Report shows an increase in early stage entrepreneurial activity in Ireland

According to the 2011 Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) Report for Ireland, there has been an increase in early stage entrepreneurial activity in 2011. As a result more people started new businesses in Ireland during 2011 than in the previous year.

The GEM report, which was launched today by Richard Bruton TD, Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, estimates that approximately 2,200 enterprising individuals were setting up a new business each month during 2011.

Findings of the 2011 GEM report indicate that almost 75% of these entrepreneurs expect to become employers. While the majority of the businesses will remain small, the employment impact of these new enterprises is significant when taken together. The GEM report also highlights the relative ambitious growth aspirations of a significant minority of these entrepreneurs in Ireland compared to other countries across the EU and OECD.

Welcoming the Report, Minister Bruton said, “It is successful businesses, not Government, that create jobs. That is why the Government’s Action Plan for Jobs includes a series of new measures to support entrepreneurs and new start-ups, and to drive continued growth in this critical sector of the economy. In this regard I am pleased to note the results of the GEM research, which indicate that more people were starting new businesses in 2011 than were a year earlier. It is good to see increased numbers of enterprising individuals determined to turn difficult circumstances into an opportunity for personal and commercial success.”

Among the entrepreneurs profiled in this year’s Report are Dr Emmeline Hill, UCD School of Agriculture and Food Science and co-founder of Equinome. Equinome, a UCD spin-out company, headquartered at NovaUCD, was established in 2009 to assist the bloodstock industry to maximise the genetic potential of each Thoroughbred horse, through the development and provision of novel genetic tests founded in scientific excellence.

The authors of the GEM report are Paula Fitzsimons of Fitzsimons Consulting, who is the National GEM Co-ordinator, and Dr Colm O’Gorman, Professor of Entrepreneurship, DCU Business School.

The 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.

ENDS

24 September 2012

For further information contact Micéal Whelan, University College Dublin, Communications Manager (Innovation), t: + 353 1 716 3712, e: miceal.whelan@ucd.ie

Editors Notes

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. Initiated in 1999 as a partnership between London Business School and Babson College, the first study covered 10 countries.

In 2011, 54 countries participated in the research. One of the unique features of GEM is the facility, which it provides to compare countries with each other across a range of variables pertinent to entrepreneurship. This is made possible as the research is carried out in exactly the same way in each country and is coordinated by the Global Entrepreneurship Research Association (GERA) based in Babson College in the United States.

The 2011 GEM Report for Ireland is available via www.enterprise.gov.ie/Publications/GEM-Report.pdf