Entrepreneurship Continues to Recover Globally, Report Finds

One of the few surveys based on the international collection of primary data on individual entrepreneurial activities, the sixteenth annual Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) report was released earlier this month at the annual GEM meeting in Monterrey, Mexico. Across 73 economies representing 72.4 percent of the world’s population and 90 percent of the world’s GDP, more than 206,000 individuals were surveyed for the 2014 report. The sheer scope and size of the report leads to many findings regarding the current state of global entrepreneurship, including:

• Early stage entrepreneurs in North America have the most optimistic expectations of high growth in job creation, while Latin American and Caribbean economies have the lowest expectations.
• The most active age group for early stage entrepreneurs is 25 and 35 years old, and the economies with the most balanced participation around age groups is in North America.
• Although early stage entrepreneurial activity is mostly performed by men, there are no differences in individual attributes (e.g., perceived opportunities, perceived capabilities) across gender. Only in expressing fear of failure is there a slightly higher presence of women than men, while women also are more likely to start a business venture out of necessity than men.
• The highest levels of early stage entrepreneurship are found in African economies (namely Cameroon, Uganda, and Botswana), while Japan and Italy have the lowest share of early stage entrepreneurs among their respective adult populations.
• Throughout the world, entrepreneurial employee activity is scarcer than early stage entrepreneurship, though this difference is the highest in African, Latin American, and Caribbean economies.