Register at: https://www.wyeside.co.uk/community-events-1/leadership-or-entrepreneurship
Dyniaethau a'r Gwyddorau Cymdeithasol - Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
SpeakerDr Louisa Huxtable-Thomas
Speaker's BiographyLouisa is an Associate Professor in the School of Management and leads on engagement and impact, as well as coordinating our Executive Education provision. Combining theories and empirical knowledge gleaned from the fields of business, social science, education and psychology, Louisa’s research interests relate to how people’s behaviours, either as leaders, entrepreneurs or policy makers have an influence on societal and economic welfare.Louisa had a varied early career encompassing work in environmental consultancy, policy making at Regional and Local Government level as well as business support and incubation. Louisa’s doctoral research brought all of this prior knowledge together and identified the ways in which businesses can successfully participate in environmental policy making. After completing her PhD in 2009, Louisa’s research interest increasingly moved towards business and management, rather than environmental policy, but always in parallel to practical projects that worked directly to assist the economy of Wales. Louisa has played a key role supporting businesses through projects such as incubation, innovation and commercialisation as well as early stage R&D. Not limiting herself to the field of entrepreneurship, Louisa has also worked with academics in fields as diverse as healthcare, e-marketing, education, low carbon energy, information systems, manufacturing and tourism. Most recently she has been working with renowned colleague Professor Paul Hannon to deliver a programme of entrepreneurial leadership development to senior managers of Malaysian Universities.
From: 6 Dec 2022, 2:30 p.m.This lecture is based on Louisa’s own research, undertaken with business owners in Wales, as well as her own experience of living in mid-Wales and having friends and family that are local, rural, business owners. The lecture starts by applying a critical eye to the words entrepreneurship and leadership and questions whether the definitions that are used by the mainstream media are helpful in inspiring current and future generations of business owners and job creators. One of the other big questions of definition that Louisa is grappling with is the definition of a ‘small or medium sized enterprise’. SMEs are the focus of so much funding, support and policy, and Louisa wants to discuss with the audience whether this is the right way of doing things.