Pennsylvania New Firms Survey

Prototype for the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor

Reynolds, Paul D. and Steven F. Freeman, Pennsylvania New Firm Survey (Appalachian Regional Commission 1987) Four volume book:

• Volume 1: Executive Summary, State of New Firms in Pennsylvania (43 p)
• Vol 2: New Firm Contributions to Pennsylvania (138 p)
• Vol 3: Enterprise Development Companies Compared with Typical New Firms (83 p)
• Vol 4: Methodological Appendix (68 p)
• Complete electronic Methodological Appendix (537 pages) and Data Set.

The Pennsylvania New Firm Survey (PNFS) was a major research project, the largest ever at Wharton at the time. The subsequent four-volume study that emerged detailed:

• extent of new firm development in Pennsylvania, including number, types, size, growth trajectory
• entrepreneurial behavior and attitudes
• helps and hindrances
• new firm contributions
• regional context and how that impacts entrepreneurship; and the
• role of government and economic development agencies.

The research was also by far the most rigorous (response rates > 80%) and extensive entrepreneurship research ever yet conducted anywhere, and helped propel development of entrepreneurship from a sporadically offered course by adjunct faculty, to a universally accepted business and policy field.

It has remained to this day widely utilized as a Survey Research Archetype. Most important, PNFS served as a prototype for the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor which has become the world's foremost study of entrepreneurship, the world’s richest resource of information on the subject, publishing a range of global, national and 'special topic' reports on an annual basis for the United Nations, World Economic Forum, World Bank, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development and other organizations around the world.

Through a vast, centrally coordinated, internationally executed data collection effort, GEM is able to provide high quality information, comprehensive reports and interesting stories, which greatly enhance the understanding of the entrepreneurial phenomenon. GEM measures:

  ● entrepreneurial behavior and attitudes, and

  ● impact of regional and national context on entrepreneurship.

The information gained, carefully analyzed by local GEM researchers, allows a deep understanding of the environment for entrepreneurship and provides valuable insights, including why are some regions, states and countries are more entrepreneurial than others. In numbers, GEM comprises ● 18 years of data ● 500+ specialists in entrepreneurship research  ● 200,000+ interviews a year ● 300+ academic and research institutions ● 100+ countries ● 200+ funding institutions.