ACE research briefing paper 006 : Anatomy of new business activity in Australia: Some early observations from the CAUSEE Project

The Comprehensive Australian Study of Entrepreneurial Emergence (CAUSEE) is the largest study of new firm formations ever undertaken in Australia . In a nutshell, CAUSEE aims to uncover the factors that initiate, hinder and facilitate the process of emergence and development of new, independent firms. Through contacts with a random sample of 30,000 Australian households the project has identified and interviewed close to 600 founders of on-going business start-ups – Nascent Firms; i.e., efforts that are under way but have not yet become operating businesses – as well as more than 500 owner-managers of Young Firms – that is, firms that started trading in 2004 or later. Founders of these firms have been taken through a comprehensive telephone interview about the state and development of their start-ups. The project will follow the development of these nascent and young firms over a four year period. This report represents a first release of selected, descriptive findings from the first wave of data analysis. Although some reported findings may have important implications it should be realised that what is presented here represents just a glimpse of the rich academic and practice-orientated output that is expected from the project.