What it means to be green: An examination of early stage environmental and sustainability focused firms

This paper takes a closer look at ‘green’ ventures that are established with environmental sustainability as a focus of their opportunity or their operation. The paper examines who becomes a ‘green’ entrepreneur (GEs), what their ventures look like compared to others (nonGE), and what problems or opportunities they face because of this. We will provide Australian empirical evidence across all types of start-ups, using data from the Comprehensive Australian Study of Entrepreneurial Emergence (CAUSEE). This longitudinal data set, which was collected in four annual waves 2007-11, uniquely allows the analysis of entrants at two stages of development. These are the random samples of Nascent firms (625 cases) – which are in the process of being created but not yet established in the market place – and Young firms (559 cases) – which have been operational for up to four years. In addition a purposeful sample of high potential firms was made to supplement the random sample. This oversample consists of both high potential Nascent firms (106 cases), and high potential Young firms (120 cases). The data is further explained in the Appendix. For more comprehensive accounts of the CAUSEE data collection, please refer to Davidsson, Steffens, and Gordon (2011) and/or the CAUSEE User Manual (Australian Centre for Entrepreneurship Research, 2012). In order to develop a richer understanding of GE, beyond the analysis of quantitative data, this paper presents qualitative responses to green issues. This comprises a number of direct comments made by green entrepreneurs developing new firms about the decisions they make, and their attitude to specific topics including how environmental opportunity and environmental policy has influenced their development1.No Full Tex