Skip to main content

MIT Day 1

Have arrived at MIT for Entrepreneurship Programme following a four hour rail trip from New York this morning.

The course began with a four hour networking event where we had to try and meet as many people as possible and create a team of eight for the business plan and elevator pitch competition at the end of the week. Met a great group of people from countries as diverse as Dominican Republic, Saudi Arabia, Canada and Ireland.

Interesting to note that Scottish Enterprise had paid for eighteen participants from Scots high tech firms but there were no representatives from Welsh organisations apart from yours truly. That is a great disappointment as we need Welsh-based entrepreneurs to attend such high quality courses on a regular basis.

Hopefully, I can get some onto the next strategic MIT course to be held in be Edinburgh in March.

Comments

Anonymous said…
'Interesting to note that Scottish Enterprise had paid for eighteen participants from Scots high tech firms but there were no representatives from Welsh organisations apart from yours truly.'

thanks for posting that little gem Dylan, isn't Scottish Enterprise at arms length from the Scottish Government - therefore allowing original thought!

Here in Wales we have to ask since when do Civil Servants who have never worked in the private sector know what is needed for businesses to grow?, Wales should never have allowed the WDA to get taken into WAG in Rhodri bonfire of the quangos.

If WAG has any sense they would ask you for feed back when you return, i wont hold my breath thou.
January 26, 2009 10:38 am
Anonymous said…
Good case for getting our economic develoment dept back at arms length.
I wonder how many of the RDAs were there.
We have a third class service here and its not improving or learning
January 26, 2009 10:59 am
Professor Dylan Jones-Evans said…
The Scots have certainly got their act together although one can only hope that we can start accessing some of these world class courses - the public sector in Wales already have access to the best institutions through a specific scheme but, bizarrely, the private sector don't.

I see the point about the bonfire of the quangoes but to be fair to the WAG team in the USA, they are the most dedicated and hard working bunch that I have come across in the last three years and I would think that there will be some serious job announcements soon. We certainly need it, after the 760 posts lost by Corus (which this blog predicted months ago).
January 26, 2009 12:27 pm
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

THE CRACHACH

Unlike me, do you consider yourself part of 'the establishment' here in Wales?  As thousands gather for the Eisteddfod in Mold this morning, they will, according to some social commentators, not be participating in the greatest cultural festivals of Europe. Instead, they will merely be bit-part players in one of the annual gatherings of the great and good of Wales.  Unkindly, this set of the movers and shakers in Welsh society is known as 'the crachach' , and constitute a social class all of their own, dominating the educational, cultural and media sectors of Wales and allegedly looking down upon any outsider with new ideas, reinforcing mediocrity and failing to see beyond the limits of their own narrow experience.  They are said to live in a comfort zone that awaits the expected invitation to the next glass of chilled chardonnay and canapés, forgetting that due to their lack of leadership and drive, Wales remains firmly rooted to the bottom of the UK prosperity league ...
30 comments
Read more

THE FUTURE FOR SILICON VALLEY

During the last twenty years, there have been many academics, politicians and policymakers (including yours truly) who have looked over to the innovation developed in Silicon Valley, California and wondered if we could ever emulate that success here in Wales. Whilst the former First Minister Rhodri Morgan proposed only last week that South Wales could become the “UK’s answer to Silicon Valley”, he is not alone in the world with such a suggestion for his local area. With imitation often being the sincerest form of flattery, many others regions across the globe have tried to emulate the ‘secret sauce’ that has led to this small valley to the South East of San Francisco becoming the seedbed for world-leading companies such as Hewlett-Packard, Apple and Google. But after fifty years of success, can it maintain its position as the premier location for innovation in the World? This is a question that its own business community has recently been asking itself. This has culminated in a...
Read more

Turn the Welsh Blogosphere Blue

It's not often I will criticise my party in public but we have really got to pull our finger out over our presence on the web, especially as it is estimated that we only have four active bloggers (and I am one of those!). This despite having a significant presence by individual Welsh conservatives on networking sites such as Facebook . It is disappointing that only Nick Bourne has a blog presence amongst our AMs and that Glyn Davies (who started his blog when down in Cardiff Bay) is the sole parliamentary candidate with an active blog. As far as I know, not one of our councillors is currently blogging. Many will say that they don't have the time to do this but we are all busy people and one of our hardest working shadow ministers, David Jones MP, makes the effort to blog nearly every day. Others will say that there is nothing to write about, so why do I get at least ten press releases every day from the Welsh party? Some have told me that it is a waste of time because the ...
19 comments
Read more