20 Dec 2013
What are students’ entrepreneurial intentions and activities across the world? This question is of highest social and economic relevance. Students represent the entrepreneurs of tomorrow; their entrepreneurial plans and activities will shape tomorrow’s societies and the overall economic well-being. Hence, it is of highest interest for different stakeholders such as academics, practitioners, educators, policy-makers, and last but not least students how many students intend to pursue an entrepreneurial career and how those entrepreneurial intentions come into being.
The GUESSS project (Global Universiy Entrepreneurial Spirit Students' Survey) addresses this question on a global level. For that purpose, the 6th data collection wave in the history of GUESSS was conducted in 34 countries at more than 700 universities between October 2013 and March 2014.
This led to a dataset with more than 109’000 complete student responses. This report provides an in-depth analysis of this unique dataset, shedding a nuanced light on students’ entrepreneurial intentions and concrete activities.
We focused in particular on crosscountry comparisons, whereby we also consider numerous other relevant aspects, such as gender and specific social and cultural determinants. Importantly, we also compare our results to those based on the GUESSS data collection in 2011 which allows us to recognize important trends and developments.
Most importantly, we see that entrepreneurial intentions in most countries seem to be stagnating or have even declined compared to 2011. The 2013/2014 edition of GUESSS would not have been possible without the invaluable effort and support of all country teams and of course without the students who responded to our survey invitation.
Thank you. We are already looking forward to the next edition of GUESSS in 2015/16.
Studentisches Unternehmertum in der Schweiz: Erkenntnisse aus GUESSS 2013/2014
Student Entrepreneurship Across the Globe: A Look at Intentions and Activities
International Report of the GUESSS Project 2013/2014
Contact us
Rico Baldegger
Dean/Managing Director/Full Professor UAS
+41 26 429 63 78