Professor Dylan Jones-Evans

BSc Hons, MSc, PhD, Docent (Entrepreneurship) FRSA MIOD

Dylan is Director of Enterprise and Innovation at the University of Wales, and adjunct professor of entrepreneurship at the Turku School of Economics in Finland.

Having previously worked as a research fellow at Durham University and University College Dublin, he was appointed, at the age of 29, as the youngest professor of business and management in Europe, holding the chair of entrepreneurship and small business management at the University of Glamorgan.

He subsequently held academic chairs at the University of Wales Bangor and NEWI (now Glyndwr University) in Wrexham. . Dylan has also worked as Deputy Director of the Centre for Advanced Studies at Cardiff University and during 2005-2008, was director of the National Entrepreneurship Observatory for Wales. He is currently on the Welsh board of the Institute of Directors in Wales, has recently chaired the Welsh Conservatives Economic Commission and serves on the Business Advisory Panel for the Secretary of State for Wales.

He is an elected member of the Research, Innovation and Engagement Committee of the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales and recently acted as chairman of the International Assessment Panel for the Irish Research Council for theHumanitiesand Social Sciences. For seven years, Dylan acted as founding chairman of Outlook Expeditions, one of the most successful university spinouts in Wales, and was director of Finance Wales, the Wales Management Council and the Business Connect Management Board. He was also Chairman of Community Enterprise Wales.

He has developed and managed over £40 million of development projects to benefit Welsh universities, including the Management Development Centre at Bangor University and the Prince of Wales Innovation Scholarship scheme. His academic research has focused on entrepreneurship, innovation and small business development, especially growth businesses, enterprise education and development of world-class small firms, and he has attracted grants from a range of bodies, including the ESRC, the Leverhulme Trust, the European Commission and NESTA.

He has published over one hundred academic articles within refereed journals, academic books and international conferences and is the co-author of the best-selling textbook ‘Enterprise and Small Business’, to be published by the Financial Times in its third edition in 2012. He is also a regular contributor to the Welsh media and writes a weekly column for the Western Mail and the Daily Post.

Email: fastgrowth50@wales.ac.uk