PROFESSOR DYLAN JONES-EVANS

How entrepreneurial is Wales? That is the question that the latest Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) attempts to answer in its latest report which investigates those involved in early-stage entrepreneurship i.e. starting and managing a new business.  This year’s results show that the rate of total early-stage entrepreneurship (TEA) in Wales in 2021 was 10.3% as compared to 11.5% for the UK. This is significantly higher than the previous year (6.5%) and means that around 192,000 adults aged between 18 and 64 are involved in entrepreneurial activity in Wales.  Nearly three quarters are in the very early stages of starting a business and the rest involved in managing a new business aged between 4 and 42 months old.  This is an important finding as not only is the overall rate of entrepreneurial activity in Wales increasing but this is largely accounted for by those starting a business. In this respect, it is critical that the right support mechanisms are in place to ensu...

Last Thursday, we held the Wales Start-Up Awards in Cardiff, and it was great to be back in the familiar surroundings of the Depot with 450 finalists, friends and supporters there to celebrate the best new businesses in Wales. It was also a good time to reflect on the decision to take the awards out of Wales and on the road across the UK as part of a new National Start-Up Awards series.  Over the last four weeks, we have visited Glasgow, Newcastle, Belfast, Birmingham, Reading, Bristol and Manchester with only London left to go in September as a result of the recent train strike. It has certainly been a challenge to take the concept to different cities, especially given that there are no other similar awards recognising and celebrating start-ups across all sectors of the economy. However, I am happy to say that the response from the start-ups themselves has been overwhelming in every part of the UK and we have been fortunate perhaps to capture the real entrepreneurial spirit that h...

Earlier this week, I chaired the final judging panels for the 2022 National Startup of the Year awards. Comprising of over 100 entrepreneurs and business supporters who had given their time to support the recognition of the best new businesses in the UK, it was a difficult process given the quality of so many of the entries. Having initially started the Wales Start-up Awards back in 2016 as a way of celebrating the best new Welsh businesses, I took what seems like a crazy decision last year to extend them to every region and nation of the UK.  Fortunately, I haven’t had to do this myself after partnering with Cardiff-based Ideas Forums, who organise the Great British Entrepreneur Awards, to manage the expansion across the nation.  Despite the hard work, it is has been an amazing journey with over 2,500 entries being whittled down to 900 finalists that have a collective turnover of £300 million and are employing over 5000 people across the UK.  Reading those stories of ent...

Helping entrepreneurs start, grow, and renew their businesses is one of the most important interventions that any local, regional or national government can take to help create jobs and raise living standards, especially within more deprived communities. As with other nations across the world that are looking to grow their economy, entrepreneurship needs to be at the forefront of economic policy at both a national and regional level in the UK and there are a number of priorities in encouraging greater participation in entrepreneurial activity that must be at the forefront of any strategic approach to increasing prosperity and boosting employment. Entrepreneurs are at the heart of every economy and society. They develop new opportunities which lead to greater job creation, they instigate innovation to develop new products, services and markets and disrupt traditional sectors by developing new way of working. They are at the forefront of social change and are the driving force behind sol...

Earlier this week, the Scottish Government published a new National Strategy for Economic Transformation. This contains seventy actions across five key priority programmes which, following a detailed analysis of Scotland’s economic strengths and weaknesses, have been identified as having the greatest potential to deliver economic growth. Given that there is no similar economic strategy here in Wales, it provides an interesting framework for the Welsh Government to examine in terms of approach over the next four years. I was particularly excited to see that one of the key priority programmes will focus on entrepreneurship to create a culture which entrepreneurship is encouraged, supported and celebrated. To achieve this, it will focus on four key projects that will result in Scotland being recognised as one of the best countries in the world to start and grow a business, surely something that should be an ambition here in Wales as well. The first of these projects is that of embedding t...

For the last twenty three years, the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) has been collecting data on entrepreneurial activity in order to inform politicians, policymakers and businesses as to the best way to increase entrepreneurial activity around the world.    As we begin to slowly emerge from the economic downturns of the last two years caused by the Covid 19 pandemic, it is becoming clear that support in entrepreneurship is vital in not only creating employment and increasing prosperity but in meeting the economic, social and environmental challenges that the World will be facing as countries adapt to the new normal. This year’s annual report from GEM is an important marker in identifying where we are in terms of entrepreneurial activity but also where we should focus our efforts in the future.  Through interviewing 150,000 individuals in 50 economies that make up two thirds of the World’s economic output, the study not only provides information on the numbers start...

With new firms responsible for the creation of employment, the generation of wealth, the development of innovation, the disruption of markets and support for local communities, entrepreneurship is increasingly seen as one of the key forces behind boosting economic prosperity around the World. As we emerge from the pandemic, those entrepreneurs with amazing ideas for new businesses will be the ones who will generate the new jobs during the post-Covid recovery, reimagine our town centres and drive forward innovation in a range of sectors.  In other words, the UK will need more home-grown, innovative firms to regenerate the economy especially within the more deprived parts of the nation where supporting the development of these entrepreneurial ventures will contribute significantly to closing the prosperity with the more prosperous regions.  To make a contribution to this agenda, I am currently working with colleagues at the University of South Wales and the Alacrity Foundation o...

