The 2007 Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, an annual assessment of entrepreneurship around the world conducted by London Business School and Babson College, is now available for free download. Some of the key findings this year include:

Many low-income countries are exhibiting high rates of early-
stage entrepreneurial activity. The top three hotspots for early-stage entrepreneurship are Thailand, Peru and Colombia. The lowest activity was in Russia, Romania and Latvia.
Among high-income countries, Iceland, Hong Kong and the United States lead the way in early-stage entrepreneurial activity, while the lowest rates were found in Austria, Puerto Rico and Belgium. (I was a little surprised to see Puerto Rico listed in the high-income category.)
In Latin America and the Caribbean, gender differences are relatively small. In high-income countries, though, men are about twice as likely as women to
be involved in early-stage entrepreneurial activity. For countries in Eastern Europe and Central Asia the gender gap is even more pronounced: men are 2.3 times as likely to be early-stage entrepreneurs as women.
The vast majority of entrepreneurial businesses offer products or services that people are already familiar with. Only around 10% offer products or services that are considered new or unfamiliar to all of their potential customers.
The report debunks some of the common misconceptions that high number of entrepreneurial businesses, particularly new ones, fail. One of the common reasons for the misconception uncovered by the study is that, on average, about one-third of businesses that were “discontinued” actually continued in some other form or with different ownership. Also, financial problems were cited as the reason for quitting the business by no more than 55% of all respondents.
While regulatory red tape has very little impact on the launch of microbusinesses, it is a significant barrier to the creation of high-growth, ambitious enterprises. Previous studies have shown a strong link between high-potential entrepreneurship and subsequent economic growth.

Failure seems to be an inevitable part of the entrepreneurial process. Many of the greatest entrepreneurial success stories had failures early in their career. In order to make ourselves feel better, it seems, we often try to tell ourselves that failure is something we learn from, but author Barry Moltz says that’s not always true — sometimes failure just sucks. Sometimes, no matter your best efforts, it just doesn’t work out — look for the lesson, and there’s not one there.

In his latest book, Bounce! Failure, Resiliency, and Confidence to Achieve Your Next Great Success (Compare Prices), Moltz explores how we cope with failure, as well as how to define success on your own terms.

I’ve arranged for an exclusive excerpt from the book entitled Failure Makes Choices”, and caught up with Barry for an interview in which he shares his unconventional wisdom on success and failure. Enjoy!

Reading through my daily small business news clippings, I came across a newly released survey from the Tenon Forum, a UK-based small business think tank, which said that almost 20% of small business owners have no idea how much money their business owes. Half of those surveyed said their business owed money, and more than a quarter had moderate or high personal debt as well.

Managed well, debt financing can be a great way to finance growth without losing ownership control. It can also be a way to make it through times of slow cash flow. But far too many entrepreneurs simply “bury their head in the sand” regarding their debts, hoping that somehow on the back end they’ll make enough money to pay it all back. And that can be disastrous for your business.

Financial statements are more than just a few piece of papers to give to lenders and investors. They are, in fact, an essential management tool for your business. If you’re not already doing so, today is a good day to learn about Using Financial Statements As a Management Tool.

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Scholar R. B. Reich considers leadership, management ability, and team-building as essential qualities of an entrepreneur. This concept has its origins in the work of Richard Cantillon in his Essai sur la Nature du Commerce en Général (1755) and Jean-Baptiste Say (1803) in his Treatise on Political Economy.

A more generally held theory is that entrepreneurs emerge from the population on demand, from the combination of opportunities and people well-positioned to take advantage of them. An entrepreneur may perceive that s/he is among the few to recognize or be able to solve a problem. In this view, one studies on one side the distribution of information available to would-be entrepreneurs (see Austrian School economics) and on the other, how environmental factors (access to capital, competition, etc.) change the rate of a society’s production of entrepreneurs.

A prominent theorist of the Austrian School in this regard is Joseph Schumpeter, who saw the entrepreneur as innovator.

The word “entrepreneur” is a loanword from French. In French the verb “entreprendre” means “to undertake”, with “entre” coming from the Latin word meaning “between”. In French a person who performs a verb, has the ending of the verb changed to “eur”, comparable to the “er” ending in English.

Enterprise is similar to and has roots in, the French word “entrepris”, which is the past particple of “entreprendre”.

Entrepreneuse is simply the French feminine counterpart of “entrepreneur”.

According to Miller, it is one who is able to begin, sustain, and when necessary, effectively and efficiently dissolve a business entity.

An entrepreneur is a person who operates a new enterprise or venture and assumes some accountability for the inherent risks. The term is a loanword from French and was first defined by the Irish economist Richard Cantillon. A female entrepreneur is sometimes known as an entrepreneuse.

The modern myths about entrepreneurs include the idea that they assume the risks involved to undertake a business venture, but that interpretation now appears to be based on a false translation of Cantillon’s and Say’s ideas. The research data indicate that successful entrepreneurs are actually risk averse. They are successful because their passion for an outcome leads them to organize available resources in new and more valuable ways. In doing so, they are said to efficiently and effectively use the factors of production. Those factors are now deemed to include at least the following elements: land (natural resources), labour (human input into production using available resources), capital (any type of equipment used in production i.e. machinery), intelligence and knowledge, and creativity. A person who can efficiently manage these factors in pursuit of a real opportunity to add value in the long-run, may expand (future prospects of larger firms and businesses), and become successful.

Entrepreneurship is often difficult and tricky, as many new ventures fail. Entrepreneur is often synonymous with founder. Most commonly, the term entrepreneur applies to someone who creates value by offering a product or service. Entrepreneurs often have strong beliefs about a market opportunity and organize their resources effectively to accomplish an outcome that changes existing interactions.

Some observers see them as being willing to accept a high level of personal, professional or financial risk to pursue that opportunity, but the emerging evidence indicates they are more passionate experts than gamblers. Entrepreneur Don Sheelen says that “An entrepreneur without passion is like a enuch without charm, both are seeking the prize, but neither is equipped properly.”

Business entrepreneurs are viewed as fundamentally important in the capitalistic society. Some distinguish business entrepreneurs as either “political entrepreneurs” or “market entrepreneurs,” while social entrepreneurs’ principal objectives include the creation of a social and/or environmental benefit.