The Cross-country Historical Adoption of Technology (CHAT) dataset covers the diffusion of 104 technologies in 161 countries during the last 200 years.  It is an aggregation of some earlier technology diffusion datasets and has most recent year of coverage as 2003.  The data is available for download.  Interested potential users should review a new overview paper published through the National Bureau of Economic Research. 

The authors summarize their definition of technologies as follows:

"They [technologies] are either: (i) the number of  capital goods specifically related to accomplishing particular tasks, (ii) the amounts of particular tasks that have been accomplished, (iii) the number of users of a particular manner to accomplish a task. These three types of measures are best illustrated with three examples. (i) The number of sail ships (measured in tonnage) in use in a country; (ii) Metric tons of steel produced using blast‐oxygen steel furnaces; (iii) the number of households that subscribe to cable tv services."

One of the newer global developments in surveys is the Gallup World Poll.  While I can't find an exact starting point, I know that I have seen some data from the World Poll going back to 2005, although the data is only now making its way into academic and non-academic publications.

• Sample academic publication: Deaton, Angus 2008. "Income, Health, and Well-Being around the World: Evidence from the Gallup World Poll." Journal of Economic Perspectives, 22(2): 53–72.
• Sample non-academic publication: South Africans Optimistic About Local Entrepreneurship

Currently, Gallup reports at least bi-annual coverage on the core survey instrument for more than 150 countries.  The World Poll seems to have very promising possibilities for future research and policy work in entrepreneurship because Gallup is collecting data on entrepreneurship in several different portions of their instrument, including on general population perception questions like, "Is the city or area where you live a good place or not a good place for entrepreneurs forming new businesses," or "If someone wants to start a business in X, can they trust their assets and property to be safe at all times?"

Indeed the hardest part about Gallup's data is getting access as the current subscription price is quite substantial.  There is no doubt that they've put together a very powerful instrument and their execution seems as top-quality as we would expect from Gallup.  My main criticism of them thus far, and I've shared this directly, is that many of the questions focus mostly on the smallest of entrepreneurs or entry while what we are most lacking globally are real perceptions about growing businesses.  That said, if someone out there does end up subscribing to the data and needs coauthors, I know of several people who would be interested. 

When I first saw the term "shared capitalism" I was a little puzzled but the more I have looked into the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Shared Capitalism Project the more interesting I found it. Shared capitalism is defined  as "employment relations where the pay or wealth of workers is directly tied to workplace or firm performance."  Funded by the Russell Sage Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation and spanning more than 10 years, this project is just getting to the stage where you will soon see a finished University of Chicago publication.  But in the meantime, you can find many of the chapters of this book in near final versions online.  According to Joseph Blasi, one of the principals on the project:

The Introduction chapter which you can download at this web site (in the top position) will explain the project in some detail including the theoretical background, what we did, and our main empirical findings. In brief, we surveyed over 40,000 employees in 14 firms and hundreds of separate work sites and established a national random sample of the US working population using the General Social Survey (GSS) with a special shared capitalism set of questions on the 2002, 2006, and now 2010 GSS, as a control group.

In Appendix A, they define some of the terms that are common throughout the book.  I thought it appropriate to highlight how innovation outcomes were defined:

• Culture for Innovation: Mean of following items, all measured on a 1-4 scale (1=never or almost never, 2=sometimes, 3=often, 4=always or almost always) "How often do the following things occur in your facility?"
  

• Innovative Ideas: Mean of following items, all measured on a 1-4 scale (1=not at all, 2=very little, 3=to some extent, 4=to a great extent)

Gallup has such wide-ranging survey reach and scope of goals that it seems there is always something new they have going on which I find interesting.  Today, I thought I'd highlight a portal for Gallup on "Business News" which I only happened on this week.  It's a real hodge podge of rolling materials including Gallup Daily Trends in things like job creation and destruction patterns that emerge through their surveys. 

A new deal announced in early August between National Venture Capital Association and Cambridge Associates for return data in venture capital (VC) world.  I am not an expert in VC data so I don't know the full ramifications of this but details should be of interest to many scholars.  It seems that this will broaden data available rather than have a significant impact on some of the more establish VC sources:

At the recent Academy of Management meetings, I was lucky enough to attend a Professional Development Workshop on "Business Creation Panel Studies: an International Overview." Most of the data presented was looking at the concept of nascent entrepreneurship, but the Australian and Latvian presentations also dealt with some other populations.  There is a great deal of similarity among the different projects presented, as is apparent from the slides below; however, for a number of reasons the presenters seemed to feel that there was still room for international comparative research and perhaps, eventually, a harmonized data file. 

