The Entrepreneur

2Quantifying Entrepreneurship, Understanding the Entrepreneurial Role

2.1. Basic principles: the OECD’s model

Entrepreneurship has been quantified only fairly recently, since the 2000s. Formerly, it essentially involved counting the number of businesses created and identifying the profile of the entrepreneur (sex, age, sector of activity, level of study, etc.). For a few years, international organizations have been trying to better understand the phenomenon of entrepreneurship in all its complexity, primarily to establish public policy measures that meet the needs of aspiring entrepreneurs, whatever their motives.

Entrepreneurship is a polymorphous economic and social fact, which makes it difficult to quantify. A number of questions must be asked immediately:

1. – many existing models make it possible to establish a theoretical framework for the analysis of entrepreneurship. How does awareness of these various models influence the way that entrepreneurship is quantified?
2. – with this in mind, these models attempt to answer various questions: what is the profile of the entrepreneur? What are his motives?
3. – quantifying entrepreneurship is, however, necessary if we want to get a sense of the phenomenon and guide the public policy measures established to support it;
4. – quantifying entrepreneurship also means having a better understanding of its impact on the economic environment, first and foremost in terms of the creation of activities and jobs;
5. – quantifying entrepreneurship also ...