Ways to increase GEM impacts on government policy towards entrepreneurship : main issues 1

1. Ways to increase GEM impacts on government policy towards entrepreneurship: main issues1 Identifying problems for policy makers, such like TEA for male 1,5 times higher than for female in Columbia. Getting people who can do analysis out of the university; Having people in a team who understand the governmental specificity as a link. Could be the chamber of commerce involved. How we can get the synergy among members from different areas. Governmnet members are not involved because of a limited understanding.

2. Ways to increase GEM impacts on government policy towards entrepreneurship: main issues2 • The cost of not doing one or another thing. The cost of not putting the measure in action. Governments need money. What will cost to implement, design, encourage by budget; perhaps taking action immediately will save some money in the future. • Sometimes the policy goes bottom-up, but not top-down. Local governments need to develop new policies that could be accepted by policy makers. The policy should come from the facts, involving GEM people (the experience of Chile).

3. Different experiences among countries1 • Only 5 countries from the discussion room receive money from national governments. Policy makers do not understand the importance and specificity of the data. It could be useful to make them another version of report easily to understand and apply. • In Netherlands the Government expects only the data, but not explication. • In Poland scientists make research, explicitly explain the data and can give recommendations. • In Switzerland the Government does not rely on GEM data. They pick up their topics and go directly to the media, then Governments react more. NES interviews with different policy makers. • Belize: Small enterprise development centre tracking all the activities and data on entrpereneurship, formalization of national entrepreneurship development, GEM marriage with Government.

4. Different experiences among countries2 • Chile: Government needs accountability for their actions, collaborative tables of resources, many different programs and projects could be useful. • It is important to answer to the question what do governments really need, what should be the principle object of the research?For instance, now the team of Chile works on examining entrepreneurship in the ‘county’ inside Santiago. Policy makers are of short time scope.

5. Recommendations1 To work on helping establishing enterprises, to support entrepreneurs, for instance, women. Scientists should explain the data, politicians should operate with the data in the way they expect to. The primary beneficiary of GEM data is Government, they should be involved in collecting and disseminating the data. To help to achieve the line minister targets in order to get his support (win-win relationship).

6. Recommendations2 Network is important in communication with the media, we need to take into consideration personal relationships. Be more proactive. There are more stakeholders: educations institutions, financial institutions. To create a consortium of organizations that are the main stakeholders. Try to disseminate the GEM data during the longer period. Doing Business Report in some countries is getting more media attention during the year than GEM.

7. Recommendations3 • Better PR of different researches on GEM data. More flexibility in orienting data to the media needs. • A centralized PR could be a solution? • NES experts could be used as a strategic tool to ‘Open more doors’. • Conference ‘administration towards scientists’, workshops, and etc.