Research data from Australia’s largest-ever study of business start-ups was released to the public today by QUT and Innovation Minister Christopher Pyne.
The data release is accompanied by short videos explaining the data set and illustrating some of the important research findings that it has yielded so far.
“This data release is a good example of the open access approach to data that the Australian Government is advocating in the National Innovation and Science Agenda,” Mr Pyne said.
Led by Professor Per Davidsson, from QUT Business School, the study, titled the Comprehensive Australian Study of Entrepreneurial Emergence (CAUSEE), followed large samples of young firms and on-going business start-up attempts in five waves of data collection from 2007 to 2013.
Professor Davidsson, who heads the Australian Centre Entrepreneurship Research (ACE) at QUT, said the CAUSEE project had already yielded a lot of new knowledge.
“We have disseminated our findings through doctoral dissertations, policy-oriented reports and scholarly journal articles. We have added the short videos as a novel way of fulfilling our mission to make research findings accessible and useful to a broader audience,” Professor Davidsson said.
“But there is room for more. The dataset is so rich that a small group of researchers cannot possibly make use of all its potential.
“By making CAUSEE data publicly available we are confident that researchers across several disciplines and organisations will develop many new insights from these unique data. That’s why we have de-identified and obtained ethical clearance for public release.”
Innovation Minister Christopher Pyne said Australia’s latest innovation system report showed that start-ups added 1.4 million jobs to the economy from 2006-2011, highlighting the importance of innovation for jobs.
“This Australian-first dataset gives us an unprecedented opportunity to understand how entrepreneurs tick in Australia, which can only improve industry policy," he said.
ACE undertook the CAUSEE study with support from the Australian Research Council, NAB, BDO, and the Australian Government Department of Industry, Innovation and Science.
The data and documentation are available at http://eprints.qut.edu.au/49327/
Sketchbook videos presenting CAUSEE data and research findings are available at http://ow.ly/XLUAx .
QUT is one of five Australian universities that have come together to form the Australian Technology Network of Universities (ATN).
Media contacts:
Niki Widdowson, QUT Media, 07 3138 2999 or n.widdowson@qut.edu.au
After hours: Rose Trapnell, 0407 585 901 or media@qut.edu.au
