Wales is slowly becoming more entrepreurial but still needs to do more to create a sure-fire enterprise culture, a new report has concluded.

In April, the number of new Welsh business start-ups had been put at 30% behind the UK average - researchers also said they lacked creative thinking.

But new data from Global Entrepreneurship Monitor suggests 3.7% more of the population have become entrepreneurs in the last two years.

Enterprise activity

6% of people involved in enterprise Wales 26th of 31 enterprising nations Few firms want more than 50 staff 'Business angel' activity just 0.2% 8.8% of men are entrepreneurs Source: GEM 2001 & UW Bangor

Yet the survey also found Wales is still lagging behind, at 26th of 31 nations worldwide in entrepreneurial activity.

The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor brings leading international enterprise scholars together to explore entrepreneurship and economic growth.

Welsh research was led by Professor Dylan Jones-Evans from University of Wales, Bangor, and Professor David Brooksbank from University of Glamorgan.

It was at Prof Brooksbank's campus in April that Glamorgan's business school analysts called for the creation of a Welsh competition centre to stop the Welsh economy from languishing at the foot of Europe's competition league.

They told business-creation evangelists at a key entrepreneurship conference in Newport that Wales was still slow to create start-up companies, and that existing businesses were woefully reluctant to sell abroad using e-commerce.

• But the new report shows 6% of Welsh people are either starting their own companies or already running a small firm - 3.7% more than in 2000 and more than in Scotland.

• 3.1% of those were involved in start-ups - up from just 1% in 2000, but ranking Wales 28th of 31 countries.

• Few Welsh firms have ambitions to grow beyond 50 employees in the next five years.

• Only 11% of the Welsh adult population believe that there are good opportunities to start a business during the next six months.

The findings have worried researchers, who have called for a radically more enterprising business culture in which individuals are not scared to take risks in order to start up their own companies.

Prof Jones-Evans said: "Only 28% of adults in Wales believe that they have the knowledge, skills and experience to start and business - considerably less than other countries in the study.

"The key issue of relevant enterprise education and training [for younger people] is something that organisations such as ELWa need to address as a matter of urgency."

'Right track'

The authors claim "support agencies" have made too little use of academic experts to develop entrepreneurship.

It was unclear whether that was a swipe at the Welsh Development Agency.

Economic Development Minister Andrew Davies issued a statement in which he said the Welsh Assembly was addressing the issues raised in the report.

He said he took the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor findings to mean Wales was "on the right track".

The primary data for the study of Wales was collected from an adult population survey of 2015 individuals, together with 36 interviews with Welsh experts on entrepreneurship.