Survey on “Factors of Business Success” (FOBS)

1. Survey on“Factors of Business Success” (FOBS) ISTAT/Eurostat/OECD Seminar on Entrepreneurship Indicators Rome, December 6-7, 2006 Hartmut Schrör, Eurostat hartmut.schroer@ec.europa.eu

2. Contents • Project • Background • Participants • Methodology • Questionnaire • Data • Dissemination and publication • Selected results • Conclusions

3. Background • Successful data collection on Business Demography • Business Demography: births, survivals, deaths, and related employment • Further questions • What are the factors determining the success / survival of newly born enterprises? • What obstacles do newly born enterprises face? • What support to them is most useful? • What is the profile of the successful entrepreneur? => FOBS project

4. Participants • 15 countries • 7 EU-15 Member States: Denmark, France, Italy, Luxembourg, Austria, Portugal, Sweden • 6 New Member States: Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovenia, Slovakia • 2 Acceding Countries: Bulgaria and Romania • Eurostat: project co-ordination, aggregated results • Commission DG “Enterprise and Industry”: Financing • OECD

5. Methodology • Target population • Enterprises that were born in 2002 and survived for 3 years, until the time of the survey in 2005. • Sub-population of enterprises that are still managed by the founder => profile of the successful entrepreneur • Samples drawn from populations of newly born enterprises identified in business registers using the business demography methodology • Attempt at identifying survivals into the present • Variety in sampling schemes and grossing-up methods

6. Questionnaire (1/2) • Start-up conditions • Motivation for start-up • Financing • Difficulties at start-up • Support and advice • Entrepreneur’s characteristics • Education • Experience managing an enterprise • Branch experience • Gender • Age • Citizenship

7. Questionnaire (2/2) • Present situation • Employment, turnover • Co-operation, networking • Difficulties developing the enterprise • Future plans and expectations • Future of the enterprise (continuing, selling, closing down) • Development of employment, turnover, investments

8. Contents • Project • Background • Participants • Methodology • Questionnaire • Data • Dissemination and publication • Selected results • Conclusions

9. Dissemination • Datasets released on Eurostat websitehttp://ec.europa.eu/eurostat • Data • Industry, Trade and Services • Horizontal View • Special topics of structural business statistics • Factors of Business Success • Metadata in SDDS format

10. Dissemination • Complete aggregated datasets • “EU” aggregate of 10 countries: CZ, DK, IT, LT, LU, AT, SK, SE, BG and RO • Excel sheets with selected indicators

11. Publication • Statistics in Focus “The Profile of the Successful Entrepreneur” http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/cache/ITY_OFFPUB/KS-NP-06-029/EN/KS-NP-06-029-EN.PDF • 12 pages in English, German, French • Indicators referring to entrepreneur characteristics • Age, gender, education, experience, citizenship

12. Experience running an enterpriseStart-up difficulties

13. Experience running an enterpriseSources of advice

14. Branch experienceJudgement of profitability

15. AgeInnovation

16. GenderLabour Force Survey vs. FOBS

17. GenderShare in NACE activities

18. GenderPrevious occupation

19. EducationJudgement of profitability

20. Employee size class at enterprise birthExpected development - increase

21. Conclusions • Successful project • Further analysis of results • Aggregated dataset at Eurostat • Microdata analysis ? …possibly using clustering technique ? • What next? • Possible follow-up project • More focus on particular subjects • Inclusion of entrepreneurship indicators

22. Thank you!