PROFESSOR DYLAN JONES-EVANS

No term used to epitomise the British economy more than “trading nation” and so, given the desperate need to increase trade to drag the country out of its current economic doldrums, it was good to see our most senior politicians at Westminster and Cardiff Bay recently zigzagging their way across the Asian continent. As is usual in these high-level trade missions, much of the press focus is on the links with multinational companies that have invested strongly in this country. Yet, perhaps more important to the future of the Welsh economy is the potential of indigenous businesses and their ability to sell goods and services internationally. So how is Welsh business performing in this regard? According to the most up to date statistics from the Welsh Government, Wales accounts for just over five per cent of the international trade of all UK regions, which is higher than its share of businesses across the economy. Indeed, exports worth £13.4 billion were generated in 2011, an incre...

Yesterday, I posted some videos from a Finnish company called Place Marketing, which focuses on promoting towns and regions. Given this, it is worth looking at two recent examples of marketing for two small nations, namely Wales and Iceland. Despite being a full blooded Welshman,  I know which one I would go for (unfortunately).   Inspired by Iceland Video from Inspired By Iceland on Vimeo .

Having been in Finland for the past few days,  I managed to catch up with a former flatmate from Dublin, Jonne Saivosalmi, who now runs a company called Place Marketing , a media company that focus on promoting towns and regions in Finland. Some of the work they do is groundbreaking and I would love to see them pitch for work in Wales, especially given their quirky and innovative approach which is a million miles away from the advertising usually procured by Welsh organisations. Take, for example, their campaign to promote higher education to overseas students in Oulu in Northern Finland.  Not an easy sell, I can assure you, but they bring it off perfectly for their target market as the videos below demonstrate. 1. Jason from Oulu on Vimeo . Yu-hsuan from Oulu on Vimeo . Gisbert from Oulu on Vimeo . Shanila from Oulu on Vimeo .

Last week, the World Economic Forum (WEF) published their annual Global Information Technology Report which measures the extent to which various nations are developing their Information and Communications Technology (ICT) capacity and its impact on competitiveness, as well as economic and social capacity. It does this by examining a number of factors including the friendliness of a country’s market and regulatory framework in supporting high levels of uptake, and the degree of a society’s preparation to make good use of an affordable ICT infrastructure.  It also looks at the efforts of individuals, business and government to increase their capacity to use ICT and the broad economic and social impacts accruing from this. As with all detailed reports from the WEF, there are some mouth-watering statistics for those looking to see where the next growth areas are going to develop. For example, the study finds that mobile broadband is currently generating a tremendous $1.3tril...

Last week, I gave a session on growth companies to a group of Irish companies. In the session on finance, this new sketchbook from Paul Kedrosky, Senior Fellow at the Kauffman Foundation, was a perfect summary on the different sources of finance for entrepreneurs. Yes, venture capitalists are not at the heart of entrepreneurial finance and most companies are actually funded by the entrepreneur’s savings, cash flow, friends, family and, yes, even credit cards!

As we all know from the excellent coverage in the Daily Post during the last few days, the business community in North Wales remains shell-shocked at the decision by the German energy companies RWE npower and E-ON to pull out of plans to build an £8 billion new nuclear reactor at Wylfa B in Anglesey. With the county consistently rated as one of the poorest areas in the UK, the development was seen as the panacea for its lack of economic opportunities, with experts estimating that it had the potential to contribute over £2 billion to the economy over the next fifteen years, creating 5,000 construction jobs and 800 direct jobs at the new power station. More importantly, it would have given Wales, and Anglesey, the opportunity to become a major centre of expertise in the sector through the creation of value added projects around the new development. For example, helping to create an energy technology park around the power station and ensuring that the skilled workforce needed for i...

Last week, I spent some time in Finland working on number of joint projects that have been developed between Turku University, where I have a visiting professorship, and the Global Academy. During my week there, I had the opportunity to visit Helsinki and the new academic institution known as Aalto University. It was a fortuitous visit, given that Aalto University was created out of a merger, two years ago, between three specialist academic institutions, namely the University of Art and Design Helsinki (1,900 students), the Helsinki University of Technology (14,000 students) and the Helsinki School of Economics (3,200 students). As such, it seems a relevant case study to examine the impact of university mergers that, as most of you are aware, are seen as the panacea to some of the challenges facing Welsh Higher Education. Talking to various individuals, it became clear that the first issue that was important in terms of the Aalto merger was that it had a specific vision that was ...