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The Day Job



Next week, I celebrate my first year as Director of Research and Innovation at the University of Wales.

Most of my time has been spent in establishing this new area within the university, including the creation of the Global Academy and the successful implementation of the £11.4 million Prince of Wales Innovation Scholarships project. The last few weeks have involved the writing of a business plan for another major programme of innovation (completed last week) as well as a new research centre.

However, the job has also given me impetus to get back to writing research papers in the field of entrepreneurship and innovation with colleagues from the UK and the rest of Europe.

Those not involved in academic life might not appreciate this but such output is the currency of an academic career and I have, admittedly, let it slip over the last couple of years.

Still, I am more than pleased that, so far this year, five have been published/accepted for publication (including two in the top journal, Regional Studies) and we are working on another eight papers to be submitted during the next six months.

The papers published are as follows:

  • "Transferring good practice beyond organisational borders: lessons from transferring an entrepreneurship programme" M. Klofsten, P. Heydebreck and D. Jones-Evans, Regional Studies (forthcoming), 2009

  • "Entrepreneurship amongst minority language speakers - the case of Wales", Dylan Jones-Evans, Piers Thompson and Caleb Kwong, Regional Studies (forthcoming), (2009)

Comments

Anonymous said…
this is not personal as it's your world but that just reminded me why academic papers send me to sleep - give me the abstract any day. The abstract for "The Spatial..." seems ok, may scan read the paper one day.. but academic papers seem to have lost the plot

Certainly Papers are not reading for the masses - more like academic snobbery and self congratulating gibberish these days, they say nothing of real value all too often. So the good stuff gets lost

perhaps it's more the result of the fact you're all now awarded, rewarded and scored on publications that any true interest and ambition and dare i say it "entrepreneurial spirit" is seemingly ever deteriorating in your ranks - when academia allowed free thinking many papers were hugely valuable and even interesting; now it seems you all write papers just to be published and not to make a difference or tell a new tale

yours, humble Mr Logical

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