{"id":628,"date":"2011-11-28T12:07:51","date_gmt":"2011-11-28T02:07:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.unsw.edu.au\/knowledgetoday\/?p=628"},"modified":"2011-11-28T12:08:27","modified_gmt":"2011-11-28T02:08:27","slug":"fear-of-failure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.unsw.edu.au\/BTOpinion\/blog\/2011\/11\/fear-of-failure\/","title":{"rendered":"Fear of failure or failure to start?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (CIE) | CIE Blog<\/a>
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

There have been recent critiques about What’s Killing Australian Innovation (see our\u00a0commentary<\/a> on a recent talk by ASB Dean Alec Cameron, and related ABC radio interview<\/a>). At this week’s TiECon Australia<\/a>, TiE Sydney chapter president Dilip Rao commented that Australia is ranked 18th globally for having a ‘fear of failure’ (first being worst). Based on the GEM Global Report 2010<\/a>, Australia actually shows up worse, ranked 16th out of 59 countries.While that sounds quite bad, the spread of the scores shows that Australia is nonetheless close to the average, and not that much different to, say, Germany (see figure below). The classic benchmark is the US, which is ranked 47, and still not close to being statistically significantly away from average (assuming a normal distribution).<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/div>\n

Fear of Failure: Percentage of 18\u201364 age group with positive perceived opportunities who indicate that fear of failure would prevent them from setting up a business<\/p>\n

Wait a second, but what’s this other variable, called “Entrepreneurial Intention”? Well, it’s defined as the “percentage of 18\u201364 age group (individuals involved in any stage of entrepreneurial activity excluded) who intend to start a business within three years” (p. 63 in the 2010 GEM report). Australia ranks poorly on this one as well (39\/59) if you take the rankings at face value. Interestingly, the US ranks even lower than Australia here (44\/59).<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/div>\n

What the heck is going on?<\/p>\n

My best guess, is that in some countries, entrepreneurship is not a choice, but a way of life. Almost everyone there has to hustle and bustle to feed their family. Meanwhile in the “Innovation-Driven Economies” it’s an optional career choice. So, focusing on the latter, what do we see?<\/p>\n

Well, Australia ranks 6\/23 on the fear of failure measure, but still very close to average for the group (US ranks 20\/23 in this group).\u00a0Australia also ranks 7\/23 on the entrepreneurial intention measure, again still very close to average for the group (US ranks 11 in this group, worse than Australia!).<\/p>\n

=> Claims that Australia has a fear of failure are NOT supported by THIS data<\/a>
\nYours truly,
\nThe Centre for Innovation & Entrepreneurship<\/p>\n

This post first appeared on the CIE Blog<\/a>. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (CIE) | CIE Blog There have been recent critiques about What’s Killing Australian Innovation (see our\u00a0commentary on a recent talk by ASB Dean Alec Cameron, and related ABC radio interview). At this week’s TiECon Australia, TiE Sydney chapter president Dilip Rao commented that Australia is ranked 18th globally for having […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":336,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12785,7],"tags":[12739,4616,12787,12788,12728,12789,12790],"class_list":["post-628","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-entrepreneurship","category-innovation","tag-australia","tag-data","tag-failure","tag-fear","tag-innovation-2","tag-mte","tag-ranking"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.unsw.edu.au\/BTOpinion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/628","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.unsw.edu.au\/BTOpinion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.unsw.edu.au\/BTOpinion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.unsw.edu.au\/BTOpinion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/336"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.unsw.edu.au\/BTOpinion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=628"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.unsw.edu.au\/BTOpinion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/628\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":630,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.unsw.edu.au\/BTOpinion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/628\/revisions\/630"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.unsw.edu.au\/BTOpinion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=628"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.unsw.edu.au\/BTOpinion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=628"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.unsw.edu.au\/BTOpinion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=628"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}