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...

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...

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 ...

  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 month, TB Davies celebrated 75 years of trading continuously from their base in Cardiff and as a fourth-generation family business, is another example of how, as recent studies have shown, it is family businesses that dominate most economies in the World.  According to the Family Entrepreneurship Report from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor – which interviewed 150,000 adults across 48 economies – over three quarters of entrepreneurs co-own or co-manage their businesses with family members.  This supports other data which has indicated that between 70% and 90% of all firms in the European Union would be considered family businesses and 75% of all businesses in the United States are family-owned firms.  Indeed, a state of the nation report from the Institute for Family Business (IFB) estimated that there were some 5.1 million family-owned businesses in the UK, representing 88% of the country’s private sector firms. They employed 14.2m people (40% of the U...

Since the recession of 2009, we have seen as renaissance in entrepreneurship in the UK.   For example, there are now more than 1.2 million self-employed people within the economy and, contrary to popular belief, the growth in those working for themselves has in high value sectors such as professional, scientific and technical activities, education, and information and communications technology.  This is not surprising as detailed analysis shows that a third of those in self-employment are now educated to degree levels, a growth of 50 per cent since 2001. And it is small firms that have led the growth in employment since 2009, with microbusinesses (those employing less than ten people) being responsible for half of all the jobs created. In contrast, large firms created only 24 per cent of the total.  But what is the state of entrepreneurship here in Wales? Certainly, there has been a greater effort by Welsh Government in promoting this area of economic activity over t...

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...

One of the most comprehensive annual studies of entrepreneurship has just published its latest report and it makes fascinating reading about how the World is embracing enterprise at all levels. The 2016 Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) survey represents the 18th consecutive year that GEM has tracked entrepreneurial activity; assessed the characteristics, motivations and ambitions of entrepreneurs; and explored the attitudes societies have towards this activity. The latest report summarises the findings from 65 countries which, together, cover nearly 70 per cent of the World population and 85 per cent of global GDP. So what are the main findings about the state of entrepreneurship globally?  First of all, more than two-thirds of the adult population believe that entrepreneurs are well-regarded and enjoy high status within their societies and that starting a business is a good career choice.  Whilst we tend to see enterprise as a Western driven concept, it is act...

Ever since I took up my first chair in entrepreneurship at the University of Glamorgan in 1996, I have been a tireless advocate for boosting enterprise in Wales. And as one of the team who helped to develop the world’s first regional enterprise strategy – the Entrepreneurship Action Plan (EAP) for Wales – in 2000, I believed that after years of economic decline, we were about to embark on an entrepreneurial renaissance that would transform the Welsh economy. Unfortunately those hopes were short lived and since the demise of the EAP eight years ago in the backwash from the abolition of the Welsh development Agency, it has been disappointing to note that the Welsh economy has struggled to create the levels of start-up activity that peaked during the time when this strategy was operational. Whilst there has been some valuable work undertaken by policymakers to try and boost enterprise, the Welsh economy has not yet attained the position which the EAP wanted, namely to be a “bold a...

Paraphrasing the current advertising campaign for Denmark’s most famous beer, if Carlsberg made studies of entrepreneurs, they would have created the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM). Established in 1999, GEM is the most comprehensive longitudinal study of entrepreneurship ever undertaken. Last year, more than 198,000 adults in 69 economies took part in the GEM survey, which represented an estimated 74 percent of the world’s population and 87 percent of its GDP. And as part of its extensive research agenda, the GEM team recently released a special report that focuses on women who start and manage businesses across the World. As with every GEM report, it is packed full of relevant and interesting statistics that should provide guidance to policymakers in supporting female entrepreneurship around the World. The most striking fact is the scale of women in enterprise – the study estimates that 224 million women were starting or running businesses in those countrie...

The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) research consortium has been measuring entrepreneurial activity and attitudes of working age adults across a wide range of countries in a comparable way since 1998. Undoubtedly, it has been the main source of information on entrepreneurship across the World for more than a decade and its global report, published every January, is eagerly awaited by academics and policymakers. Individual reports from the 54 countries participating in the study are published shortly after the main report is released and last week, the the 2011 GEM report for the UK was launched. The main headlines from the research showed that more people in the UK were thinking of setting up in business in 2011 than in the previous ten years, with a fifth of adult Britons either already running a business or expecting to run one in the next three years. It also noted a rise in female entrepreneurs, with 49 per cent of adults in the early stages of setting up a business...

As governments around the World look to reignite their economies, there is increasing interest in developing policies to encourage greater entrepreneurship. This is not surprising given that a range of studies have demonstrated the impact of both new and small firms on the economic prosperity of many nations. Earlier this week, a major study from the European Commission showed that 85 per cent of net new jobs created in Europe between 2002 and 2010 came from small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs), far higher than their 67 per cent share of total employment . That, in itself, shows the vital importance of small firms at this critical time for Europe. However, the one statistic that screams out for politicians to take notice and reach out for new policies immediately is the finding that all net employment growth has been generated by newly born SMEs (i.e. those aged up to five years old). In fact, the number of jobs created by new firms – 17.5 million - more than compensated...

Western Mail Article 5th November 2011 Last month, a campaign was launched to increase the number of women entrepreneurs in the UK by 100,000 over the next decade. Everywoman , the largest female business community in the UK, has linked up with the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB)'s Real Life Entrepreneurs Campaign to help encourage more women to set up new ventures in the UK. Their argument is simple, namely that an extra 150,000 start-ups would be created per year if women started businesses at the same rate as men. This is not surprising as, according to the last Global Entrepreneurship Monitor report for the UK, female early-stage entrepreneurial activity in 2010 was 4 per cent of the adult population as compared to 9 per cent for men i.e. the ratio of female to male early-stage entrepreneurial activity was 44 per cent. As well as a focus on encouraging more women, the FSB's campaign will also promote enterprise amongst young people, the over-50s, those wit...