PROFESSOR DYLAN JONES-EVANS

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...

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...

  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...

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...

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...

At a time when governments are looking for radical new ideas to deal with the looming unemployment crisis that many economists still believe is inevitable following the economic slowdown caused by the Covid Pandemic, few would have thought that we go back to the early 1980s for solutions. Perhaps the greatest irony is that at a time when the Futures Generations Commissioner for Wales suggested the introduction of a Universal Basic Income to give everyone a minimum amount of cash, there has been a call to resurrect a free enterprise scheme started under Margaret Thatcher that is already a model for basic income for entrepreneurs. Earlier this week, a paper from the Policy Exchange think-tank proposed the reintroduction of the Enterprise Allowance Scheme (EAS) to encourage more people to consider self-employment as a response to the potential jobs losses from the current recession. When the EAS was introduced in 1983, it provided support to out-of-work claimants who wanted to start thei...

For over twenty years, the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) has collected data from 115 economies around the world in an attempt to understand entrepreneurs and their impact on economic development.  Earlier this month, it produced a detailed report from 54 countries which examined the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship in general. Not surprisingly, it found a general consensus in a number of areas such as that a number of key business sectors had been hit hard across the World including tourism and hospitality, the airline industry, arts and entertainment, event management, construction and many consumer services.  It was also noted that a number of sectors had not only survived but also thrived at the same time including food, pharmaceutical products and logistics with some specific parts of the technology industry having done well out of the shutdown.  For example, edtech had benefited as universities, colleges and schools move...

So who do you think are the greatest entrepreneurs of all time?  Well, according to Fortune Magazine, the list would consist of Steve Jobs of Apple; Bill Gates of Microsoft; Fred Smith of FedEx; Jeff Bezos of Amazon; Larry Page and Sergey Brin of Google; Howard Schultz of Starbucks; Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook; John Mackey of Whole Foods; Herb Kelleher of SouthWest Airlines; Narayana Murthy of Infosys; Sam Walton of Wal-Mart; and Muhammad Yunus of Grameen Bank. As with all such subjective lists, many of us might disagree with those selected. Dominated by American high technology founders, the list had no women entrepreneurs and only two individuals recognised who are based outside the USA.  The list failed to include Sir Richard Branson despite his various entrepreneurial ventures ranging from Virgin Records to Virgin Atlantic and being the individual that most young people, at least in the UK, would wish to emulate. It also didn’t recognise pioneers of the industrial revoluti...

This year, the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) celebrates 20 years of measuring entrepreneurial activity around the World. When the first GEM report was published back in 1999 as a joint project between London Business School and Babson College in the USA, the study initially comprised data on all the G7 nations (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, UK, and USA) as well as Denmark, Finland, and Israel. Over the next two decades, more than 100 different countries have worked with GEM to produce detailed studies on the state of entrepreneurship in their nations. When GEM was expanded in 2000, I was honoured to be asked to lead the GEM study into Wales, a project that produced the first detailed analysis of entrepreneurship in the Welsh economy and which, for the first time, looked at key differences across a range of factors including start-up rates across the key regions of Wales, the effect of deprivation on enterprise and the first ever study on Welsh language and entr...

Many have argued that one of the drivers of the referendum result to leave the European Union was a fear of immigration which, in the minds of a significant part of the population, had become too high. Yet one of the real failures of the remain camp was to emphasise the positive benefits of immigration which affects all aspects of our lives. With a similar discussion on immigration currently going on in America under the Trump Presidency especially in terms of increasing jobs for US born citizens, it may be worth looking in detail at the impact that immigration has had on the World’s largest economy over the last two decades. One of the first studies to identify the positive impact of immigrants was the ground-breaking book “ The New Argonauts ” published back in 2006 from the Berkeley academic Anna Lee Saxenian. In a tour de force of modern economic geography, she examined the effect that immigrants were having on the development of the most economically successful region glo...

