Factors Affecting Attendance at a Global Entrepreneurial Event: A Statistical Analysis of Data Collected Through an Online Registration System.

• Author: Ogruk-Maz, Gokcen

INTRODUCTION

The purpose of this study is to understand the impact of characteristics of registrants on the probability of attending a Global Entrepreneurship Week (GEW) event that intends to build networks and promote connections between entrepreneurs, academicians, investors, and policymakers. The event is held annually in November across the world and is supported by the Global Entrepreneurship Network (GEN) but locally developed and hosted as an event under this larger umbrella organization. Equally as important are GEW's efforts to engage the broader community and help educate them on what entrepreneurs are doing and how enormously they impact our economy and society. From this event, it is hoped that GEW encourages the unleashing of people's ideas and facilitates the next step on their entrepreneurial journey. Understanding certain aspects are a factor of nature and we explore how to exploit those factors through an event that nurtures more activity in our local economy.

Questions we seek to address in this paper are paramount to informing entrepreneurial events and the importance of using registration and participation data to inform the impact of the event. Additionally, we posit that this information is critical in addressing target audiences of the event to ensure it is inclusive in its program, reputation, and marketing efforts to solicit registration to the event and attendance after registration.

For purposes of this discussion, we define an entrepreneur, as influenced by Schumpeter (1934, 1942), as the process of introducing a new product, service, or technology to the market that does not already exist or attempts to disrupt the current market as it is currently experienced. This includes a "pursuit of opportunity beyond resources controlled" as stated by the godfather of entrepreneurship at Harvard Business School, Professor Howard Stevenson (Eisenmann, 2013).

Entrepreneurs come from many different physical and cognitive backgrounds and take this path for various reasons. Literature was reviewed to better understand the process of hosting an entrepreneurial event and the likelihood of attending an event to improve entrepreneurial success. The first stream is centered on the demographics of entrepreneurs in the United States, which is the location of the event presented in the paper. Secondly, we know the importance of these events as it relates to needs of the entrepreneur for business success.

Schilling (2019) presents the traits of entrepreneurs and notes the need to have access to resources. An entrepreneur needs access to capital, innovation resources, education, and generally, a supportive environment that values entrepreneurs. We see this as a critical aspect of entrepreneurs and their ability to succeed. This is not to say that entrepreneurs are not found in areas where support is not significant or developed, but rather that success is greater in those areas where the environment for entrepreneurs is sophisticated and continuously developing. There are many other factors that contribute to registration to the event and subsequently attending the event. The conversion rate of registration to participating in the event is notably a challenge for event organizers. To date, research has been conducted by Dr. Robert Cialdini on the psychological ways to increase event registration. While this is very important information, it fails to address the attendee profile and time of registration.

We understand that some entrepreneurs may attend a conference or event to save a business from failure. This may come as a directive or possibly just encouragement from investors or other business partners. Noting this is Leonard Kim (2016) in his Inc. discussion in which he specifically states attending a conference could save your business. With upward of 30% of startups failing in the first 24 months, the answer may be found in attending these events. The goal of attendance is to gain valuable business knowledge, learn about possible resources to support the business, and network with other entrepreneurs who have been in the trenches at some point in the business journey.

Networking

We posit that access to resources is a very necessary component to success as an entrepreneur. The process of gaining access to resources comes in many forms. Looking at the best way to bridge aspiring entrepreneurs with resources available to them can be done through networks which can develop as a result of event attendance. Developing networks is critical to the success of an entrepreneur, again, so they can leverage these network resources in securing financial support, marketing/social media development, and gaining knowledge about entrepreneurial processes. These processes learned may range from setting up the business model to learning how to assess the added value of the new business venture. Women entrepreneurs need networks to be able to be successful (Kumar, 2019). In addition to building networks for general knowledge sharing purposes, it is also beneficial for accessing financing.

Attending entrepreneurial events has numerous benefits, as suggested to this point. In this paper, we first aim to understand the demographics of registrants and how various characteristics of registrants affect their attendance at the event. In the next section, we present the overview of the Global Entrepreneurship Week event in Fort Worth, Texas, from its inception to the time of this paper. Second, we cluster both attendees and non-attendees who work for a start-up, small business, or entrepreneurial venture to find similarities among data and group them into clusters that share similar characteristics. Next, we summarize the data and explain the methodology used in this paper. We then present the results of our empirical study. We conclude with a discussion and address the limitations of the study suggestions for further research.

Overview of GEW

The Global Entrepreneurship Network operates an array of programs in 180 countries aimed at making it easier for anyone, anywhere to start and scale a business. One such program or event is Global Entrepreneurship Week held each November to catalyze the work being done every day into a central event globally. The week has grown and now boasts events held in 180 countries with 20,000 partners hosting over 40,000 activities that attract 10 million people (https://genglobal.org/gew).

On the local level, the Fort Worth GEW was reinvigorated in 2018, just 4 months prior to the November event. This became a grassroots effort led by two higher education institutions in the city and many community volunteers. Serving as volunteers were members of the city economic development team, local entrepreneurs, non-profit organizations that serve entrepreneurs, and networking experts. The planning process took the form of a distributed model with a call being sent to request proposals for events, speakers, or workshops. The event proposals were reviewed by a committee formed from the volunteers and accepted proposals were notified to plan the event and communicate with the organizing team. The use of Eventbrite created...