Entrepreneurship and self-employment for mature-aged people
Mature-aged entrepreneurship is the process whereby people aged 50+ participate in business start-ups. The mature-aged entrepreneur is often referred to as the seniorpreneur, latepreneur, third-age entrepreneur, grey entrepreneur, late-career, or old entrepreneur. Such entrepreneurship is a prospective policy option to prolong the working lives of older people, reduce older-age unemployment, and enhance the social inclusion of older individuals. Many older people may wish to remain economically active in order to maintain a lifestyle or choose self-employment as a flexible alternative to organisational employment. Many believe entrepreneurship is a young person’s game, yet studies show that the average age of successful start-up entrepreneurs is 45 (Azoulay et al., 2020).
Australian mature-aged entrepreneurs contribute $11.9 billion per annum to the Australian economy in over 379,000 businesses. They launch approximately 14,000 new businesses each year and actively contribute to fiscal, social, health, and active ageing outcomes in their communities. Thirty-four per cent of all young businesses in Australia are now led by mature-aged entrepreneurs, identifying mature-aged entrepreneurship as the fastest growing sector of entrepreneurship. In this presentation we look at advantages and disadvantages of mature-aged entrepreneurship, including highlights such as hybrid entrepreneurship, mentorship and social innovation. We also provide tips for mature aged entrepreneurs.
After more than a decade in private enterprise Alex Maritz entered academia full-time. Previous roles included Chief Operating Officer of Sony Playstation and Managing Director of Blockbusters Entertainment, National Sales Manager at Boots Pharmaceuticals and Glaxo SmithKline.
Alex is the recipient of Stanford Technology Ventures and Global Innovation Management Scholarships and internationally awarded finalist in the Entrepreneurship Education Award from the United States Association of Small Business and Entrepreneurship. Being a recipient of an Australian Learning and Teaching Citation for excellence in entrepreneurship education, Alex also received Faculty excellence awards in learning & teaching and research. He is the recipient of numerous best paper and esteemed paper awards from leading academic conferences and journals and sits on the editorial board for leading journals in the discipline.
Having procured in excess of $ 3.8 million in external research grants and consultancies (including Chief Investigator of an ARC Grant in Biodevices), Alex has published over 200 scholarly reviewed articles in entrepreneurship and innovation and supervised 26 successful higher degree research completions (including 12 PhDs).
Alex is the Vice-President of the International Association of Organizational Innovation (USA), and current and previous Visiting Professor appointments include Saarland University (Germany), Chan Jung University (Taiwan), HuaQiao University (China) and RMIT (Vietnam).
Current interests include the development of cross-disciplinary entrepreneurship, Australian leadership of research and engagement on Senior Entrepreneurship, PhD supervision, start-up consulting and international engagement with leading and prominent entrepreneurship ecosytems, mentorship, networks and collaborations.