One of the things I have got in the habit of doing when I am in the USA is to buy a swathe of business magazines from the first newsstand I come across.
Last week, I managed to get my fix of Inc Magazine, Fast Company, Entrepreneur Magazine and a range of other periodicals. However, it was an article in Business Week on technology entrepreneurs that caught my eye.
The magazine had undertaken a study to examine the typical profile of the technology-made entrepreneur in the USA, surveying over 650 executive officers and heads of product development in 500 engineering and technology companies established from 1995 through 2005. The results were, if nothing else, surprising to read.
First of all, the age old myth of technology-based entrepreneurs being young students, sometimes dropouts, in their early 20s who start such companies as Google, Microsoft and Apple was shattered. Instead the study found that the average age of founders was 39, with twice as many being over 50 as were younger than 25.
Not surprisingly, whilst nearly all of the entrepreneurs were graduates, a third had Master’s degrees and ten per cent Ph.Ds. Interestingly, the founders graduated from a range of universities, although graduates from the Ivy League colleges (i.e. the leading US universities) were more likely to become entrepreneurs than others and run more successful firms. This shows the importance of our leading universities, such as Cardiff University, to encourage enterprise amongst its staff and students and not to believe that this should be limited only to the new university sector.
Another striking finding was the fact that a quarter of the technology companies studied had a foreign-born chief executive or lead technologist as a founder. More importantly, these immigrant run companies accounted for £26 billion in sales and 450,000 jobs in 2005. This supports previous findings by Anna Lee Saxenian which showed the importance of immigration to the recent growth of Silicon Valley.
In particular, Indians were the key driving force, founding more technology-based businesses in the last ten years than all the other immigrant groups combined.
The real contribution of these immigrants, though, is to be found in their intellectual contribution to the USA, with a quarter of U.S-originated international patent applications authored or co-authored by foreign nationals living in America, a three-fold increase on the 7.8 per cent recorded in 1988.
As the study says, there are real lessons in terms of how to encourage more technology-based entrepreneurs in an economy. As studies such as the GEM report have shown, education provides a competitive advantage in terms of entrepreneurship, with a higher proportion of those with postgraduate degrees starting their own business.
However, the Business Week survey suggests that many of those with better qualifications are also older and have spent a number of years working for someone else. This seems to suggest that the rate of high technology entrepreneurship can be increased if middle-aged scientists and technologists can be encouraged to start their own businesses.
A few years ago, there were a number of studies carried out on corporate venturing by the Welsh Development Agency but, unfortunately nothing emerged in terms of any programme to get more workers, especially those in high technology industries, to consider entrepreneurial activity.
Certainly, we should continue to encourage entrepreneurship amongst students and young people, but this should also be extended to educating our current workforce and there is certainly a role for our enterprise agencies to teach their current enterprise programmes in larger companies. There is a massive potential and plenty of great ideas amongst the existing workforce in Wales if only they can be nurtured and developed through enterprise training.
However, the findings on the links between immigration and entrepreneurship could possibly have the biggest impact on the Welsh economy if mechanisms can be put into place to attract the best global talent in science and technology to our universities, to encourage innovation and enterprise in that talent and to help it to establish businesses here in Wales.
If the Artes Mundi is the one of the largest art prizes in the World, then there is certainly no reason as to why the Assembly Government shouldn’t also take a massive leap of faith and say that we will pay the best bursaries possible to get the best scientists from all over the World here to Wales.
This, along with the presence of giants such as Sir Martin Evans at Cardiff University and the hundreds of world-class scientists within our universities, could make the difference to the future of the Welsh economy and, who knows, create a cluster of immigrant-run high technology firms which could make the same impact as those in the USA.
Last week, I managed to get my fix of Inc Magazine, Fast Company, Entrepreneur Magazine and a range of other periodicals. However, it was an article in Business Week on technology entrepreneurs that caught my eye.
The magazine had undertaken a study to examine the typical profile of the technology-made entrepreneur in the USA, surveying over 650 executive officers and heads of product development in 500 engineering and technology companies established from 1995 through 2005. The results were, if nothing else, surprising to read.
First of all, the age old myth of technology-based entrepreneurs being young students, sometimes dropouts, in their early 20s who start such companies as Google, Microsoft and Apple was shattered. Instead the study found that the average age of founders was 39, with twice as many being over 50 as were younger than 25.
Not surprisingly, whilst nearly all of the entrepreneurs were graduates, a third had Master’s degrees and ten per cent Ph.Ds. Interestingly, the founders graduated from a range of universities, although graduates from the Ivy League colleges (i.e. the leading US universities) were more likely to become entrepreneurs than others and run more successful firms. This shows the importance of our leading universities, such as Cardiff University, to encourage enterprise amongst its staff and students and not to believe that this should be limited only to the new university sector.
