employment, or market share over the past three consecutive years.

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