Since the financial crisis of 2009, the number of people in self-employment in the UK has grown by about a million to 4.84 million workers and now accounts for 15 per cent of the workforce. In fact, the latest Labour Market statistics show that self-employment accounted for 27 per cent of all of the increase in employment during the period 2009-2018. Whilst some have argued that this is partly down to the increase in companies servicing the so-called “gig economy” such as Uber and Deliveroo, the vast majority of those taking the plunge to work for themselves have done so for positive reasons. According to research into this area, the main driver is the identification of a new business opportunity which is often related to an area in which the future entrepreneur is currently active, possibly through employment or their personal interests. But there are also a range of other factors which may encourage an individual to set up their own business. It can be due to a need for r...

Earlier this month, people across Wales came together on Remembrance Sunday to not only commemorate the 100th anniversary of the end of the First World war but to honour those who have served and paid the ultimate price for their country. Yet, how many of us think about what happens to soldiers, aircrew or sailors when they leave the Armed Forces and return to “Civvy Street”? Often it can be very difficult for many to find a job after years in military service, especially when there are so many others looking for employment in a tight labour market. In particular, many will not consider other alternatives, such as working for themselves, because they have been in the forces for so long. Yet research has shown that previous military service has one of the largest marginal effects on self-employment, with “veterans” being 45 per cent more likely to be self-employed than non-veterans. One of the countries that values its veterans and their potential contribution to developing an...

On Monday, the Chancellor of the Exchequer delivered his third budget to the House of Commons and whilst it was focused very much on showing that austerity was coming to an end through increases in public spending, it was also one which firmly had an eye on improving the economic performance of UK businesses. So what were some of the highlights from the 2018 budget that Welsh firms can look on positively as we approach our exit from the European Union? The first was the confirmation that a reduction in corporation tax to 17 per cent in April 2020 would now take place. Not only is this now likely to see more sole traders incorporating but corporation tax and how it can be varied once we leave the European Union – will probably become the weapon of economic choice by the UK Government if not all goes to plan with a Brexit deal. The Welsh economy has one of the highest dependency on manufacturing of any part of the UK and therefore the plans to increase the Annual Investment Allo...

According to a recent report from the Office for National Statistics, the rapid growth in the number of self-employed has been a major feature of the UK labour market over the last decade. With unemployment at its lowest since the mid 1970s and employment at record levels, the strong performance of the job market has been partly due to the growth in the self-employed which has increased from around 12 per cent of the labour force in 2001 to 15 per cent of the labour force in 2016. Whilst the number of employees fell between 2008 and 2014, it was those working for themselves who contributed the most to self-employment during this period. Even as the mainstream labour market for employees recovered after then, the self-employed were still responsible for around a third of total employment growth. The level of self-employment varies considerably by UK region, with London having the highest level of self-employment in 2016 (17.4 per cent) and Scotland the lowest (10.8 per cent). ...

Like many others at the beginning of this year, I had a long look at what had happened in the previous twelve months and decided to make some changes to my life. Apart from the usual health and fitness promises (some of which, believe it or not, are still being kept), one of the real challenges was being able to make the time to spend with people I find interesting, stimulating and can really add something special to my life. Like everyone else, life had just become too busy to take even a few hours off regularly to catch up with those brilliant individuals who encourage and motivate you to better things. So after talking this through with two close friends - Gareth Jones of Town Square and David Williams of the Youth Development Agency – we decided to each identify a small number of people we would like to invite for a regular night out of great food, good wine and brilliant conversations. As a result, we had our first ‘supper club’ at Casanovas in Cardiff in February and s...

The third annual Wales Start-Up Awards were recently launched giving new Welsh businesses the opportunity to showcase their successes and demonstrate their contribution to job creation, creativity and innovation in the economy. Covering the full spectrum of business sectors including important sectors such as food and drink, social enterprise, digital and life sciences, the Wales Start-Up awards give new enterprises the opportunity to enter 15 awards while shining a light on the Wales’s fast-growing and buoyant start-up community. As the only regional awards in the UK to focus on start-up firms, they are unique in that only new businesses launched within the last three years are eligible to enter. Last year’s winner of the Start-Up Awards was Felin Honeybees of Anglesey, which also won the Green and North Wales Start-Up awards at the event held at the Depot in Cardiff. Founded in 2016 by Kate Hayward, it has successfully brought the concept of beekeeping into the mainstream...