When the Entrepreneurship Action Plan for Wales was launched back in 1999, it was the first regional enterprise strategy anywhere in the World.  Whilst it focused on delivering a range of programmes to develop and enterprise culture, increase the number of new businesses and support growth firms, it also focused specifically on increasing participation in entrepreneurship by under-represented and disadvantaged groups such as older people, women, ethnic minorities and young people.  This is not surprising as research showed that those individuals who typically started a business were white, male and aged between 30 and 49 years of age. Fast forward two decades and the mainstreaming of business support here in Wales means that there is little assistance available to help increase entrepreneurial activity within these groups. However, as a recent OECD study has demonstrated, not only is this focus needed to improve participation in business creation by these groups but support fr...

Recent research from the office for National Statistics showed that whilst the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic had been greatest for younger workers, those older workers aged 50 years and over have also been affected and to a greater extent than those in middle age. For example, employment for older workers was at a record high just prior to the beginning of the lockdown in March 2002 but since then, it has fallen at a higher rate than for the rest of the working population. The data also showed that those employees aged 50 years and over were more likely to report working fewer hours than usual because of the coronavirus than those aged under 50 years, with those aged 65 years and over the most likely to say they had worked reduced hours. In addition, older workers had the highest overall increase in redundancies, and this presents a bigger challenge for this age group as they are more likely to be unemployed long-term than younger people.  In fact, once older workers lose their j...

This week, I have returned to Finland and, more specifically, the city of Turku where I am a visiting professor at the university. The occasion is the 35th European conference in entrepreneurship research which, as I was at the fourth event in Durham back in 1990, makes me feel extremely old. Of course, after having to avoid such gatherings for so long, it’s been wonderful to finally catch up with colleagues and friends to  discuss, face to face, some of the latest studies in my chosen field. It’s also given me an opportunity to find out what has been happening to the Finnish economy - one of the most competitive in the World - after the Covid-19 pandemic and especially the future prospects for entrepreneurship in this fantastic country. The good news for Finland is that according to its latest SME Barometer (which provides a comprehensive picture of Finnish small and medium sized firms’ perceptions of the economy - the predictions are optimistic after the downturn of last year. Th...

  Developing a competitive knowledge-based economy usually requires two important elements namely entrepreneurs with ambitious businesses and a strong investor base that can provide the vital equity funding that can turbo boost the numbers of growing firms that can create wealth and employment The degree to which these two factors impact on the different nations and regions of the UK is the subject of an excellent new report from the British Business Bank entitled “Regions and Nations Tracker: Small Business Finance Markets 2021”. Drawing on information from data specialists Beauhurst, it shows that there have been nearly 15,000 private external equity deals small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) across the UK.  It proposes that at the heart of developing high growth businesses and a positive environment for investment is the relationship formed between the investor and the companies. Most important of all, the entrepreneur must be as happy with the investor as the investor...

As we emerge from the economic downturn caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, it is clear that higher levels of entrepreneurship will one of the key factors in building back the Welsh and UK economies. Given this, it is worth examining the latest data on entrepreneurial activity in the UK from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM). This worldwide project measured rates of entrepreneurship in 43 economies in 2020 with 9,453 adults interviewed for the UK study. As such, it gives us a comprehensive analysis of how entrepreneurship has been developing during one of the worst recessions in history. One of the key indicators within the GEM survey is Total early-stage Entrepreneurial Activity (TEA) which measures those individuals that start and manage a new business.  According to the study, the rate of early-stage entrepreneurship in Wales in 2020 was 6.5% which is lower than the UK (7.5%), England (7.7%) and Scotland but higher than Northern Ireland (5.4%).  Unfortunately, this is ...

During the last week, the judging process for the 2021 Wales Startup Awards conducted 118 interviews with arguably some of the best new Welsh businesses.  Over six days, the forty one judges experienced the depth and breadth of the startup scene in Wales and heard some amazing stories of resilience, creativity and sheer hard work. As someone who has been involved in supporting businesses in Wales for a quarter of a century, the process opened a window on the state of entrepreneurship across the country and, more importantly, enabled me to understand some of the key issues facing startups as we emerge into a new economic reality.  So what did I learn from these amazing individuals and their firms? First of all, entrepreneurial spirit and drive is alive and well in Wales. We have interviewed some amazing companies from every sector and every part of the nation and it is incredible to see the enthusiasm these new businesses have for their products or services.  More importan...

  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 poun...

  As an entrepreneurship academic for over thirty years, one of the highlights in my schedule every year is the annual publication of the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM). Based on nearly 140,000 interviews with adults from 46 economies across the World, this is a study of entrepreneurial activity, attitudes and ambitions that has been gathering data since 1999. However, the 2021 report is particularly relevant as the data has been collected during a Covid-19 pandemic which has decimated national economies and therefore this is be one of the first international measurements of the business lockdowns on levels of entrepreneurship. It is also important in trying to assess whether, as in previous recessions, entrepreneurial activity will again drive economic recovery across the World So what are the main findings of the 2021 GEM report?  With only six GEM countries reporting that less than one in three adults had experienced a decrease in household income due to the pandemic...

Earlier this week, in association with Wales Week London , we launched the sixth Wales Start-Up Awards which celebrates the success of the best new Welsh businesses every year. It was a pleasure to interview a number of the award winners that are making a real stamp on their industries and markets.  These included Project Blu , overall winner in 2020 which has signed a major multi-million pound deal to sell their environmentally friendly dog products in the USA; Yoello , the Cardiff-based payments specialist which had to pivot during the pandemic but has completed a major funding round to expand their operations substantially; t he Goodwash Company , whose innovative approach to their business is putting them on the path to becoming a major UK brand in the next couple of years; and the Enbarr Foundation which is rewriting the textbook on community entrepreneurship through its efforts in Deeside. Despite all the challenges of the last 12 months, these amazing founders had not only s...