A Proposal for a Standard With Innovation Management System

Paula Odete Fernandes, João Ferreira and Cristina Fernandes
analogous levels of development (Carree et al., 2002; 2007), but also between countries at different
levels of development (Wennekers et al., 2005; Acs & Amorós, 2008).
For dynamic perspective various indicators can be used including entrepreneurial start-up activity. In
the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) study, a person is considered to be involved in a nascent
firm “if had engaged in any activity to start the firm In the past 12 months, expected to own all or part
of the new firm once it became operational, and the initiative had not paid salaries or wages to
anyone for more than three months” (Reynolds et al., 2005:52). Currently, the GEM research takes as
one theoretical starting point the assumption of various conditions that lead to the creation of
entrepreneurial opportunities and the support of entrepreneurial individuals who are capable and
motivated to exploit these opportunities (Valliere, 2010). The present study focuses on a crucial
determinant of entrepreneurship in developing (and developed) countries from the 2009 GEM survey
and it aims to identify groups of countries that share similar patterns regarding the characteristics of
entrepreneurial attitudes and perceptions.
After this introduction, the paper is structured as follows: section two provides a review of the
literature on entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial attitudes. In section three, we set out the
methodology and describe the sample and methods applied. Section four the results are presented
and finally the conclusions are draw in section five.
2. Literature review
Only from the 80s is emerged the interest in the role of entrepreneurship in economic development
having this interest been influenced largely by the revolution of endogenous growth (Low &
MacMillan, 1988). This revolution has led to a new wave of investigations that have placed the
individual capacity to address the risk at the heart of economic analysis (Groot et al., 2004). However,
the ability to face the risk was very early studied as a characteristic of the entrepreneurship (Knight,
1921; Lucas, 1978; Kihlstrom & Laffont, 1979; Kahneman & Tversky, 1979; Jovanovic, 1982; Parker,
1996; 1997). Entrepreneurship has recently been defined as the creation of new economic activity
(Davidson et al., 2006). Although entrepreneurs may be analyzed at the individual level, operate at
the organizational level (Shane & Delmar, 2004), economic, social and institutional (Veciana &
Urbano, 2008). Kirzner (1973) argues that the entrepreneur is an agent driving the market equilibrium
and its activity is essential to competitiveness, this being inherent in the process of entrepreneurship.
Also to McClelland (1961) entrepreneurship is related to the desire for personal achievement, which
turns out to be transposed into the business where you take risks of different nature and where it can
achieve economic success due to their ability and not to their fate. The interest in entrepreneurship is
an increasingly topical issue that is important both to Governments (NCOE, 2001), entrepreneurs,
decision makers (Galbraith, 1985; Hansen, 1987; Felsenstein, 1996; Sternberg & Arndt, 2001) and for
researchers themselves (Hisrich et al., 2007; Audretsch, 2007; Mabhbubani, 2008). We also noted
that since the 90s, public bodies have proven aware of the importance of entrepreneurship to the
growth of countries (Rosell & Viladomiu, 2001).
According to OECD (2005) report, 20% to 40% employment rate in most industrialized countries is
directly related to the high rate of entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship is first and foremost a catalyst
for economic growth and national competitiveness (GEM, 2010) and emerges as a crucial contribution
to economic development (Gatner, 1988; Sarasvathy, 2001; Baron, 2004; Sternberg, 2004; Krueger,
2007). Research into the role of entrepreneurship on economies has long been vulnerable by a dearth
of consistent and comparable international data regarding entrepreneurs and their economic impact
(Valliere, 2010). The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) research comes to overcome this
obstacle resulting in a large and growing database about entrepreneurial activity in many countries.
The potential value of this kind of database has been demonstrated by an increasing number of
studies that incorporate elements of GEM data (Bygrave et al., 2003; van Stel & Thurik, 2004;
Wennekers et al., 2005; Wong et al., 2005; Koellinger, 2008; Koellinger & Minniti, 2009; Clercq et al.,
2010). While the GEM project is now generally recognized as a useful tool for empirical researchers in
entrepreneurship, the connection from these empirical findings to entrepreneurship theorizing has not
been as far developed (Valliere, 2010). The worth of GEM in the future development of
entrepreneurship theories remains somewhat unexplored.
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