Hunter Centre professor co-authors World Economic Forum report

The World Economic Forum has just released a report on entrepreneurship co-authored by Jonathan Levie, professor in the Hunter Centre for Entrepreneurship. The report, entitled "Leveraging Entrepreneurial Ambition and Innovation: A Global Perspective on Entrepreneurship, Competitiveness and Development" was produced jointly by a Global Entrepreneurship Monitor team of professors from Strathclyde, Aston Business School, Universidad del Desarrollo, Chile and Babson College, US, working with a senior team from the Investor Industries group at the World Economic Forum and Endeavor, the organisation that promotes high-impact entrepreneurship in emerging markets around the world.

The report shows that early-stage entrepreneurial activity is higher in economies that are less competitive and lower in highly competitive economies. Conversely, the proportion of ambitious and innovative entrepreneurs is more frequently high in more competitive economies. In many highly competitive economies with low rates of business starts, entrepreneurial drive manifests itself through more formalised structures – in what the report calls “entrepreneurial employee activity” – which the report suggests should caution anyone from jumping to quick conclusions about the quality of entrepreneurial ecosystems based on entrepreneurship rates alone.

Professor Levie, who is a co-director of GEM UK and recently project-managed a large grant to GEM from the European Commission, commented, "This is the first time that Global Entrepreneurship Monitor and the World Economic Forum have collaborated on a research report. Coming on top of recent "Missing Entrepreneurs" annual reviews and Policy Briefs from the OECD and the European Commission, which drew heavily on GEM data, this demonstrates the traction that GEM is now getting as an authoritative source of information on entrepreneurship around the world."

The WEF report can be downloaded here while the OECD/European Commission reports are available free here.