Dylan Jones-Evans

Professor Dylan Jones-Evans OBE is the co-founder of IDEAS which is responsible for the UK Start-Up Awards, the UK Fast Growth Fifty index, the Great British Entrepreneur Awards and Ideas Fest. He is currently developing the biggest private-owned entrepreneurship in the UK.

A passionate advocate for start-up and scale-up businesses, he was appointed as the first professor of entrepreneurship in Wales in 1996 and has held senior posts in several universities. He is currently visiting professor at Turku University in Finland and Aston University in the UK.

He has published over 100 academic articles within refereed journals, academic books and conference proceedings, focusing on technology entrepreneurship, university-industry relationships and finance for small firms. Along with Professor Sara Carter, he is author of the best-selling textbook ‘Enterprise and Small Business’. He has also developed over £60 million of research and development projects that have focused on enterprise, innovation and regional development.

He is an investor in several businesses and is currently is chairman of Town Square - the fastest growing coworking business in the UK - and Bionema - an exciting agritech business. He has also served as a board member at Finance Wales, Prime Cymru, Welsh ICE, Port Talbot Enterprise Zone, the Institute of Welsh Affairs and the IOD.

He has worked as a consultant for the OECD, EU and other economic development bodies globally and was Vice President for the European Council of Small Business. He has been special adviser to the House Of Commons Select Committee on Welsh Affairs and served on the Business Advisory Panel for Wales Office.

He was also responsible for the creation of a new Development Bank for Wales for the Welsh Government and was a member of the BeTheSpark panel guiding entrepreneurship policy in Wales in partnership with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

He is currently a member of the judging panel for the King’s Award for Enterprise focusing on innovation, is a regular commentator for the BBC on economics and business and writes a weekly business column in the Western Mail and the Daily Post.

Dylan was responsible for securing a star for Richard Burton on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and was awarded an OBE in the 2013 Queen's Birthday Honours list.