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

Comments

[susan01]

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Margaret

http://businesseshome.net