Planning Entrepreneurship –A Viable Option for the 21st Century Graduate

Abstract

According to the Euromonitor Global Market Research article published on the 2oth of April, 2010, Finland is one of the countries that have a higher proportion of unemployed graduates due to the problem of skills mismatch. There is a possibility that a time will come when many graduates may choose to return to further education rather than be unemployed while seeking for employment in an unfavourable economic climate. Being a business management student interested in entrepreneurship, the researcher chose to research into this field putting emphases on the barriers that deter graduates in taking entrepreneurship planning through self-establishment as an option after graduation.

With emphasis on this research, data has been collected from primary sources, secondary sources, and tertiary sources. Primary source data involved the use of an in-depth interview and questionnaire. Secondary sources of data were obtained from scientific articles and journals from Emerald, Elsevier Science Direct, Ebrary, published theses and other electronic publications. Dictionaries, Wikipedia, the Encyclopedia Britannica, and Statistics Finland were used as the source of the tertiary data collected. In analysing the data gathered, both quantitative (Predictive Analyses Software Statistics) and qualitative methods were used.

From the research results, it was observed that the barriers to entrepreneurship are in many forms and defining a situation as a barrier depends on the individual. In some of the results obtained from the interviews and questionnaires, there were slight differences and similarities. Moreover, it was discovered that establishing a new business in Finland is relatively easy but according to the research the reason why many unemployed graduates are reluctant to enter into entrepreneurship planning as expressed by interviewees were the fear or risks, inexperience, poor networking skills and inadequacy of confidence.