Global Entrepreneurship Monitor: Right attitude will spark growth

Total entrepreneurial activity rate. Source: Global Entrepreneuriship Monitor NZ 2002. Herald graphic.

New Zealand is full of entrepreneurs, but too few of them go on to create wealth, writes JOHN DRINNAN.

New Zealand needs a cultural shot in the arm if we are to take full advantage of our strong entrepreneurial spirit.

We fail to transform our entrepreneurial businesses to create enough of our wealth, and Dr Howard Frederick, principal author of a study on New Zealand entrepreneurship, has plenty of ideas why.

As director of the New Zealand Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Unitec, Frederick ran the 2002 Bartercard New Zealand Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM), part of a study of 37 countries.

When New Zealand joined the GEM network last year we did well.

We scored highly again this year - sixth behind Thailand, India, Chile, Korea and Argentina - with 14 per cent of people aged between 14 and 64 engaged in entrepreneurial activity.

That is 4 per cent more than the United States and much more than Australia, on 8.7 per cent. The average for all 37 countries was just 8 per cent, so we stand out as a country of entrepreneurs.

But we are inclined to become lifestyle entrepreneurs, happy with our comfortable lives rather than expanding our businesses to their full potential.

The typical New Zealand entrepreneur is someone based in Auckland whose main ambition is to have a house, a boat and van with their name on the side, the research shows.

Focusing on lifestyle may be part of our national psyche, but from an economic perspective Frederick suggests lack of ambition combined with a fear of failure could be stopping us from turning our entrepreneurship into wealth and economic growth.

There is another problem: "We are unrelentingly modest," says Frederick.

Individual self-maximisation is a driving force of entrepreneurship, but New Zealanders never trumpet their success.

Americans say 200 per cent of the truth and believe half what they hear. New Zealanders say half the truth. So when an American meets a New Zealander they see a quarter of the reality.