One of the most interesting parts of sitting in on this session for me was hearing the experience of each principal investigator in gathering support for their project, dealing with vendors, getting data, and then analysis.  Indeed, a couple of themes emerged across presenters which were of note on the pure logistics of organizing a panel survey.  This is my own summary, not something which was presented at the event:

1. Funding - Many of the organizers experienced exogenous shocks to their funding source in the course of carrying out the surveys.  Even without shocks, most of the principal investigators talked about the expensive nature of panel data collection and the importance of securing funding early.
2. Vendor - In all but one case, I believe, these panel surveys were collected using an outside vendor under direction from the academic principal investigator.  While it was not the case for each country, more than half seemed to have had some pretty significant vendor issues during the process.  Indeed several had switched vendors during the course of the panel data collection.
3. Sample - In each case, I don't think the principal investigators ever felt they were able to truly get a large enough sample of nascent entrepreneurs.  This is typically a function of cost and sheer difficulty of screening the adult population (or some other source) in order to find people in the process of starting a business.  

So, with thanks to the presenters in this session for their gracious permission to post the slides to Data Maven, here in the order they presented are the slides from the workshop. 

Business Creation Panel Studies: An International Status Report
Recent Overview Paper on Nascent Entrepreneurship
Australia
Canada
China
Latvia
Netherlands (Presented by Paul Reynolds)
Norway
Sweden
United States
Commentary

Scott Shane highlighted in his blog yesterday some interesting data from the Cooperative Institutional Research Program (CIRP) at the University of California, Los Angeles, related to the interests of college freshmen in business.  The CIRP Freshman Survey is part of a larger effort at CIRP to measure the college experience and something which caught my interest about a year ago, so I wanted to share more detail on the survey and some additional tabulation from it which will help researchers to see why there is some great potential here.  In particular, this data set would seem ripe for some doctoral research, as CIRP is open to research proposals, and to my knowledge, very little has been done with this data looking at career choice.

From the CIRP website...

• Admissions and recruitment
• Academic program development, review and self-assessment
  
• Institutional self-study and accreditation activities
  
• Public relations and advancement/development
  
• Institutional research and assessment
  
• Retention studies
  
• Longitudinal research about the impact of policies and programs
  

Now Scott's post highlighted the response to a question which reads as follows in the 2009 questionnaire, although the response categories have likely changed over the years.

• Becoming accomplished in one of the performing arts (acting, dancing, etc.)..........................
• Becoming an authority in my field.........................................
• Obtaining recognition from my colleagues for contributions to my special field..........................................
• Influencing the political structure...........................................
• Influencing social values.......................................................
• Raising a family.....................................................................
• Being very well off financially................................................
• Helping others who are in difficulty.......................................
• Making a theoretical contribution to science.........................
• Writing original works (poems, novels, short stories, etc.)....
• Creating artistic works (painting, sculpture, decorating, etc.)..
• Becoming successful in a business of my own..................... [bold added]
  
• Becoming involved in programs to clean up the environment..
• Developing a meaningful philosophy of life...........................
• Participating in a community action program........................
• Helping to promote racial understanding..............................
• Keeping up to date with political affairs.................................
• Becoming a community leader..............................................
• Improving my understanding of other countries and cultures..
• Adopting “green” practices to protect the environment.........

What struck me most when I read Scott's summary of the data was the high level of response to the question.  According to Scott's tabulations, the measure has run between 40 and 50 percent of college freshmen choosing either "essential" or "very important" to the choice "Becoming successful in a business of my own" since at least 1976, with the exception of a period of time in the 1990s. 

In correspondence with John Pryor, one of the directors on these projects at UCLA, I had looked at another measure which the Freshmen Survey appears to have related to entrepreneurship, specifically, their probable career choice.  Here is the question from the 2009 survey:

•  Accountant or actuary.....................
• Actor or entertainer.........................
• Architect or urban planner...............
• Artist................................................
• Business (clerical)...........................
• Business executive (management, administrator)........
• Business owner or proprietor..........[bold added]
  
• Business salesperson or buyer.......
• Clergy (minister, priest)...................
• Clergy (other religious)....................
• Clinical psychologist........................
• College administrator/staff...............
• College teacher...............................
• Computer programmer or analyst...
• Conservationist or forester..............
• Dentist (including orthodontist)........
• Dietitian or nutritionist......................
• Engineer..........................................
• Farmer or rancher...........................
• Foreign service worker (including diplomat).......................
• Homemaker (full-time).....................
• Interior decorator (including designer)..
• Lab technician or hygienist..............
• Law enforcement officer..................
• Lawyer (attorney) or judge..............
• Military service (career)...................
• Musician (performer, composer)......
• Nurse...............................................
• Optometrist......................................
• Pharmacist......................................
• Physician.........................................
• Policymaker/Government................
• School counselor.............................
• School principal or superintendent..
• Scientific researcher........................
• Social, welfare, or recreation worker..
• Therapist (physical, occupational, speech)........................................
• Teacher or administrator (elementary).................................
• Teacher or administrator (secondary)..................................
• Veterinarian.....................................
• Writer or journalist...........................
• Skilled trades...................................
• Laborer (unskilled)...........................
• Semi-skilled worker.........................
• Unemployed....................................
• Other................................................
• Undecided....................................... 