Another striking finding was the fact that a quarter of the technology companies studied had a foreign-born chief executive or lead technologist as a founder. More importantly, these immigrant run companies accounted for £26 billion in sales and 450,000 jobs in 2005. This supports previous findings by Anna Lee Saxenian which showed the importance of immigration to the recent growth of Silicon Valley.
In particular, Indians were the key driving force, founding more technology-based businesses in the last ten years than all the other immigrant groups combined.
The real contribution of these immigrants, though, is to be found in their intellectual contribution to the USA, with a quarter of U.S-originated international patent applications authored or co-authored by foreign nationals living in America, a three-fold increase on the 7.8 per cent recorded in 1988.
As the study says, there are real lessons in terms of how to encourage more technology-based entrepreneurs in an economy. As studies such as the GEM report have shown, education provides a competitive advantage in terms of entrepreneurship, with a higher proportion of those with postgraduate degrees starting their own business.
However, the Business Week survey suggests that many of those with better qualifications are also older and have spent a number of years working for someone else. This seems to suggest that the rate of high technology entrepreneurship can be increased if middle-aged scientists and technologists can be encouraged to start their own businesses.
A few years ago, there were a number of studies carried out on corporate venturing by the Welsh Development Agency but, unfortunately nothing emerged in terms of any programme to get more workers, especially those in high technology industries, to consider entrepreneurial activity.
Certainly, we should continue to encourage entrepreneurship amongst students and young people, but this should also be extended to educating our current workforce and there is certainly a role for our enterprise agencies to teach their current enterprise programmes in larger companies. There is a massive potential and plenty of great ideas amongst the existing workforce in Wales if only they can be nurtured and developed through enterprise training.
However, the findings on the links between immigration and entrepreneurship could possibly have the biggest impact on the Welsh economy if mechanisms can be put into place to attract the best global talent in science and technology to our universities, to encourage innovation and enterprise in that talent and to help it to establish businesses here in Wales.
If the Artes Mundi is the one of the largest art prizes in the World, then there is certainly no reason as to why the Assembly Government shouldn’t also take a massive leap of faith and say that we will pay the best bursaries possible to get the best scientists from all over the World here to Wales.
This, along with the presence of giants such as Sir Martin Evans at Cardiff University and the hundreds of world-class scientists within our universities, could make the difference to the future of the Welsh economy and, who knows, create a cluster of immigrant-run high technology firms which could make the same impact as those in the USA.
Comments
I always get the feeling that the people in Cardiff Bay are more comfortable supporting things like Artes Mundi which do give Wales profile, than science and enterprise, both will help the economy and both need support.
However, Picture can go one of two ways, they will either end up with no source of funding for their products and hence will have to close, or the credit crisis will mean that their products will be the only ones on offer to credit-hungry consumers.
They will be heroes or zeroes, which often happens in situations like this but I would be very brave, at this moment, to predict the outcome
It is more difficult to get venture funds out of Finance Wales than HSBC or any other high street bank. Nobody entrepreneurial or who has a viable high tech idea would go anywhere near these institutions or bother to contend with the rigmarole of paperwork, disclosures, guarantees and hordes of crooked 'angels' and business advisers by the score. If as you say many of the new high technology enterprises are started by intelligent older people who know a thing or two (like me) then they would stay clear. There are also some spectacular examples of high profile failure to muse upon that are more than abit disconcerting.
Also you are very very wrong in surmising that there are 'hundreds of world-class scientists' within Welsh universities - there aren't. There may be hundreds of scientists but 99% of them are lecturers, and staff who haven't had an original thought in their lives and are certainly not world-class. Most clever scientists would make disastrous business people anyway. Also, most of them are employed by corporations who can pay a devilishly decent price for one's soul.
High technology costs alot of money in equipment, premises, staff and effort. Sorry, but this is just not available in Wales at any conceivable level and never will be.
On the positive side, there is, however, a solution! Yes there is. All it needs is for a deputation of AMs to go to a rural area of North Carolina near Chapel Hill to a place called Research Triangle Park . Thirty years ago this was a swamp filled with insects, large mouthed bass, snakes and the odd hunter. Today this small area (less than 20 sq miles) generates more revenue from hi-tech business than the entire GDP of Wales. I kid you not. So why doesn't the WAG forget about reinventing the wheel and just attempt to emulate the RTP in this country. Is that so hard?
They should also try to understand what are the factors that encourage people to undertake these ventures in the first place and then create the climate in which it can happen. Believe me that climate is not here.It requires a better understanding of human psychology and motivations.
Maybe one day someone with vision may appear to lead us to the promised land ... is that you Dylan?