“Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.”

Henry Ford

Small and startup businesses fail. It is a fact of life. Whatever we’ve done before hasn’t worked.  Whatever we are teaching students isn’t working. The purpose of my research is to find out what has worked for people like yourself, the lessons that you have learned, the people you have met, and the mistakes that you have made while in business. More importantly, I’m studying competencies that you deem important and then incorporating them into higher education curriculum.  Hopefully, this could be the key to the success of future entrepreneurs.

The facts are simple, over the past 22 years, startups have been failing in the first year at a mean rate of 21.2%. In the past 16 years, the mean rate of failing after five years is over 51.8%. Despite the best attempts by small business advocacy groups and higher education, the numbers remained unchanged. And this is despite the fact that the number of institutions teaching small business and entrepreneurship courses from the 1980’s to 2003 has increased by 433%. And failures remain unchanged.

Although I’ve been a small business advocate most of my career, I am doing this research for completion of my Doctor of Business Administration Program at Wilmington University in New Castle, DE. I am hoping that my research will uncover competencies that you deem important, have higher educational institutions incorporate these ideas into their curriculum and have a positive effect on the failure rate of startups.

Your participation in this research project is completely voluntary. You may decline altogether or refuse to answer any question. Your responses are completely anonymous and confidential. If you would like to know about my findings and/or would like to talk further about this topic, you can share your email with me. Data from this research will be reported only as a collective combined total.

If you have any questions about this project, feel free to contact me at jock.m.sommese@wilmu.edu or Dr. Kathy Kennedy-Ratajack, Dean of the College of Business, Wilmington University, at kathy.s.kennedy-ratajack@wilmu.edu.

Thank you for your assistance in helping entrepreneurs, our economy, and myself.

Sincerely,

Jock M. Sommese

 D.B.A. Candidate and Researcher

PS. If you have not started a business, you do not need to go any further and thanks for your time. In order to stop receiving any reminders, please go to the bottom of original email where it says:

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