Business Opportunities Weblog

Older Entrepreneurs Are A Better Bet

By on January 6, 2011 in Ideas

Today many of the successful entrepreneurs we might think of are young. For example, the founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg. However,that is not necessarily true. According to The Huffington Post, a series of studies have shown that it’s not the younger generation that’s driving our growth.

Research by the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) shows that entrepreneurs over the age of 35 accounted for 80 percent of “total entrepreneurial activity” in 2009, meaning the planning, setting up, and managing of new businesses. Entrepreneurs under 35, on the other hand, were responsible for only 19.1 percent of entrepreneurial activity, the research finds.

And gray entrepreneurs outpacing green ones isn’t an isolated trend that’s only occurred in the past few years. “In every single year from 1996 to 2007, Americans between the ages of 55 and 64 had a higher rate of entrepreneurial activity than those aged 20-34,” says Dane Stangler, a research manager at Kauffman. She argues in a paper that the decline of lifetime employment, longer lifespan, and the effect of the current recession are all contributing to increases in entrepreneurial activity amongst older generations.

Photo by Kevin Dooley

entrepreneur trends

Angela Shupe has added 5,783 posts to Business Opportunities Weblog.

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  • http://n.a. Cindy Hawkins

    Huzzah, huzzah! And how about: we ‘greypreneurs’ possess steady, dedicated effort, a real sense of what can work over the long haul, a more philosophical attitude, and…life experience. Don’t get me wrong. I am all for young business people going after their dreams, but I’m not at all certain the best business climate is what one economist called a juvenocracy! Perhaps a savvy under 35 honcho might do well to partner up with some of us – receive the benefit of our wisdom, while we get to make use of THEIR good energy! With both those factors going on – could we go places or what??

  • http://bertanyajawab.blogspot.com Persistent

    Thanks the informations

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