BizResearch

The Global Entrepreneurship Index

Volume 5, Issue 5:
The Global Entrepreneurship Index (GEINDEX),              
by Zoltán J. Ács (George Mason University and Max Planck Institute) and László Szerb (University of Pécs) 

Abstract

This paper constructs a Global Entrepreneurship Index (GEINDEX) that captures the contextual feature of entrepreneurship across countries. We find the relationship between entrepreneurship and economic development to be mildly S-shaped not U-shaped or L-shaped. Our findings suggest moving away from simple measures of entrepreneurship across countries illustrating a U-shaped or L-shaped relationship to more complex measures, which are positively related to economic development. Implications for public policy suggest that institutions need to be strengthened before entrepreneurial resource can be deployed to drive innovation.

To read this go to:
Portal> Library Serices> A-Z list of Databases> Foundations and Trends.
Or click on this link if you are logged into Portal and are a member of staff, student or Faculty at the London Business School

Anatomy of an Entrepreneur

The Anatomy of an Entrepreneur, a newly released study from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, seeks to provide an understanding of how entrepreneurs develop, the circumstances that can foster or induce entrepreneurship, and insight into the mindset and beliefs of entrepreneurs.  The paper aims to fill in some of the existing information gaps in this area by providing high-level insights into the backgrounds (socio-economic, educational, and familial) and motivations of entrepreneurs. This is a follow-up to several research projects by the Global Engineering and Entrepreneurship project at Duke University, which has been researching the effect of globalization on the engineering profession and on U.S. competitiveness.

For this project, 549 company founders were surveyed from a variety of industries, including aerospace and defence, computer and electronics, health care, and services. Founders were asked a series of detailed questions about their backgrounds, motivations, and experiences in launching companies.

Selected findings:

• 74.8% of respondents indicated desire to build wealth as an important motivation in becoming an entrepreneur. This factor was rated as important by 82.1% of respondents who grew up in “lower-upper-class” families.

• 64.2 % of respondents said they have always wanted to own their own companies. This was a stronger factor for those from lower-upper-class backgrounds—78.6% ranked this as important.

• The average and median age of company founders in the sample when they started their current companies was 40.

• 71.5% of respondents came from middle-class backgrounds (34.6%upper-middle class and 36.9% lower-middle class). Additionally, 21.8% said they came from upper-lower-class families (blue-collar workers in some form of manual labour).

The full report can be downloaded from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation website

Photo from Creative Commons: Flickr: SkyWhisperer

Need a business plan for a microbrewery or online consultancy?

Business Reference is a US site that provides a range of business plans: from detective agency and dog kennel to PR firm and video production company.

The plans are composed of actual business plans written by entrepreneurs in North America who are seeking financing for their business.

The site also includes:

Encyclopedia of Small Business
Encyclopedia of Business
Business Biographies
Business Plans
Encyclopedia of American Industries
Encyclopedia of Management
Company Histories
Company Histories Part 2
Leading American Businesses

End.

Picture:Flickr:Creative Commons: Busb

How to start up a business from home

Book: 'Spare Room Start Up: How to start a business from home'

By Emma Jones

Founder of  EnterpriseNation Emma reveals her secrets for home business success, being ones own boss and still having the lifestyle you choose!

Date/Time: Wednesday 28th May 2008 at 6.30pm

Location: In store Waterstones, 82 Gower Street, London, WC1E 6EQ

Entry: Free. If you have a chance you can pick up a free ticket in advance from our ground floor customer service desk or call us.

For further details contact: Tel-020 7636 1577

Website: www.waterstones.com

Picture: Creative Commons: Flickr: danny angus

Kauffman Index of Entrepreneurial Activity

The Kauffman Foundation has just released its latest Index of Entrepreneurial Activity. The index is the result of an annual study that looks at new business creation across the United States.  Data is taken from the Current Population Survey (CPS) which allows for comparisons of the percentage of the adult, non-business-owner population that starts a business over time. In addition to this overall rate of entrepreneurial activity, separate estimates for specific demographic groups, states and metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) are also presented. This Index provides the only national measure of business creation by specific demographic groups. The entrepreneurial activity rate has remained fairly consistent over the past decade, but this year results reveal some important shifts in the demographic and geographic composition of new entrepreneurs across the country. Key findings include:

• Men are now twice as more likely to start up a new business than women. The entrepreneurial activity rate for men has increased from 0.35% in 2006 to 0.41% in 2007. In contrast, activity rates for women have fallen from 0.23% to 20%.
• The construction industry has the highest entrepreneurial activity rate in 2007, followed by  the services industry.
• Non-Latino white and African-American business creation rates increased slightly from the previous year whilst Asian entrepreneurship rates declined.
• The immigrant entrepreneurial activity rate has increased from 0.37% in 2006 to 0.46% in 2007.

