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Entrepreneurship
and Well-being
Exploring the UN Sustainable
Development Goals through the
lenses of GEM and other indicators
Edited by
Slavica Singer · Nataša Šarlija
Miroslav Rebernik · Barbara Bradač Hojnik
Sustainable Development Goals Series
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Slavica Singer • Nataša Šarlija
Miroslav Rebernik
Barbara Bradač Hojnik
Editors
Entrepreneurship
and Well-being
Exploring the UN Sustainable
Development Goals Through
the Lenses of GEM and Other
Indicators
Editors
Slavica Singer Nataša Šarlija
J.J. Strossmayer University in Osijek J.J. Strossmayer University in Osijek
Osijek, Croatia Osijek, Croatia
Miroslav Rebernik Barbara Bradač Hojnik
University of Maribor University of Maribor
Maribor, Slovenia Maribor, Slovenia
ISSN 2523-3084 ISSN 2523-3092 (electronic)
Sustainable Development Goals Series
ISBN 978-3-031-19180-0 ISBN 978-3-031-19181-7 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-19181-7
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Foreword
At first glance, the connection between
entrepreneurship and sustainable devel-
opment may not be immediately obvious
to everyone. In the past, entrepreneur-
ship, in the Global Entrepreneurship
Monitor (GEM) primarily interpreted as
the creation of new ventures, did not
usually mean sustainable development or
sustainable growth, but was associated
with purely economic aspects. The GEM,
the world’s largest and oldest research
consortium for the analysis of entrepreneurial activities, attitudes and
framework conditions, also ignored the issue of sustainable development
for a long time.
This book provides many plausible arguments for the fact that sustain-
able development and entrepreneurship must and can be thought together
in the sense of a “one world” idea. Entrepreneurs, including those who
start new businesses today, are of course important actors who (can)
influence the achievement or failure to achieve the UN’s Sustainable
Development Goals (SDGs). As an example, the type of products of the
new companies and the form of production of these products (can) differ
significantly in terms of sustainability. This applies to the global
v
vi Foreword
perspective, but also to each continent, each individual country and each
individual sub-national region within the countries.
The book is also timely for another reason. The motivation for running
a new venture seems to be changing in many countries, in favor of moti-
vations that are closely related to the achievement of (some of) the SDGs.
Since 2019, the Adult Population Survey (APS) differentiates between
four motivations. One of them is “To make a difference in the world”,
which is quasi-representative for several SDGs—and clearly differs from
the other three classic, more economically oriented motivations for run-
ning a new business. For me, initially surprisingly, the motivation “To
make a difference in the world” received high approval ratings globally in
the first reference year 2019 (across all countries 46% “somewhat or
strongly agree”, as % of surveyed adults with a new business). Significantly,
in most countries this motivation is much more common among younger
founders than older ones and more common among women than men.
The data from the most recent GEM cycle 2021 show that this motiva-
tion to run a business has not lost its popularity even in times of global
crisis (47% agreement on named motivation).
From the perspective of a GEM veteran, another aspect should be
pointed out. The GEM data collected since 1999 (excluding pilot year
1998) now provide such a rich repertoire of empirical data on entrepre-
neurship activities and attitudes themselves, but also on entrepreneurial
framework conditions, that it is obvious to use this treasure trove of data
for the content-related references to the SDGs. Although not all coun-
tries participate in the GEM every year, well over 100 different countries
have taken part over the years, the majority of them in at least five years.
Since the pilot year 1998, there have been 1076 survey waves (sum of
participating countries per year over all years) of the Adult Population
Survey and 940 survey waves of the National Expert Survey (NES). If the
opportunities arising from the use of GEM data at the sub-national level
are also taken into account, the analysis potential is multiplied, also for
the detailed investigation of the relationship between entrepreneurship
and SDGs within a country. In the book, the two chapters on the coun-
try case studies of Slovenia and Spain provide very good illustrative mate-
rial; they are my favored chapters in this book. The presented analysis
primarily covers the “high-income countries” (26 of the total 40 GEM
Foreword vii
countries included in the report), 16 countries alone belong to Europe.
The authors would certainly have wished for greater coverage here, which
may well be achievable in the future. However, since most of the eco-
nomically stronger countries are also those that—in absolute terms cause
the most ecological damage globally (resource consumption, CO emis-
2
sions, etc.)—this shortcoming is less serious. China and Japan, however,
should be included in future editions of such analysis.
To sum it up: the book is an important pioneering work that will
hopefully be followed by further efforts in this direction, both by GEM
national teams and outside GEM.
Leibniz University Hannover Rolf Sternberg
Hannover, Germany
Acknowledgements
Behind this book, there are many people and quite a long timeline of
work on bringing together GEM indicators and UN SDGs.
Our acknowledgments and thanks go to all members of the GEM
community for their dedicated work on researching national entrepre-
neurship, and especially to the members of the GEM Research and
Innovation Advisory Committee 2014–2021 (Nezameddin Faghih, Jian
Gao, Mike Herrington, Jonathan Levie, Ehud Menipaz, Cesare Riillo,
Rolf Sternberg and Rodrigo Varela), who participated in many rounds of
the discussion on the relevance of GEM for monitoring the UN SDGs.
Our acknowledgments and thanks go to the GEM data team led by
Alicia Coduras Martinez.
Our acknowledgments and thanks go to Barbara Bradač Hojnik,
GEM Slovenia; Ana Fernández-Laviada and Mahsa Samsani, GEM
Spain; and Simara Maria de Souza Silveira Greco, GEM Brazil, for pro-
viding three good examples of how GEM indicators are used for moni-
toring national policies towards UN SDGs.
Finally, our acknowledgments and thanks go to Niels Bosma, Senior
Research Advisor at the GEM consortium, for his comments on the pre-
vious version of this manuscript. As always, a critical perspective from
outside the writers’ team helped us be clearer about the book’s purpose
and intended messages to the UN, overall research community, especially
to GEM researchers, and policy makers at international and national levels.
ix
Executive Summary
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are a unique global consen-
sus on issues that everyone (from individuals to institutions) should be
accountable to act on for the well-being of people and the planet. With
this book Entrepreneurship and Well-being—Exploring the UN Sustainable
Development Goals through lenses of GEM and Other Indicators, a group of
researchers from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) takes a
step forward to analyse the capacity of GEM to add value to the global
discussion on well-being and the Sustainable Development Goals.
As a result of the evidence-based analysis conducted and presented in
the book, the points of connection between UN SDGs and GEM con-
ceptual framework, methodology and indicators were identified. Well-
being is an important connecting point that is deeply rooted in both the
UN SDGs and the GEM conceptual framework.
When the UN began diagnosing the state of our planet in 2019 to cre-
ate a platform for identifying targets relevant to the 2050 SDGs, António
Guterres, Secretary-General of the United Nations (UN Environment,
2019: XXVI), emphasised that “(T)he only missing ingredient for success
is our collective resolve”.
We have taken this as a call for collaboration, and the book aims to
show what we, the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor researchers, can
contribute to building collective capacity to achieve this significant shift
in trajectory for achieving well-being for both the people and the planet.
