Kelly Shaver, president of MindCette, on the Entrepreneurial Mindset Project led by the Allan Gray Orbis Foundation and Global Entrepreneurship Research Network in partnership with the MindCette. Presented at the Global Entrepreneurship Congress in Johannesburg, South Africa.

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ENTREPRENEURIAL MINDSET PROJECT
Kelly G. Shaver
President, MindCette®, LLC

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Why study entrepreneurs?
• Even slowly-growing entrepreneurial companies create jobs
• Policy-makers would like to support this economic development
• But there are significant failure rates
• Top three reasons for failure (CB Insights):
• No market need
• Ran out of cash
• Not the right team

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Individual factors to consider
• Reasons to create a company
• Broad personality dispositions
• Narrow individual traits
• Cognitive processes
• Behavioral predispositions that support action
• Aspects of persistence
• Resilience in the face of failure

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Why another test? (I)
Construct ASTEE EMP GET2 OURS
Achievement x x x
Action orientation x x x
Autonomy x x x
Creativity x x x
Locus of control x x x
Risk acceptance x x x
Self-confidence x x x
ASTEE = EU Assessment tools and indicators for entrepreneurship education.
EMP = US Entrepreneurial mindset profile
GET2 = UK General measure of enterprising tendency, v. 2

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Why another test? (II)
Construct ASTEE EMP GET2 OURS
Adaptability x
Coachability x
Curiosity x
Financial motives x
Grit x
Innovation x
Metacognition x
Normative structure x
Opportunity recog. x
Personal motives x

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Current status of the project
• Pilot testing with undergraduate entrepreneurship students
• Large-scale pilot in South Africa (N = 600)
• Preliminary analysis
• Females and males differ
• Checking for skewness, across items and within people
• Wordings may need to be made more extreme