Partner Article

Regional entrepreneurs' motives unveiled

The motivations which lead to business start ups in the region were revealed this week at a workshop in Newcastle.

The special workshop, led by a group of entrepreneurship students from Newcastle University Business School, aimed to explore motivation among entrepreneurs.

The agenda for the day’s events involved local entrepreneurs working with business development groups to explore reasons and barriers for entrepreneurship in the North East.

Led by Dr Chris Ivory from Newcastle University Business School, Amelia Henderson, David Findlay and Steve Ho, from the Innovation, Creativity and Entrepreneurship (ICE) programme, analysed the motivations of entrepreneurs from fifteen fledgling businesses in the region in the hope of reducing barriers to starting up and encouraging more entrepreneurship in the region.

The nine month study revealed that the most popular intrinsic motivations were ‘wanting to be my own boss’ combined with a ‘love/passion for what I do’ whilst extrinsic factors that proved popular were ‘money’ and ‘work/life balance’.

Perceived barriers to starting up were ‘finance’ and ‘lack of preparation’ closely followed by ‘legislation’ and ‘time constraints’. It was found that barriers to industry in some cases reinforced motivation and the more risk involved, the more likely the individual is to strive to overcome all barriers.

Christine Dryden from Business Link, who attended the workshop, said: “People who want to start a business will do it regardless. They will do it anyway, whether there is advice or support available to them or not.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ruth Mitchell .