Dias nummer 1

1
Successful Immigrant Entrepreneurs in
Copenhagen
A presentation of an analysis of 30 best practice
immigrant enterprises in Greater Copenhagen with
special emphasis on methodology and deciding
criteria for best practice
2
Successful Immigrant Entrepreneurs in
Copenhagen

• Presentation of the research and methodology
• Presentation and discussion about deciding
  criteria
• Presentation of some of the results from the
  research and a few business examples

3
Research aims and focus

• The aim of the research has been to gather
  knowledge about how immigrant entrepreneurs
  create successful businesses. This knowledge
  about possible ways to success and about skills
  and strategies used by successful entrepreneurs
  can be used in our advising of the many lesser
  successful immigrant entrepreneurs.
• The main research focus has been
• 1. Are there any common denominators regarding
  successful immigrant entrepreneurs skills,
  strategies and praxis?
• 2. In what ways do these common skills,
  strategies and praxis distinguish the
• successful entrepreneurs from the
  lesser successful?
• 3. To what extend are the successful immigrant
  entrepreneurs creating enterprises
• with good working conditions for
  employees as well as for the selves?

4
Research questions and themes

• Choice of sector and type of business?
• Access to start-up capital and capital infusion?
• Strategies and tools used in the daily management
  as well in future development of the enterprise?
• Degree of innovativeness of the
  enterprise/business concept?
• What type of network do they participate in and
  have access to?
• Advisory sources from where do they get advice?
  

• Educational background and the degree of match
  between educational career and type of
  enterprise?
• Prior working experience and the degree of match
  between former career and type of enterprise?
• Knowledge about Denmark, Danes and Danish
  language?
• Motivational factors for becoming self-employed?
• Personnel recruitment methods and profile and
  nationality of employees?

5
Informants and methodology

• Successful immigrant entrepreneurs/enterprises
• 30 successful immigrant entrepreneurs have
  answered a questionnaire. Of these 15 have been
  in-depth interviewed. The qualitative in-depth
  interview have in most cases been combined with a
  visit to the actual enterprise.
• Employees
• 6 employees have been interviewed about their
  job, their background, how they got the job,
  their evaluation of their job and the enterprise
  regarding working conditions and future
  self-development and career possibilities within
  the enterprise.
• Experts and other persons with special knowledge
  within the field
• EVUs business advisors have been interviewed
  about their knowledge and experience with both
  successful and unsuccessful immigrant
  entrepreneurs. Further more there have been
  carried out interviews with Amin Bahar
  coordinator in a network for ethnic business men
  and Malene Kier HR manager for 7-Eleven
  Denmark.

6
Informants and methodology

• Authorities
• There has been carried out interviews with
  relevant authorities within areas such as
  taxation, working condition and environmental
  issues about their experiences with greater
  immigrant enterprises as well as immigrant
  enterprises in general.
• Desk research and statistics
• There has been carried desk research of reports,
  analysis and other publications about immigrant
  entrepreneurs. Very little has been written about
  successful immigrant entrepreneurs in Denmark as
  well as internationally!
• General statistics about conditions and
  characteristics of immigrant entrepreneurs has
  been compared with data from the research to find
  out in what ways the successful entrepreneurs are
  distinct from the general image of immigrant
  entrepreneurs.

7
Deciding criteria

• Immigrant entrepreneurs
• Successful entrepreneurs

8
Deciding criteria

• Immigrant entrepreneurs
• Persons who own a company or were key persons in
  the start up process and who are not born in
  Denmark - or whos parents are not Danish
  citizens born in Denmark.
• Further more the research only includes
  immigrant entrepreneurs from non Western
  countries that will say countries without the
  EU, USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Norway
  and Switzerland. - This is also the target group
  of the EVU project.
• Note! It is political interesting that
  immigrants in the public debate in Denmark are
  mostly only immigrants from non-western
  countries. This is also reflected in projects and
  reports on immigrant entrepreneurs. In Sweden for
  example much research about the subject also
  includes immigrants from western countries. Since
  immigrant entrepreneurs from neighbouring
  countries are often doing well immigrant
  entrepreneur becomes a positive word, where in
  Denmark it has many negative connotations.

9
Deciding criteria

• Successful (immigrant) entrepreneurs
• We chose a combination of classical business
  success criteria as in benchmarking models and
  sociological/anthropological criteria.
• Typical benchmarking criteria
• - Hard Economic growth, effectiveness pr.
  working hour, lawfulness etc.
• - Soft Customer relations, innovation,
  communication between management and
• employees.
• Sociological/anthropological criteria
• - Based on Entrepreneurs own ambitions and
  expectations to his/hers enterprise.
• - Integrational aspects Does work in and with
  the enterprise facilitate or impede
• social inclusion. For example Much work in
  immigrant businesses is not qualifying
• for future career in mainstream businesses.
  

