PROFESSOR DYLAN JONES-EVANS

There is increasing evidence that business incubators and accelerators – enterprise support programmes that are based within specific spaces to help startups grow – are becoming more prevalent across the UK. Indeed, the number of business incubators and accelerators has grown rapidly over the last few years and it is estimated that there may over 400 such organisations operating across the UK, supporting around 10,000 businesses at any one time. But what has been the impact of these business support mechanisms on businesses given that there may be around £30 million of public funding spent on them annually? A recent study from the innovation body NESTA has examined the impact of incubators and accelerators on the startups they support and investigate which types of support - provision of workspace, mentoring, funding or training – actually drive this impact. Their survey of 438 startups that that have previously or are currently attending an incubator or accelerator makes interesting r...

Thirty years ago, I was travelling around the country in a battered Vauxhall Cavalier interviewing founders of technology-based firms for my Ph.D study into technology-based entrepreneurship.  It was one of the first studies of this phenomenon in the UK and, at the time, was hardly on the radar of politicians and policymakers.  Fast forward three decades and now tech entrepreneurship is at the forefront of every economic strategy in the World.  Indeed, as last week’s column on the report “The State of European Tech” suggested, the tens of billions of pounds of investment going into tech companies across Europe is changing the industrial landscape in so many different ways. As part of that report, a survey was undertaken of over 1,200 tech founders from across Europe and the results give a real insight into who the individuals are who take the plunge to start up their own businesses within technology intensive sectors.   First of all, the tech scene remains a whi...

Last week, one of the largest gatherings of technology entrepreneurs globally took place in Helsinki.  Originally founded as a local student-driven movement to change attitudes toward entrepreneurship, Slush has grown into a global movement with various events, including the annual winter conference in Finland, which attracted over 25,000 people including 3,500 start-ups and 2,000 investors. As part of the event, an annual report on the state of European tech industry is released and this year’s study demonstrates again the major changes which have occurred over the last few years across the continent and how Europe, slowly but surely, is becoming a location for new technology firms. In terms of investment, there was nearly £27 billion of capital invested in technology companies in 2019 - an increase of 34 per cent over the previous year - with the largest hub being found in London.  The UK also accounted for a third of all the funding invested into tech firms this year (£8.7 ...

Last Thursday I was privileged to be at the brilliant Tramshed Tech accelerator in Cardiff for the launch of the latest “State of the Nation” report from Tech Nation, the UK’s network for ambitious tech-based entrepreneurs. Yet again, there were some fascinating statistics including about the situation here in Wales with the report showing that there are currently 3,605 Welsh digital tech firms employing 45,000 people and having a total turnover of over £1 billion. However, the emphasis this year was not to look inward but to examine the performance of the UK tech economy on the global stage and how our innovative companies, entrepreneurial communities and ground-breaking technologies are making an impact across the world.  And rather focusing on start-up firms that usually are at the core of most research studies into the tech sector, the report focuses on those high growth scale-up firms which currently account for 80 per cent of the £6.3bn of tech investment into UK firms in 201...