My career in entrepreneurship development began, almost accidentally, when in the concluding chapter of my PhD I recommended that Business Schools should take enterprise and new venture creation seriously if they were to be relevant to society. This was in 1987.

Since then it has been a pioneering journey at a number of Universities where my courses FOR entrepreneurship rather than ABOUT entrepreneurship have taken root. These include Cambridge, Reading, Cranfield and several other institutions, having established entrepreneurship centres at Nottingham Business School, Cambridge Judge Business School and most recently been Director of the Bettany Centre for Entrepreneurship at Cranfield.

The focus of my work is to enable managers and owners of science and technology enabled businesses to unlock hidden value in their ideas, turn them into business proposals and have the confidence and self-belief to take their ideas forward, whether this is for start-ups, scale-ups or established businesses. Over the career I have had the good fortune to advice and mentor hundreds of entrepreneurs, their teams and support business readiness for growth and scale up. I continue to do this and enjoy seeing the impact in a very direct way.

Happily, my work, informed by extensive research and consulting activity has enabled me to provide advice to policy makers, heads of institutions and advisory agencies.  My curiosity in this field has led to conducting research, publications and books that are appropriate to a deeper understanding of mindsets, skills and knowledge and personal goals of entrepreneurs.

My career takes the shape of an educator, mentor, connector and also being an entrepreneur and business angel. In essence being a pracademic!

A recent and exciting affiliation I have is as Associate of the Senior Common Room at Kings College Cambridge. Hence the picture. I have joined as a judge of the business plan competition and mentor young entrepreneurs.  I have many additional affiliations which are listed elsewhere, but one which should also be mentioned here is that of being a Trustee of The Gen-Initiative which supports income generation and bottom-up community development in India