Contextualizing entrepreneurship: Getting to know the elderly entrepreneur who started out of unemployment.

Abstract: Entrepreneurial motivations are still a relatively undiscovered research field (Carsrud & Brännback, 2010). More specifically there seems to be a gap in the literature about the motivation of older entrepreneurs (Weber & Schaper, 2004). Weber and Schaper (2004) mentioned that this segment will have a growing impact upon national economic performance, policy frameworks, academia and the business community over time. Based on this research gap, the following research question is selected: “ What motivates elderly, unemployed people to start a new venture? And what characterizes them? In order to answer this research question there is chosen to conduct inductive, qualitative research with corresponding semi-structured interviews. Qualitative research is chosen because it can provide insight in the complexity of this social matter. For this relatively sensitive research topic the chosen method is to conduct in-depth, semi-structured interviews for collecting data on individuals’ personal history, perspectives and experiences. This form of research is especially effective in order to acquire a deeper understanding of the matter. In order to be able to interpret and act upon the acquired data, the Gioia method (Gioia et al., 2013) is used to closely analyze the data. The first finding from this research is that self-actualization is the main motivational force for these ‘grey entrepreneurs’ to start their own company out of unemployment. Furthermore, they tend to show employee tendencies within their entrepreneurial career, which characterizes them.