PROFESSOR DYLAN JONES-EVANS

Since 1999, I have been championing the cause of the small number of firms that grow quickly and make a disproportionate impact on prosperity and job-creation in the economy.  After launching the first ever Wales Fast Growth 50, there has slowly been an increased interest in high growth (or scale-up) firms as various research studies continue to confirm their significant contribution to the UK economy.  One of those which continues to highlight the importance of such firms is the annual review by the Scaleup Institute, which defines high-growth (scaleup) firms as those growing their employment numbers or turnover by more than 20% a year over a period of three years with at least 10 employees at the start of the period. According to their latest report published last month, there were 33,445 scaleups in the UK in 2019, which is an increase of 24% on 2013 (as against a growth in GDP of 12% over the same period).  More importantly, they employed 3.2 million people and genera...

  The search for the fastest growing Welsh firms was launched last week in the Western Mail.  The Wales Fast Growth 50 recognises those group of high growth businesses that make a disproportionate contribution to jobs and wealth creation in the Welsh economy. Since the project was established twenty-three years ago, the 652 firms that have appeared in the Western Mail are estimated to have created 44,000 jobs and to generate £25 billion of additional turnover. With various research studies showing that a small number of high growth firms -which are defined as those that are growing by more than 20% per annum - disproportionately create jobs and wealth all over the World, such businesses continue to be of interest in driving forward economic prosperity. A recent report from the Scale Up Institute found that whilst there were 1250 Welsh scale up firms, Wales had the lowest proportion of such businesses relative to the rest of the business population.  In addressing this def...

Earlier this week, the Scale Up Institute produced its annual report into the state of high growth businesses in the UK. It showed that scaleups - those businesses growing by more than 20% per annum by employee or turnover growth (or both) – continue to make a substantial contribution to the UK economy.  The research identified a total of 33,860 scaleups in the UK that generate a total turnover of £1 trillion which represents half of the total contribution by all UK SMEs despite making up less than 1% of the SME population. They also employed 3.5 million people and the total number of scale-ups has grown by more than 25% in the period 2013-2018.  Scaleups also continue to be more productive than other UK businesses across almost every sector of the economy and, more importantly, exist in all sectors with most being found in wholesale and retail, professional, scientific and technical, and admin/support services.  Whilst we have been identifying and celebrating the fastes...

This year, the Wales Fast Growth 50 celebrates two decades of recognising the achievements of the fastest growing Welsh firms. And during the next few weeks, we will be announcing a very special event that will be taking place in October. Needless to say, it will aim to be the biggest event of its kind in many years and will not only commemorate 20 years of the Fast Growth 50 listings in the Western Mail but the Welsh business community as a whole. When we started back in 1998, there was very little interest in supporting indigenous businesses, never mind those firms that grow quickly. Fast forward to today and it would seem that politicians, policymakers and private companies have finally realised the significance and importance of this small group of firms to local, regional and national economies. Some of this increased interest has been supported by the work of companies such as Octopus, which has recently published its third High Growth Small Business Report and which, ...

In 2015, the Scale-Up Institute was established by the private sector to make the UK the best place in the world not just to start, but to scale a business. In the last three years, it has done a sterling job in ensuring that scale-ups – those firms with average annual growth in employees or turnover greater than 20 per cent per annum over a three year period – have been put at the forefront of key policies being developed by the UK Government. Their latest annual review is not only an impressive summary of the state of  scale-ups in the UK but, more importantly, presents an analysis of the key challenges being faced by such businesses as they look to grow further. According to the 2017 report, the biggest single challenge faced by scale-ups is access to talent, including the social and technical skills of their workforce, being able to recruit from overseas, or having the talent to win overseas business. This suggests, the issue of skills, and skills development, should b...