9/11/2009 12:49:54 PM By
E.J. Reedy
This morning I read a new report called
"The grey economy: How third age entrepreneurs are contributing to growth" by Ron Botham and Andrew Graves. This project was funded by
National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (NESTA) in the U.K. This report is particularly interesting in that it summarizes a survey which was undertaken in the U.K. specifically to look at firms started by older entrepreneurs, as well as topics like innovative activities. While their survey response rates were not particularly good, other aspects of the design seemed pretty robust on my first reading of their protocol. I know there is a great deal of interest in the older entrepreneur population, as highlighted by some recent reports by
Kauffman and others, and would point interested parties to this report (and the accompanying literature review). Although this is the first survey which I can remember which stratifies to get an oversample of older entrepreneurs, I doubt it will be the last.