Last Sunday’s Boston Globe’s Metro West section published an interesting article on entrepreneurship. I find that many of my clients are starting out a new business or putting a spin on an existing one, so it was a fascinating read for me.
Andrew Corbett is a professor of entrepreneurship and faculty director of the John E. and Alice L. Butler Venture Accelerator Program at Babson College in Wellesley, just a few towns away from Framingham.
“Corbett is a coauthor of the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor’s 2013 United States Report, which showed that 39 million Americans, or nearly 13 percent of the 18- to 64-year-old working-age population, were running or starting their own business — the highest rate of entrepreneurship reported among 25 developed economies in North America, Europe, and Asia.”
Wow! That’s 13% of all workers in the United States. I’ll continue to quote here: “There were seven female entrepreneurs for every 10 males, with entrepreneurship rates peaking in mid-career (20 percent in ages 35 to 44) for men and early to mid-career (13 percent among both ages 25 to 34 and 35 to 44) for women.
Yet, Americans in the 55- to 64-year-old age group emerged as the fastest-growing segment worldwide.” Ages 55-64… Baby Boomers keep on trucking!
It would be interesting to further study this trend to find out the types of companies that are being hatched. As a web designer, I’ve had the opportunity to see these new or revived business first hand. Health and fitness, attorneys, construction, craft arts and fine artists, cpas, writers and all types of consulting, to name a few.
The article continues:
“Mid-career and senior entrepreneurship makes perfect sense, Corbett said, since mature workers generally have broad experience, a modicum of financial independence, and greater risk tolerance. Regardless of age, he said, entrepreneurship is an attainable goal.”
If you are looking to start a new business check out these places in the MetroWest area of Boston:
Middlesex Community College has opened an Innovation Development & Entrepreneur Assistance Center in Henderson Hall on its Bedford campus. The IDEA Center connects students with resources and expertise to help organize, launch and manage successful new ventures. Its speaker series is open to the public.
TechSandBox, an innovation incubator in Hopkinton, provides programs geared both toward technology-based startups and general business topics such as marketing and financing, said founder and CEO Barbara Finer.”
Mentioned in the article is new entrepreneur Ms. Yin, an MBA student at Babson, who used the accelerator program to develop her company. “In addition to support from Babson, including three months of free office space through its Hatchery Program, Yin and her husband have attended workshops organized by MassChallenge and benefited from several state government resources.”
Another MetroWest town, Shrewsbury, through its Public Library, has hosted monthly meetings known as the Greenhouse for Entrepreneurs, where the public can share their ideas. Free, its facilitated with the help of Krosslink.org, which aims to foster local entrepreneurship through public libraries.