Dr Liu, together with Dr Geoff Parkes from Aston University, is the winner of the Best Developmental Paper Award 2016.

The award was presented for the pair’s paper, “Let’s Put the Person Back into Entrepreneurship Research: A study of entrepreneurs’ personality and innovations”, which looks at entrepreneurs’ personality traits as the predictors of innovative inclination of SMEs.

Dr Liu said: “I was honoured and humbled to receive this award.  Whilst entrepreneurship has been viewed as a key factor driving the innovative orientation for many small firms’ existence and survival, ‘individual’ entrepreneur into the SME innovation study remains largely under-explored.  Today, SME owners, financial institutions and organisations involved in the allocation of Government support to small firms, this research intends to provide a methodology which enables the identification of entrepreneurs with a propensity to innovate.”