Christian Friedl is an associate professor at the Institute for International Management and Entrepreneurship, head of the GEM Austria team and deals with innovation, entrepreneurship and the latest trends on a daily basis. In this Science Story, he takes a look at the Austrian start-up scene.
How many people start a business in Austria? What are their motives? How great is the fear of entrepreneurial failure? How conducive or inhibiting are the general conditions perceived to be? And how does Austria compare internationally as a start-up location?
We address these and many other questions at the Institute of International Management and Entrepreneurship as part of the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM), the largest international comparative study on entrepreneurship. We analyze the dynamics of the domestic business landscape, start-up activity, the population's attitude towards entrepreneurship, special characteristics of entrepreneurs and the necessary framework conditions. We have been conducting this survey for Austria on a regular basis since 2012 and are now able to derive developments, country comparisons and trends for the domestic start-up landscape based on 27,492 surveys and 229 expert interviews. GEM is therefore an early warning system, benchmarking tool and trend barometer all in one.
For example, there are currently signs of recovery in entrepreneurial activity in Austria:
🔎 The rate of start-ups is slowly recovering from the slump at the beginning of the 2020s, even in a European comparison.
💡 Other key indicators such as the rate of established companies have already returned to pre-pandemic levels, ranking fifth in Europe.
The perceived start-up opportunities, motives and image of entrepreneurship from the perspective of the Austrian population also provide interesting insights:
🙃 We can, but we don't have to...: The Austrian population is increasingly seeing start-up opportunities again, but rarely translates these into concrete start-up intentions.
💪 Overall, start-ups in Austria are generally founded on the basis of opportunity, not necessity.
💚 Just under 70% of start-ups pursue sustainable aspects when founding a company.
With regard to ♀️ Female Entrepreneurship, the proportion of young female entrepreneurs has fortunately risen to 44.8%, but there is still a lot to do:
🔎 lower proportions of women in the non-EPU sector, in established companies and in RTI-intensive companies,
🤨 Almost 30% of start-up teams are still purely male,
🤔 Women in Austria are more afraid of entrepreneurial failure, have a significantly lower self-assessment of their own skills and see fewer start-up opportunities.
Our start-up ecosystem receives a "double-edged report card". In the overall assessment of the entrepreneurial ecosystem, Austria is once again in the midfield in both European and international comparison. There are also few changes compared to past surveys - our strengths (such as the excellent support on offer in the start-up phase) have been retained, but so have the weaknesses (e.g. entrepreneurship education). Viewed positively, this can be understood as the resilience of the domestic ecosystem, particularly due to the difficult framework conditions. Viewed more critically, the results can also be understood as resistance to change.
Further results and extensive analyses of the dynamics of the entrepreneurial ecosystem in Austria can be found in the current GEM Austria 2022/23 Report at https://www.gemaustria.at. We are currently preparing the survey for the GEM Austria 2024/25 Report.
