Entrepreneurship policy development : New Zealand in comparison

This paper first examines the impact of entrepreneurship research on policy development in 20 countries of the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor project. Curiously, despite its entrepreneurial endowments, the impact on New Zealand falls behind other countries. For a deeper insight, the paper then compares entrepreneurship and innovation policies in New Zealand and Sinaloa, Mexico. New Zealand has a robust innovation policy yet places little emphasis on the needs of actual individual entrepreneurs and their decision to choose self-employment. In Sinaloa, the emphasis is on creating more and better entrepreneurs, but there is no innovation policy. Both sides have something to learn from the other.

A measurement framework for international entrepreneurship policy research : from impossible index to malleable matrix

The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM), a multifaceted, multinational research programme now in its seventh year of field operation, currently dominates the field of international entrepreneurship policy research but faces a crisis of credibility. Despite having created and continuing to develop a very rich database capable of addressing many of the complexities requisite for understanding entrepreneurship at the national and international levels of analysis, GEM has chosen to disguise the depths of its potential research and policy utility through a misnamed quest for unobtainable simplicity at the centre of the project and a disorganised variety of report presentations at the periphery. Subsequent to a review of the entrepreneurial definitional literature and a resolution of its many themes into six components of entrepreneurial activity, based on Penrose's (1959/1995) articulation of the practical meaning of 'entrepreneurial services', this paper suggests that a 'malleable matrix' approach can provide a practical measurement framework capable of reporting national entrepreneurial activity in a structure that is comprehensive without being overwhelming.

Policy drivers of international entrepreneurship in Europe

The diversity of countries and cultures in Europe necessitates an international outlook for most businesses. This paper examines the internationalisation of business in Europe through a literature review on international entrepreneurship theory. The role of the individual business owner and of business and interorganisational activity in facilitating the internationalisation of businesses in Europe is discussed by utilising the theoretical framework of international entrepreneurship and by putting forward three main propositions. The main aim and intent of this paper is to understand how the policies of individual governments and institutions such as the European Union help businesses in Europe to internationalise, with particular emphasis on businesses in the Baltic region. The paper discusses policy implications and suggestions for future research, which highlight the importance for firms in Europe of focussing on international markets.

GEM New Zealand's different approach

At 13.9% of the adult population, New Zealand's ''Total Early-Stage Entrepreneurial Activity'' is highest amongst developed countries. This benchmark uses the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) methodology. New Zealand has a high level of opportunity entrepreneurship and a moderate level of necessity entrepreneurship. New Zealand's entrepreneurial firms contribute about half of all new jobs created annually. Informal investment is a more important source of financing to entrepreneurs than venture capital. The proportion of female entrepreneurs has slipped over the past three years. Maori are more entrepreneurial than the rest of population. The study argues that New Zealand has an excellent innovation policy but no entrepreneurship policy.

The relationship between innovation and entrepreneurship : easy definition, hard policy

The paper argues that innovation is the combination of an inventive process and an entrepreneurial process to create new economic value for defined stakeholders and focuses on the policy implications of this duality. Attention is concentrated on summarising the entrepreneurial process and its importance to innovation policy and avoids any detailed elaboration of the invention process. A very brief overview of the invention process is followed by a moderately detailed summary of Hindle's (2008) model of entrepreneurial process. With an understanding and formal articulation of entrepreneurial process it becomes possible to focus on the key issues that ought to inform the development of innovation policy. These key issues are discussed and the paper concludes where it began by emphasising the need to build innovation policy on the explicit recognition that innovation results from the blending of two processes, invention and entrepreneurship, and that viable innovation policy can never be created unless entrepreneurial process is properly understood and addressed.

Encouraging high expectation entrepreneurship : the implications of Australian policy practices

Recent studies have shown the important roles that new high growth firms can play in job creation and economic development. This paper reviews the positioning of present Australian government policies and programs that intend to be supportive of the development of more high growth businesses; that is those that employ greater than twenty persons. The research explores the environments of a group of new high growth Australian firms and the roles that the various identified government support initiatives have played in their development. The paper also draws on recent research on survival and growth patterns of spin-off companies generated by publicly funded research agencies to map the government support initiatives with the different stages of the high growth business life cycle. The paper reviews issues in the Australian business environment that may have affected the rate of generation of new high growth firms. Of particular relevance has been the progressive freeing up of the Australian labour market and a greater resource allocation to research commercialisation by publicly funded research providers. The analysis has finally separately considered how to produce and support more founders of such high growth firms, their future chief executive officers, the specialist consultants and other professional support people and issues related to access to finance that such firms will need. The research findings draw attention to the important role of government financial support for industry research, particularly at the point where the first product is in the market and resources are scarce. At this point support is vital both to increase the market penetration of the core product and for R&D for product customisation and increasing the product range.