John and I had corresponded about his survey because he presented a paper at the 2008 Kauffman Symposium on Entrepreneurship and Innovation Data in which he highlighted the need from his perspective to update the occupation choices represented on the survey for a modern world.  Indeed, in his paper he highlighted the following, "approximately 17 percent of incoming students cannot find a suitable occupation on the list and  answer with 'other' (another 14 percent respond with 'undecided'). In 2008, approximately one out of five seniors answered 'other' for the probable career after graduation on the CSS."

In corresponding with John, he was nice enough to send me the time series for the answers to "Your probable occupation" that related to business ownership, which with his permission, I have included below.  

With this response garnering between 1.6 and 3.7 percent over the course of the survey, it is at an extremely different level than the question Scott highlighted.  Obviously, both are relevant, but more work needs to be done to understand and interact the responses on individual records.  Indeed, if you are a researcher doing work with this data, please let me know.  What I would hypothesize is the question Scott highlighted has more to do with interest at some point - a question polling firms have asked in the adult population at different times - while the question which I highlight is probably more akin to the nascent entrepreneurs or people who plan to start a business in the next few years.  Now, this is only conjecture and there are other places in this survey where the idea of entrepreneurship would seem to appear, but the conclusions which we draw from the data can differ and should be investigated more.  Indeed, the question which I highlight remains closer to historic highs than the question which Scott highlighted, but it should be noted that neither question is at a peak currently. 

It will be interesting to see what the coming years of data show in these trends and what work can be done to improve measurement of entrepreneurship and innovation in the CIRP surveys.  John Pryor also asked that I share this on the post: "HERI is interested in exploring the development of entrepreneurship (among other areas) with follow-up surveys of these students as they have been out in the working world."  I believe John is referencing surveys like what is planned shortly on "becoming scientists" as listed on their website.

Alicia Robb, Denny Dennis, and I did a Professional Development Workshop at the Academy of Management a couple of days ago.  Here I am posting the slides from that workshop, which focused on data available for entrepreneurship research, along with notes from my comments at the event, which I had not put into slides.

Alicia Robb, Kauffman Foundation and University of California, Santa Cruz Denny Dennis, NFIB
E.J. Reedy, Kauffman Foundation

• Business Dynamics Database
• New developments at the Bureau of Labor Statistics
• General Social Survey
• National Establishment Time Series Database and the related youreconomy.org
• Survey on Consumer Finance
• OECD Trademark Data

Additionally, at the meeting, hard copies of the proceedings of the 2007 Kauffman Symposium on Entrepreneurship and Innovation Data were handed out.  Additional copies were requested by some but electronic versions of each paper are available on line. The 2008 proceedings, which focused on ideas for improving data are also available. 

And lastly, we highlighted a few ways in which scholars could connect with Kauffman and other scholars in this area.  There is this blog, Data Maven, for tracking data developments.  On Facebook, join the Kauffman Entrepreneurship Scholars group.  Subscribe to entrepreneurship emails from Social Science Research Network.  Or participate in Kauffman's emerging scholars programs.

An article from the World Bank on measuring investor and consumer confidence:

• Dailami, Mansoor; Masson, Paul. Measures of investor and consumer confidence and policy actions in the current crisis. 2009. 

This is not entrepreneurship or innovation but many scholars in our area look at topics which are touched by this topic and I can foresee that increasing.

I just got an email from Tim Sturgeon at MIT which was quite encouraging.  First, they have recently received notification from the National Science Foundation (NSF) recommending funding for the 2009 National Organizations Survey.  While this is still some time away before researchers could use the data, Tim and his co-principal investigators presented an overview of some of their plans in November 2008 at the Kauffman Data Symposium.  The issue of whether or not an entrepreneurship sample can be funded, as they propose, remains, and is something which this team is looking to Kauffman for.  As such, I remain open to feedback on that portion of the proposal. 

But outside of this, I wanted to highlight that apparently data collected in the Globalization Module of the 2008 General Social Survey will soon be available for analysis by application.  The data will be posted to NORC Data Enclave soon.  They also have plans to make the National Organization Survey data available for scholarly use after collection.  Kauffman sponsored a small entrepreneurship module in the 2008 GSS, as well, which might be of interest.