Abstract
Although
research on entrepreneurship across countries has been popular over the last
decade, the factors influencing entrepreneurs are varied and the approaches to
analysis remain limited. Previous studies have helped to define numerous
factors affecting nascent entrepreneurs; however, There are still potential
limitations of the empirically based knowledge collected about nascent
entrepreneurship. Additionally, the
application of traditional statistical methods such as correlation analyses to
entrepreneurship research seems insufficient for analysis of preceding data
covering longer. Prior research
also indicated some limitations of entrepreneurial research, including the lack
of use of macroeconomic factors and the lack of a large number of
countries or longitudinal data on individuals. In this study, we use data from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor
(GEM) to examine 14 factors in 10 countries by employing Kohonen
self-organizing maps (SOM) as a means to identify the patterns that exist
between selected countries and years (from 2011 to 2016). Our results
identified 4 clusters (courageous, experienced, conservative and compensative)
and the features associated with each of these clusters. These results
illustrate some specific patterns of entrepreneurs and show how countries shift
over time.
Keywords: nascent entrepreneur ; entrepreneurial performance ; global entrepreneurship monitor (GEM) ; self-organizing maps (SOM);cross-country study.