Company founders are important agents in business economics. I investigated entrepreneurs who founded successful, long-standing and high-growth companies. The data include 402 Finnish founder entrepreneurs who had founded a company and had been awarded the Finnish title of neuvos during the period 1917-2015 (i.e., since the beginning of Finnish independence). So far only few longitudinal studies have been presented on company founders in Finland.
This study focuses on the era of industrialism in Finland and addresses the following research questions. First, what kind of entrepreneur groups are identified in different phases of industrialism when studying the backgrounds, education and work careers of founders of successful and long-standing business enterprises in Finland? Second, how has Finnish founder entrepreneurship changed as an historical phenomenon?
I identified four main entrepreneur types: self-made man, practical entrepreneur, educated entrepreneur and business entrepreneur. These types serve to illustrate what kind of people founded enterprises in different periods of industrialism. The main result is that after the liberalization of economic life (1860-70s), highly successful company founders came from all kinds of social backgrounds. In this data set self-made men were the most common in the first period (enterprises founded 1875-1913), practical entrepreneurs in the second period (enterprises founded 1914-1939), educated entrepreneurs in the third period (enterprises founded 1940-1959), and business entrepreneurs in the fourth period (enterprises founded 1960-1990). Studying company founders afforded many insights into entrepreneurship and the development of Finnish economy and society. This study showed that business founding as a phenomenon changed during the era of industrialism, but unchanging characteristics can be discerned throughout the research period. Entrepreneurship is a very personal phenomenon, but at the same time it is inextricably linked to different phases in the development of an economy. Understanding entrepreneurship requires simultaneously considering these phenomena.