Entrepreneurship : industry policy priorities and entrepreneurial education in Australia

Four fields of national policy - general economic policy, industry policy, education policy and specific research and development policy - are strongly interrelated. Unfortunately, in Australia, policy makers in the four fields have not recognized that the discipline of Entrepreneurship - with its emphasis on managing the innovation process - holds the key to effective co-ordination between the four vital policy areas. The paper argues that innovation strategy, not cost reduction or research expenditure, is the key to developing successful, export-oriented products and world competitiveness. Viable innovation strategy depends on the relationship between government, capital availability, development capital and industrial developers. In turn, this relationship requires a cadre of entrepreneurial business managers educated not in the 'traditional' MBA mainstream but in the discipline of Entrepreneurship, specifically focused on learning the practical skills involved in venture evaluation and management of the innovation process. The paper concludes by describing the philosophy and performance of Swinburne University of Technology's School of Innovation and Enterprise, a school at the forefront of entrepreneurial education in Australia and thus a school with important implications for the nation's industry policy priorities.

The entrepreneurial arts leader : cultural policy, change and reinvention

"The Entrepreneurial Arts Leader is grounded in an understanding of cultural policy, management, art history, entrepreneurship and creativity, and is cross-disciplinary. It features a comprehensive bibliography and models of entrepreneurial arts leaders, and will be of seminal importance to arts managers, administrators, cultural policy makers and students."--BOOK JACKET

The new arts leader: the Australia Council and cultural policy change

One consequence of the development of cultural policy has been a demand for more creative leadership in arts organisations. This article provides a case study of how leadership of the Australia Council changed from the 1970s to the beginning of the 21st century. It argues that changes to the way in which Australia Council chairs approached their role was shaped by, and contributed to, the trend towards constructing the arts as an industry. Part of this change sees the Australia Council subjected to aspects of reform, which were widely endorsed by the Australian public sector. The article identifies three styles of leadership exhibited by the chairs over the period: visionary, statesman and reformer, in three phases of the Council's history. It examines the political and social imperatives shaping these leadership styles.

From what we know to how we use it : five principles for turning entrepreneurship research and practitioner action guidelines

This and the companion paper that follows owe their existence to a paper presented by Kevin Hindle at the AGSE Regional Entrepreneurship and Innovation Research Exchange in February 2004. In his paper, Hindle (2004) argued passionately that entrepreneurship researchers must ensure that the best of their hardwon wisdom does not find its beginning motivation and final resting place in the pages of arcane journals that practitioners never read. He suggested that if every entrepreneurship researcher committed, say once every two years, to write a "how to" article it would significantly enhance the status of the research community in the eyes of practising entrepreneurs and those who provide support and services to them.

The argument was well-received, particularly by two people in the audience, Robert Anderson, the managing editor of the Journal of Small Business and Entrepreneurship, the journal of the Canadian Council for Small Business and Entrepreneurship/Conseil Canadien des PME et de l'entrepreneuriat (CCSBE/ CCPME), and Brian Gibson, the editor of Small Enterprise Research, the journal of the Small Enterprise Association of Australia and New Zealand (SEAANZ). For both editors, Hindle's argument was a familiar one. The membership of CCSBE/CCPME and SEAANZ consists of academic researchers, educators, government employees in both policy and program areas, and those offering support and services to entrepreneurs and the managers of small enterprises. In both organizations, there is a general consensus that the needs of "academics" are well met, but not so the needs of the non-academic constituents.

Exploring the relationship between media coverage and participation in entrepreneurship : initial global evidence and research implications

Using a set of variables measured in the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) study, our empirical investigation explored the influence of mass media through national culture on national entrepreneurial participation rates in 37 countries over 4 years (2000 to 2003). We found that stories about successful entrepreneurs, conveyed in mass media, were not significantly associated with the rate of nascent (opportunity searching) or the rate of actual (business activities commenced up to 3 months old) start-up activity, but that there was a significant positive association between the volume of entrepreneurship media stories and a nation’s volume of people running a young business (that is in GEM terminology, a business aged greater than 3 but less than 42 months old). More particularly, such stories had strong positive association with opportunity oriented operators of young businesses. Together, these findings are compatible with what in the mass communications theory literature may be called the ‘reinforcement model’. This argues that mass media are only capable of reinforcing their audience’s existing values and choice propensities but are not capable of shaping or changing those values and choices. In the area covered by this paper, policy-makers are committing public resources to media campaigns of doubtful utility in the absence of an evidence base. A main implication drawn from this study is the need for further and more sophisticated investigation into the relationship between media coverage of entrepreneurship, national culture and the rates and nature of people’s participation in the various stages of the entrepreneurial process.

Understanding success in indigenous entrepreneurship : an exploratory investigation

In Canada there are numerous studies about indigenous Entrepreneurship, most descriptive with little theory development or testing, This leaves a gap in the information available to researchers, policy makers and practitioners. In this paper we describe a research program intended to address this gap beginning with the activities of the Lac La Ronge Indian Band, considered an exemplar of successful indigenous entrepreneurship. From these activities, we draw propositions about indigenous entrepreneurship that are compatible with generic theory. Finally, we describe how we will move from these propositions to a model of indigenous entrepreneurship using grounded theory and structural equation modelling.