Looking back over the last three decades, I count myself lucky to have been involved in a range of activities to develop and support entrepreneurship and small businesses here in Wales.
Back in 1996, I became the first ever professor of entrepreneurship in Welsh higher education when I was awarded a chair at the then University of Glamorgan. Working with an amazing group of people, we created several new important projects including the first ever Welsh programme for female entrepreneurship and the first postgraduate qualification in entrepreneurial practice.
We were also involved in developing several strategic interventions to boost the Welsh economy with the most important of these was the creation of the Entrepreneurship Action Plan for Wales. This was the first regional enterprise strategy in the World and the precursor to the thousands of enterprise ecosystems we now see flourishing in every economy.
