PROFESSOR DYLAN JONES-EVANS

Western Mail column 28th May 2011 Last week, the Welsh Conservatives released data which seemed to imply that the Welsh Government has used the current round of European funding to subsidise its own programmes rather than supporting projects developed by the business community. According to a press release from Shadow Minister for Business, Andrew RT Davies that landed in my in-tray last week, £665 million of European Funded Convergence grants has gone to fund 68 projects sponsored by the Welsh Assembly Government. This represents 48 per cent of all the funding awarded since 2007. Other recipients of European grants funding include the local authorities (£320 million), university sector (£207 million), the voluntary sector (£121million), government sponsored bodies (£51 million) and further education (£13 million). In contrast, private sector sponsors have received only £7 million of grants for six projects. To many working within the private sector, this is extremely disappoin...

Have just arrived in Tunisia to undertake a couple of days of interesting work with the OECD, which has been tasked with examining entrepreneurship within the university sector. More specifically, the Ministry of Education and Research has asked the OECD to review five Higher Education Institutions – one virtual university, three full universities and one vocational education provider. This includes a questionnaire-based survey of all higher education institutions in Tunisia., followed by a country-level assessment of graduate entrepreneurship support. It will be an intensive couple of days in a hotel in Hammamet before leaving on Saturday morning for a nine hour journey home via Lyon and Amsterdam! At least I have the cricket to look forward to on Sunday (assuming the weather in Cardiff is similar to what we have in Hammamet!) The two days will consist of detailed workshops with the rectors of the Universities, business start-up providers and representatives from two ministries...

Daily Post column May 23rd 2011 Last week, the First Minister noted that farming was an important part of Welsh life despite eliminating the need for a Minister sitting around the Cabinet table with responsibility for the industry. In defending the fact that, for the first time ever, there would be no Ministerial responsibility for rural Wales, Carwyn Jones stated that he has made sure there is instead a deputy minister for agriculture who will be responsible for representing farming, fisheries and food development. Certainly, the fact that agriculture is now firmly embedded within the new department of Business, Enterprise and Technology is to be welcomed. And given that food and drink is an important exporter for Wales, it was surprising that Ieuan Wyn Jones had excluded it from his list of six key sectors for the Welsh economy during his tenure as Economic Development Minister. Yet, many believe that farmers and those working in rural Wales have a right to be worried. As I ...

Western Mail column May 21st 2011 Last week, I was over in California as a guest speaker at the British American Business Council (BABC) event in San Francisco. It was an impressive event focusing on innovation and I was fortunate enough to share the platform with luminaries such as Mike Moritz of Sequoia Capital, one of Wales’ most successful business exports; Peter Moore, President of gaming company EA Sports (and a former teacher at Ysgol Dinas Bran, Llangollen!); and Penarth-born Lieutenant General Sir Robert Fry. Of course, there is nowhere better than Northern California to hold a symposium on innovation, given that the World’s greatest concentration of high technology companies is to be found in an area down the road from San Francisco that has now become famous as Silicon Valley. The term Silicon Valley comes from the fact that, back in the 1950s and 1960s, there was a cluster of companies involved in the semiconductor industry within the region although the real succes...

As someone who still uses Interflora, I didn't get this at first! A simple but effective way of demonstrating how social media affects all aspects of our lives.

Daily Post Column May 16th 2011 In an interview with the BBC’s Andrew Marr last year, the First Minister suggested that we do not have enough businesses in Wales and that “we have to do more to unleash the entrepreneurial spirit". Indeed, in other media interviews, he again emphasised this point stating, for example, that “it’s sometimes said that the public sector in Wales is too large. I disagree; the public sector appears large because the private sector is too small.” Given that there is now a focus on delivery of new private sector jobs, this begs the question over exactly what has happened to employment within the private and public sectors during the term of the last Assembly Government? Official statistics shows that during the first three years of the last Labour-led administration, private sector employment in Wales reduced by 34,000, a fall of 4% as compared to June 2007. The biggest decreases in business employment were to be found in Blaenau Gwent (-19%), To...

This video was shown before the BABC conference session on social media. It blew the mind of everyone in the room that hadn't seen it before (including my good self) and is a warning to any business that wishes to develop its customer base over the next few years.

Western Mail column May 14th Last Friday, I gave a presentation to a group of Welsh businesspeople at Hays Recruitment's Cardiff offices on the subject "Is Wales missing out on Global Opportunities?". I started by examining the relative performance of Wales in terms of exports during the last year. Unfortunately, it showed that whilst the total value of UK exports increased by 16.2 per cent during the period December 2009-2010, exports from Wales fell by 0.1 per cent to £9 billion over the same period. Therefore, whilst the Welsh economy is not going backwards in terms of international activity, we are certainly not taking advantage of the recent trends in growing exports across the rest of the UK. The official data also shows a concentration in the areas in which we export, with three sectors - energy, metals and chemicals - accounting for two thirds of trade from Welsh businesses. As these are also sectors that are predominantly driven by larger firms, there is ...