The report is available in full from the Kauffman Foundation website (PDF)

Entrepreneurship research in Europe

Entrepreneurship research has gained prominence over the past decade and in light of this, the latest issue of Entrepreneurship theory & practice (Vol 32:2) presents a special issue on the current state of entrepreneurship research in Europe. Researchers from France, Germany, the United Kingdom and Scandinavia, provide an up-to-date account of the entrepreneurship research scene in their respective countries. Two articles from US authors look at the differences in how entrepreneurship scholars measure the phenomenon and assess the European approach(es). The idea behind this special issue is to draw attention to the context in which entrepreneurship research takes place. This reflects the recent debate in entrepreneurship research, in which scholars are increasingly recognizing the societal dimension and facets to entrepreneurship and its study.

The latest issue of Entrepreneurship theory & practice can be found in the journals collection located in the library basement.

Alternatively, current staff, students and faculty can use Article Finder (available via Portal) to find out which of our databases provides full-text access to this journal.

Photograph from Creative Commons: Fire of the Mind

The world's 50 most innovative companies - March issue of Fast company

The fast 50

The world's most innovative companies  - Why Alibaba and Nike are in the top 10 and does Apple beat Facebook?

To find out who makes the list and read moe about them look at he March 2008 issue of  Fast Company. The magazine is on display in the Current Awareness Zone of the library. The full text of the magazine can be found in Business Source Complete and Facitva - but only as the less attractive HTML .

Fast Company is a monthly US magazine or go to the web: http://www.fastcompany.com/

".. uncovering best and "next" practices, the magazine helps a new breed of leader work smarter and more effectively."

Picture; Creative Commons: Flickr: spike55151

Inspiring entrepreneurs - a talk at the British Library

Mothers of invention 3 - Celebrating International Women's Month 2008

The latest in the series of 'Inspiring Entrepreneurs' events on Monday 17 March 2008 from 18.15 to 20.00, followed by a networking reception until 21.00 at the British Library, 96 Euston Road, London, NW1 2DB.

For information and to book - click here.

Interested in the role of women in Business: try BestoBiz  (Portal Library >A-Z list of Databases).

The current awareness briefings include: Women at the top and  Women as corporate leaders

Picture: Filckr: Creative Commons: By Larry He's So Fine / Malcolm

Business creation in the US: panel study of entrepreneurial dynamics II initial assessment

The Panel Study of Entrepreneurial Dynamics (PSED) is a research program run by the University of Michigan. The main aim of the study is provide valid and reliable data on the process of business formation. PSED I began in 1998-2000 and PSED II in 2005-2006. The latest issue of Foundations and trends in entrepreneurship (Vol 4:3) discusses the findings of PSED II. The results suggest that personal attributes, motivations and contexts seem to have minimal effect on the success of a new firm; whereas prior experience and having an appropriate strategy in place are critical factors in successful completion of a new firm birth. These findings have substantial implications for policy makers who wish to improve the capacity of the US entrepreneurial sector in order to confront global competitive threats with a steady flow of new and innovative firms.

Foundations and Trends can be found on the A-Z list of library databases in the library area of the Portal. It is available to available to current staff, students and faculty of the London Business School.

Picture from Creative Commons: Flickr: Grendelkhan

The Future of Innovation

Richard Watson - The Future of Innovation

Richard Watson, CEO of Global Innovation Network and author of Future Files: A History of the Next 50 Years, explores the latest news on innovation. Which tools and processes are working and why? Which new innovations and ideas will change the world and why? Get expert insights on all this and more from his blog.

1. Rhythm & Balance
The speeding up of more or less everything, caused (some say) by everything from technology to globalization, is making some people feel uneasy. One consequence is an aspiration to slow things down a little. Some people are actively trying to regain control……read blog for full entry

2. Karma Capitalism
The old capitalist model was red in tooth and claw. It was shareholder driven and its motivation was money. This model was refined in the caring sharing nineties to include stakeholder concerns and is now being reinterpreted once again to include a much broader awareness of societal impacts at both a local and international level. For example, companies are starting to move away from the idea that they are money machines reacting to the market and…read blog for full entry

3. Making things
Make magazine is a ‘how to’ magazine that was launched in 2005. The publication is devoted to making things with your hands. It is also about how to hack technology and combine low-tech and no-tech with high-tech. Stories have included features on knitting, recycling plastic bags into fabric and DIY coffee roasting. So why is it successful and what on earth is going on? The answer….read blog for full entry

4. Something for nothing
In the future you will still have to sing for your supper but at least some of the lunches will be free. One of the emerging business models in the closing half of 2007 was giving stuff away…read blog for full entry

5. Industrial provenance
The more the world becomes globalized and homogenized, the more people will worry about cultural identity (i.e. where they come from). This is partly a reaction to US immigration and the rise of the European super-state but there is also a genuine worry about where products and ingredients come from and in particular the quality of products being produced by nations like China. Food provenance and traceability are well-established trends but ….read blog for full entry

6. Robotics
According to Bill Gates, robotics is the next big thing. But why hasn’t robotics taken off before? The answer is that many of the basic tasks required of the ideal all-round robot still can’t be done or cost too much to do. For example, orientation and the visual recognition of objects are still very tricky and getting a robot to tell the difference between an open door and an open window is practically impossible. Thus, until robots can quickly sense and react to their environment they will not become ubiquitous and uses will be limited. However, this is all about to change.…read blog for full entry

