How did I select the creative NAGRENTs?

Policy-makers have a strong (but perhaps mistaken?) confidence in the economic benefits of graduates, of business start-ups, and the creative sector. Happily, my personal curiosity about creative NAGRENTs hits all three categories, so hopefully the research will be of interest.

A Retrospective study?

It could be interesting, as may people have already done, to investigate retrospectively the start-ups of successful graduates, but that prevents us from learning about the probably much larger number who don't make the grade.

Another approach would be to seek out those who have not succeeded and investigate them. Quite apart from the tricky question of constitutes success or failure, it could be hard to find such graduates. I am also sceptical anyway (as are many authors) about the value of retrospective investigations. Post-rationalisation is a wonderful thing!

A real-time study of NAGRENTS..  with potential, but steep learning curves

As I am doing a part-time PhD (of up to 7 years!) I decided to do a 'real-time' investigation over 4 years of a selection of creative NAGRENTs who had the potential, and stated intent, to grow a successful business. No starving artists! I would follow them, whatever the outcomes, in order to find out how they coped with the stresses and strains of start-up and the development of their career.

The final important decision was to only include graduates with NO prior start-up experience and fresh from graduation. The reason for this was to  ensure that they would have a steep learning curves to climb - which has already proved to be the case.

Selection criteria

The criteria for selection were:

• Studied a creative subject degree, in the UK
• Starting a UK business in the creative sector, on graduation. 
• Stated intent to succeed and grow.
• No prior start-up experience, and limited employment experience.
• Demonstrated commitment by attending start-up training/support.

and, of course, prepared to be researched in depth for four years!

So,  I was assembling a cohort of young inexperienced creative graduates who were committed to trying to start a business in one of the most competitive sectors in the UK. Could be interesting!

In the next blog I will talk about the big decision - a qualitative or quantitative study?