10
Deciding criteria

• Turnover and personal income
• - Turnover should be stabile or growing.
• - The enterprise should provide the entrepreneur
  a personal income with a min. of
• 22.000 a year (before tax).

Im not in it for the money. To manage your own
company is like having a child. Youll do
anything to see it grow up and become healthy and
strong. My motivation for doing this is not to
get a great salary. We, the three owners, only
receive an average salary and we dont get big
great manager cars. Id rather invest the money
in the company. For me the best thing is the
process of starting up and developing the
enterprise.
11
Deciding criteria

• Business activities should be part of the formal
  economy
• - Accounting, payment of VAT, conditions of
  employment etc. should follow official
• legislations and agreements.
• - The enterprise should be legal in general
  terms - saying that we havent looked at
• minor breaches of law, which are in many
  occasions the result of lack of knowledge.

• The lawfulness of the enterprise was selected as
  a criteria for two major reasons
• Talking best practice entrepreneurship illegality
  is problematic since basing a livelihood mainly
  on illegal activities/goods provides little
  socioeconomic security and rarely facilitates
  inclusion in mainstream society. Informal economy
  might provide the first step out of socioeconomic
  isolation and deprivation. But here, again, the
  definite success criteria must to be able to
  enter the mainstream economy.
• The public and the media has put much attention
  to immigrant entrepreneurs participation in
  informal economy in Denmark. We wanted to show
  best practice cases the positive side of
  immigrant entrepreneurship where nobody could
  put a finger on anything.

12
Deciding criteria

• Years of existence
• - Some enterprises were chosen because they have
  had a stabile turnover for several
• years.
• - Some enterprises were chosen because they have
  experienced remarkable growth
• but maybe only have existed few years.
• - Minimum was 2 years of existence.

13
Deciding criteria

• Entrepreneurs own expectations and criteria for
  being successful
• Examples some have ambitions of creating big
  enterprises with high growth rates and many
  employees. For others success is just to make a
  living being able to work with things they like.
  Others again are directly explicitly about not
  letting the enterprise grow too big.

14
Research results

• Size and sector
• Many smaller and medium sized ethnic enterprises
  but no really big ones. The most successful
  ethnic entrepreneurs in Copenhagen has a 7-16
  million yearly turnover and 30 to 50 employees.
• Most successful ethnic entrepreneurs seems to be
  operating in sectors like whole sale and service
  (cleaning, travel agencies, business consulting,
  interpretation etc.)

15
Research results

• Education and work experience
• Most of the successful ethnic entrepreneurs are
  well educated. 32 have a masters degree or the
  like. Only very few have only primary schooling.
• In general the entrepreneurs educational career
  matches the type of enterprise they start up. 74
  think their educational skills are important in
  their managing of their enterprise.
• Most of them had had several years of (relevant)
  working experience when starting up their own
  enterprise. Often within the same sector as they
  choose to start up.
• From their prior jobs they have brought with them
  important experience, sector knowledge and a
  network of suppliers and customers.

16
Research results

• Class based vs. ethnic resources
• The successful ethnic entrepreneurs are in the
  managing of their enterprises mainly using their
  class based resources such as education, working
  experience and mainstream business skills and
  tools.
• During the start up process, however, they have
  often used more ethnic based resources. Family
  and co-ethnics have in the beginning often been
  primary sources to capital, labour, suppliers and
  customers.
• Around 2/3 are actively using their ethnical
  background in their business concept (examples to
  come next slides)
• Conclusion For the great part of immigrant
  entrepreneurs the way to success goes via a
  combination of actively using their ethnic
  resources and managing their company using
  mainstream skills and class based resources.

17
Business examples

• Anadolu
• Whole sale of meat and catering products

18
Business examples

• Atlantis Travels
• Luxury, diving and other tailor made travels
  mostly to Egypt.

19
Business examples

• Truemax
• Scandinavia's largest and leading 3D academy

20
Business examples

• Stefanos Deli
• Combined deli, café and organic grocery store.

21
Business examples

• Le Le nha hang
• Vietnamese restaurant with a trendy urban
  concept.

22
Research Results

• Biggest barriers seems to be mental!

Interviewed successful ethnic entrepreneurs
think that the biggest barriers for many ethnic
entrepreneurs are mental. Too few have the
courage to count on unique and untraditional
ideas when starting up enterprises. They dont
believe in own skills and many simply dont think
it is possible to get success as an immigrant
entrepreneur in Denmark!