News

DCU Business School academic co-authors Entrepreneurship Report

Colm O'Gorman, Professor of Entrepreneurship, DCU Business School and co-author Paula Fitzsimons, National GEM Co-ordinator, have published the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) Report for Ireland for 2011. The report was launched by Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, Richard Bruton T.D. and Kathleen Lynch TD, Minister for Disability, Equality, Mental Health & Older People.

The report reveals that more people started new businesses in 2011 than in the previous year. It estimates that approximately 2,200 people set up a new business each month during 2011, with almost three quarters of these entrepreneurs expecting to become employers. While the majority of the businesses will remain small, the employment impact of these new enterprises is significant when taken together.

However, there has also been a significant increase in the rate of owner managers closing a business - 2.8% in 2011 compared to 1.2% in 2010 - with 60% citing lack of profitability. This is a higher rate of closure than OECD or EU averages. Furthermore, the prevalence of informal investors declined slightly and the average amount invested is lower than the norm across the OECD and EU, with the average amount invested in Ireland over a three year period falling to an average of €26,000 per investor in 2011 from €46,000 in 2010.

In 2011 for the first time, GEM calculated the rate of entrepreneurial employee activity (intrapreneurship) in Ireland. One in ten of those in employment report that they have been engaged in an entrepreneurial activity for their employer during the past three years.

The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) provides an annual assessment of the entrepreneurial activity, aspirations and attitudes of individuals across a wide range of countries. GEM is the largest on-going study of entrepreneurial dynamics in the world.

The Irish GEM report is supported by Enterprise Ireland, Forfás, the European Social Fund and the Department of Justice and Equality, under the Equality for Women Measure 2007-2013, and also by the Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation. Read the 2011 GEM Report for Ireland here.