On the 'Global Entrepreneurship Report'

Recently, Amway has published the results of a major survey conducted in 24 countries (*) around the world. You might remember that Amway has been doing this survey for a few years but until this year, it was limited to the European countries. This most recent research was again, conducted by GfK, covering 26,000 respondents, women and men.

Key findings from the report are as below:

Despite the economic uncertainties, people are generally positive about entrepreneurship.

70% of the respondents have a positive attitude towards entrepreneurship. Here, the Danish people are the most positive (89%), followed by the Finnish (87%) and the Australians (85%). The Hungarians are the least positive (53%).

The gap between the above ‘potential’ entrepreneurs and who can visual themselves as one is large.

Among all respondents, 39% can imagine becoming self-employed. The highest potential is in Colombia (63%) and Mexico (56%), and the least in Japan (17%).

‘Independence’ is the most important motivation for becoming self-employed.

43% mention this as the most important motive. The U.S. (65%), Denmark (64%), and Australia (62%) show the strongest need for independence, while Denmark showing the weakest.

‘Fear of failure’ is a severe obstacle to starting a business.

70% of the respondents confirm this is so in their cases. The respondents in Japan (94%), Italy (91%) and Czech Republic (91%) are extremely frightened of failure. The Netherlands (43%), Mexico (47%) and the U.S. (37%) show the least fear of failure.

The possible consequences of failure are social, psychological, and financial.

The most pronounced factor for fear of failure is ‘financial burdens up to bankruptcy’ (41%). This is followed by ‘threat of economic crisis’ (31%) and ‘threat of unemployment’ (15%). 14% mention ‘personal disappointment’ and 9% ‘disappointing/losing family’.

The report calls for action from the authorities to pave the way for entrepreneurship. However, the results are full of important messages to the industry leaders as well. This is especially in the areas of communication and training. I think it has become more than obvious with this report that while dealing with different societies, one-size-fits-all communications and trainings cannot succeed everywhere.

While interpreting the results, we should always bear in mind two points:

1) Not all are joining our industry to become entrepreneurs. (You might want to take a look at “Herbalife’s Distributor Earnings” that I wrote on this previously.)

2) Being an ‘entrepreneur’ does not have the same meaning as being a ‘direct seller’ in all societies.

 

(*) The countries covered in this survey: Australia, Austria, Colombia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Great Britain, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Spain, Switzerland, Turkey, Ukraine, USA

Note: Please click here if you wish to read report in full for free.