7. Data visualization
When IBM launched its PC back in 1981 it had no graphic capability whatsoever. These days we all seem to relate best to information when it’s delivered in short snack-sized sound-bites or when it’s a picture that replaces a thousand words. One of the key challenges for the twenty-first century will be how to cope with the almost infinite amount of information that will be produced. According to Nobel Prize-winning physicist Murray Gell-Mann, one of the most valuable skills in the future will…read blog for full entry

8. Reality mining
Mining data isn’t new but it’s becoming more universal and interesting because software to filter or analyse large volumes of data is becoming increasingly ubiquitous and powerful. For example, around 2,000 résumés per day are sent to Fortune 500 companies in the US, with around 90% sent in by email or via company websites. As a result, companies are using word-scanning software to decide who’s worth seeing and who isn’t. Equally, Centrelink - Australia’s benefits agency - uses what it calls a Job Seekers’ Classification Instrument to work out the probability that a claimant will become long-term unemployed and adjusts the help that’s made available to the claimant. Both are forms of prediction.
The upside of this predictive analysis is…read blog for full entry.

9. Eco-exhaustion
Are you getting hot and bothered about global warming? Does a cup of carbon-neutral cappuccino or a packet of environmentally friendly potato chips make you go enviro-mental? If so you could be suffering from environmental cynicism or eco-exhaustion. In short, people are getting fed up with being told how to behave, especially from hypocritical and holier than thou politicians and celebrities that are driving a Toyota Prius one minute and stepping onto a private jet the next. None of this is to say that acting on behalf of the environment is a bad thing. It’s simply that in a great many instances this newly found environmental consciousness is…read blog for full entry

10. Fantasy & escape
People can’t deal with too much reality. As people’s lives speed up (thanks to technology and connectedness) and become more pressured (thanks to increasing expectations and less security in everything from relationships to employment) people become anxious. Add the threat of terrorism or rising interest rates (or a US recession) and people can get very anxious indeed. One solution to this anxiety is...read blog for full entry

Picture: Creative Commons, sourced from Flickr: Wonderlane.com

Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) report 2007

The ninth annual Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) report has just been released. GEM is a consortium of national teams, participating in the Global Entrepreneurship Research Association. This includes researchers from Babson College, London Business School and a university team for each participating country. The report currently includes 42 countries and is the world’s largest research project dedicated to global entrepreneurial activity and its affect on national economic growth. The results of GEM data analysis are used as a key benchmarking indicator by a number of regional, national and supranational authorities around the world.

 

To read the report in full click here

Global Ideas Bank

 The Global Ideas Bank is a non-profit website dedicated to encouraging individuals to share their creative ideas and social inventions for social change. This fascinating website at present contains nearly 4000 ideas. GIB’s mission is "To promote and disseminate good creative ideas to improve society. It further aims to encourage the public to generate these ideas, to participate in the problem-solving process. These ideas we term social inventions: non-technological, non-product, non-gadget ideas for social change.” The site acts as a virtual suggestion box, with hundreds of ideas being submitted each month from around the world. Over 160,000 visitors have voted on the site, allowing the best suggestions to rise to the top democratically. Ideas cover a range of areas, from a nutrient recycling soil saving program to the slightly more unusal ones including the use of pigs to root for land mines.

The Independent's Social Entrepreneur of the Year award

This week saw the founder of Belu Water, a bottled water company that donates all of its profits to clean water projects around the world, win the 2007 Independent's Social Entrepreneur of the Year award. The awards were run in partnership with the business consulting firm the Boston Consulting Group and the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship, who also operate a similar awards scheme covering 40 countries.

Belu Water beat off competition from six finalists including the Eden Project and MEND, an obesity treatment programme. The company use carbon-neutral packaging in the form of compostable bottles which are made from corn and can be recycled with plastics or commercially composted back to soil in just eight weeks. These bottles will be the first carbon-neutral product to be stocked at Tesco. Among its clean water projects, Belu has installed hand pumps and wells for 20,000 people in India and Mali. It is also currently working on a ‘rubbish muncher’ to clean up the Thames.

 

To read the full story click here

45 social entrepreneurs who are changing the world

For the last five years Fast company magazine and global consulting firm Monitor Group have presented the Social Capitalist Awards to celebrate ‘world-changing nonprofits’. The Social Capitalist Award is the only award  program that quantitatively measures non-profit organizations on their innovation and social impact, as well as the viability and sustainability of its business model. The 2008 results are in the December/January 2008 issue, with expanded profiles and web exclusive interviews available from the magazine’s website. This year, for the first time for-profit companies were also included. Using the same assessment criteria, companies that could show that social good was placed ahead of shareholder returns were considered,10 out of 31 companies were included.

The latest issue of Fast company can be found on the magazine stand located on the first floor of the library.