As the BABC conference in San Francisco begins today and UK and US businesspeople come together to discuss the future of innovation, I thought it would be worth reflecting on a recent post that was sent to me regarding the 100 Things to Watch in 2011. Five months later, I wonder how many of these have actually begun to happen?

Daily Post Article 10th May 2011. As I write this column in California, last week’s Welsh Assembly elections seem a long way away. With Labour hinting that, despite winning 30 seats, they would be considering agreements with other parties to secure a working majority, being on the other side of the World may be the best place to be when the political horse-trading commences! It has been a fascinating election for a number of reasons. First of all, I am sure, that despite smiling faces on Friday, the Welsh Labour Party will be bitterly disappointed at not securing a majority. Given that they fought the election arguing that this was an opportunity for voters to pass judgement on the UK Coalition Government, there must be disenchantment amongst Labour ranks that they failed to pick up enough constituencies to give them a secure majority in Cardiff Bay. After all, if you had listened to Labour’s statements during the campaign, then you would think that David Cameron’s governme...

This week, I am in California speaking at the 18th annual British American Business Council Transatlantic Conference in San Francisco . I am honoured to be sharing the stage with luminaries such as Mike Moritz (Sequoia Capital), Peter Moore (President of EA Sports), George Whitesides (CEO of Virgin Galactic) and Lord Green (Minister of State for Trade and Investment). I am looking forward immensely to this important event which should help to put the innovation agenda firmly on the map in terms of developing greater links between the USA and the UK. During the week, I will also be ensuring that the University of Wales will also be contributing to developing greater links between Wales and Silicon Valley, but more of that next week. In the meantime, here is a great video representing a recent academic paper, "Innovation as a Learning Process: Embedding Design Thinking", authored by two Californian academics, Sara L. Beckman of Berkeley and Michael Barry of ...

Wyn Grant on the short-termism endemic in British industrial policy: "(There is) a profound uncertainty, which has never been resolved, about what Government’s relationship to industry should be (which is compounded by) the separation of industrial and bureaucratic careers, and by the character of a civil service in which stability, smoothness of operation and avoiding embarrassment for ministers often seems to be the first priority of government." Nothing much seems to have changed there! REFERENCE - W. Grant, ‘Government and manufacturing industry since 1900’ in G. Jones and M. W. Kirby (eds.), Competitiveness and the State: Government and business in twentieth-century Britain (Manchester, 1991), 116.

Today, the Western Mail, in association with the University of Wales, begins its annual search for the fastest growing Welsh companies. Established in 1999, the Wales Fast Growth 50 aims to identify the fifty fastest growing firms in Wales. Now in its thirteenth year, it has become firmly established as one of the main barometers of entrepreneurship in the Welsh economy and the list of business success that companies across Wales aspire to. Last year, the 50 fastest growing firms in Wales created 1,400 new jobs and increased their sales by an incredible £305m in the middle of the worse recession since the 1920s . The 2010 fastest growing firm in Wales was recruitment company Smart Solutions, which achieved an incredible growth rate of 3400 per cent between 2007 and 2009. Operating in a highly competitive marketplace, the company became successful by investing heavily in its infrastructure, always putting its staff first, and developing innovative ideas and strategy in a stale ma...

Daily Post column, May 2nd 2011 During this election campaign, we have had the unedifying row between Labour and Plaid Cymru over which party was responsible for developing the Pro-Act scheme. As you may recall, this Welsh Assembly Government programme was put into place to help companies during the recession by encouraging them to avoid redundancies through supporting workers to train instead.  It was available to businesses that had introduced short time working and faced the threat of redundancies.  It offered £2000 per individual towards training costs and a further wage subsidy of £2000 per worker whilst this training was being undertaken. Across Wales, it can be argued that the scheme did its job, safeguarding 10,635 jobs in 250 firms at a cost of £27 million, although there has been some dispute as to how many of the jobs were actually under threat of redundancy at the time. Yet, whilst the political wrangling has gone on between the two parties that made up...

Western Mail column 30th April 2011 With only five days to go until polling day, I have been ploughing through the four Welsh political parties’ economic manifestos for the Assembly elections to examine what each is specifically promising the small firm sector in Wales if elected. Let’s first look at what Wales’ largest party has to offer. The opening line in Labour’s manifesto on the economy states that “Wales faces significant economic challenges and the next Assembly term will be a critical period for the Welsh economy”. Not many could argue with that statement, especially as Wales remains the poorest region of the UK. Yet, the rest of the manifesto on the economy, especially for the small firm sector, remains a major disappointment. To me, the biggest regret is that the Welsh Labour Party ignores the overwhelming evidence that it is SMEs (small to medium sized enterprises) that create jobs in the economy. Instead, they argue that “much of the economic base of Wales is fou...

Having just finished teaching my entrepreneurship course in Turku, it was fantastic to get messages from  a number of my students that they will now be starting businesses when they finish their studies. Makes the journey all worthwhile! This is a short video that was sent to me by one of the students. It gives a simple but direct message on the importance of entrepreneurship and is worth watching.