Twenty-five years ago, I accepted the position of professor of entrepreneurship and small business management at the University of Glamorgan.
It was the first academic role of its type in Wales, and it was a proud moment in my life to be able to come home from University College Dublin in Ireland to begin a new journey promoting and developing the whole area of entrepreneurship both inside and outside the university.
Of course, back then entrepreneurs were not valued within the economy and society not only in Wales but more widely across the World.
There was little appreciation of the impact of individuals such as Steve Jobs, there was no programmes such as Dragon’s Den on the TV and the thought of young people being encouraged to start up their own business rather than go into a safe job working for an established employer was seen as irresponsible at best.
Instead, the strategy of economic development bodies was very focused much on spending tens of millions of pounds to attract large businesses to relocate to deindustrialised regions.
In that respect, Wales was no different with the Welsh Development Agency (WDA) putting all of its eggs into the basket of bringing in the South Korean semiconductor manufacturer LG to Newport to create thousands of well-paid jobs which, of course, never materialised.
Yet despite this failure, it was clear that politicians and policymakers at the time remained largely ignorant of the impact that new firms could have despite countless studies that showed, even at that time, that they created the majority of jobs in any economy.
Fortunately, one of the first pieces of research I was involved with after my arrival at the University of Glamorgan was an examination of the enterprise policies of local authorities in Wales. It concluded that there was a need for called co-ordinated regional approach to end confusion regarding the development of support for Welsh entrepreneurs and small businesses.
Following discussion with various policymakers about this approach, an economic policy document published by the Welsh Office was published in 1998 which built upon this idea and proposed a new approach to bring together existing initiatives to support new businesses under a clear, integrated programme of activity.
The Entrepreneurship Action Plan (EAP) for Wales was the first regional enterprise strategy of its kind, co-ordinated at a devolved governmental level but delivered locally.
It was built around three challenges namely developing a greater awareness of the opportunities and benefits of entrepreneurship; creating a greater number of sustainable start-up businesses in Wales; and increasing the number of businesses in Wales that grow
So what impact did the EAP have on its main target, namely increasing the number of new businesses? To say it was successful would be an understatement given that after years of decline, the number of new Welsh firms created during the period 2002–2005 increased by 21% as compared to 13% for the UK. In terms of impact across population, the number of firms per 10,000 population increased by 18% as compared to 9% for the UK and the birth rate - namely the proportion of new firms as a percentage of the total stock of businesses - also grew during this period.
It was clearly a strategy that was working and, more importantly, was slowly transforming Wales into a more entrepreneurial nation. However, this success was stopped in its tracks when, in 2004, it was announced that the WDA was to be abolished. This led to considerable uncertainty and a decision was subsequently made by the Welsh Government to close down the EAP despite the fact that the plan itself was being managed by a private sector led implementation panel that was independent of government or the WDA.
As a result, there was significantly less attention devoted to entrepreneurship during the period after the abolition of the WDA and the support that was available was fragmented with no real strategy or direction.
There was a revival of entrepreneurship as a policy imperative with a new Minister for the Economy in 2011 and this slowly resulted in a range of interventions that culminated in the creation of the BeTheSpark initiative in 2017 as a movement fostering innovation-driven entrepreneurship in Wales. However, there has been very little progress since despite the fact that the rate of new business creation continues to be considerably below that of the UK.
Therefore, it is fair to say that looking back over the last quarter of a century, there is now a greater appreciation of the role of new and growing businesses. However, the job is not yet finished and with entrepreneurship remaining on the periphery of policymaking in Wales, there is still considerable work to be done in ensuring that it remains an important part of economic development priorities at a local, regional and national level across the nation.
Hopefully the new Minister for the Economy in the Welsh Government will look carefully at putting it centre stage once more in stimulating economic prosperity, developing new innovations and supporting local communities.