Education, Training and Networking for Entrepreneurship in ...

Innovativeness and competency
Innovativeness is related to competency to start
a business, Table 10.3. Competent entrepreneurs
tend to be more innovative than entrepreneurs
without this competency, as we should
expect (the difference is statistically significant;
the probability-value is 0.04 for the one-sided
chi-square test of the cross-tabulation, and the
p-value is 0.01 for comparing the two means in
a one-sided t-test).
Table 10.3
Innovativeness of entrepreneurs, by their
competency
Denmark 2003-08
Competent Less
competent
Innovative 39 % 34 %
Less innovative 61 % 66 %
Sum 100 % 100 %
Mean innovativeness 1.62 1.55
N respondents 1.165 368
Innovativeness and networking
Innovativeness is related to networking with
advisors, Table 10.4. Entrepreneurs with many
advisors tend to be more innovative than entrepreneurs
with few advisors, as we would expect.
The correlation between innovativeness
and size of the network is positive it is 0.2 (and
is statistically significant with probability-value
0.02 in a one-sided test).
Table 10.4
Innovativeness of entrepreneurs, by their
networking with advisors
Denmark 2008
The above cross-tabulations are limited, in that
they only examine association between two
phenomena at a time, and ignore other tings
that may impact on the association. We shall
therefore extend the analysis in the following
section.
Effects upon innovativeness from education,
training, competency and networking
The question now is, how is innovativeness
shaped by distinct effects from education, training,
competency and networking?
The effects upon innovativeness from education,
training, competency and networking are
estimated by regression (Table 10.5 in the Appendix).
Innovativeness is greatly promoted by
networking, and also promoted by competency
and training. Entrepreneurs with vocational education,
or short or medium higher education,
or without vocational or higher education are
less innovative than entrepreneurs with long
higher education. In other words, entrepreneurs
with long higher education are especially innovative.
These effects are to be expected, but it is
important to note that they are so strong as to
be discerned and be distinct from one another
and from other conditions.
The effects among education, training, competency
and networking were estimated in the
preceding chapter (Figure 9.2). The effects of
education upon networking, though, are omitted.
The estimated effects are shown in Figure 10.2,
where a solid arrow denotes a positive effect, a
dashed arrow symbolizes a negative effect, and
the thickness of an arrow represents the magnitude
of the effect.
Small Large
network network
Innovative 32 % 42 %
Less innovative 68 % 58 %
Sum 100 % 100 %
Mean innovativeness 1,4 1,6
N entrepreneurs 82 84
68