Photo by Jonathan Talbot, World Resources Institute
A few weeks ago the 2008 World Entrepreneurship Summit took place in London. At the summit one of the founders Dr Rebecca Harding, launched a report looking at the important role of entrepreneurship in stimulating economic development.
The report recognises that entrepreneurs are crucial in creating economic growth, but raises questions as to how this economic growth will “create a sustainable future for the world”.
For example, India has a fast growing economy which grew by 9.2% last year, but the level of poverty for the vast majority of Indian citizens is still high, where they live below $1 a day the UN’s Development Programme Benchmark.
Because of the nature of entrepreneurship, it’s ability to open up new markets, use innovation to it’s advantage and be innovative, resourceful and turn opportunities into feasible markets, entrepreneurs must be used to generate economic development.
However the report goes on to point out that at this moment in time we are struggling to build entrepreneurial cultures and thus not using entrepreneurs to their full potential. Reasons for this failing are down to governments, leaders in business and trend setters inability to nurture, support and offer resources to help entrepreneurs develop.
Rebecca Harding talks of the entrepreneurial ecosystem, which sets out the stages a entrepreneur will go through as they develop and grow. I have summarized these in the diagram below.
view the entrepreneurial ecosystem diagram at full size
The ecosystem is a cycle, going through the stages of entrepreneurs starting out, growing and developing and finally re-investing in the process.
The rest of the report talks about the the relevance and importance of developing the ecosystem, drawing on examples from across the globe for each of the different stages.
The ecosystem has the ability to bridge the gaps in creating entrepreneurial cultures across the globe, giving a flexible structure for policy makers and business leaders to work from.
To make the ecosystem operate effectively, we have to find out what resources, support and growth strategies are missing, and then do something about it. When we do this we have the chance to really empower entrepreneurs to reach their potential to be catalysts for change and economic development.
To read the report in full click here or visit Delta Economics
May 17th, 2008 at 2:17 pm
Lucy, i thought this might be of interest - it seems to me to be good “plain English” in relation to the increasingly obvious conundrum around the model of capitalism and economic growth clashing with sustainability:
DEVELOPMENT FUTURES
1. Rationale
1.1. Climate change is ‘proof’ that the development path upon which the global economy is currently based is unsustainable. If we continue along this path the separation between humans and nature will widen as will the gap between the rich and the poor. Poverty will never be alleviated by an economic system that relies on the unsustainable exploitation of natural resources in order for it to ‘grow’ and without ‘growth’ this system fails. Worryingly, like a cancer cell, economic growth requires growth for growths sake and it will, eventually, destroy its host – the Earth.
1.2. Climate change is perhaps the clearest sign that humanity is living beyond the carrying capacity of the planet and yet, despite the clearest warning signals, we continue along the same hackneyed development path believing that an outdated and failing notion of development will eventually lead to a sustainable, harmonious world where everyone lives above some arbitrary poverty line. It is important to remember at the outset, that there are political and economic reasons why we continue to follow such a path – there are people who benefit from such thinking for the rich will always be winners and the poor losers. The system was constructed so that the power would always lie in the hands of the rich and the poor would always be marginalised actors in a world which cared little for their wellbeing.
1.3. Worryingly, those who are trying to ‘improve’ the situation for the poor are envisioning futures whereby those living in poverty are dragged out of the current situations through a positive and pro-active engagement with the global economic system. The ‘poor’ are to become active participants in the process of globalisation in the hope that by becoming participants in this process they will achieve healthy and wealthy lives. This thinking, however, is redundant. People living in poverty will, if they engage with the Western development paradigm, always be poor and marginalised despite a comparative increase in wealth. The only way to ‘true’ development is by constructing and walking alternative development paths; but what do these paths look like and do they or can they exist in a world where the superhighway of economic growth destroys every other path?
1.4. The NGO community talks a great deal about alleviating poverty; however, many of their solutions are all within the context of the ‘traditional’ development path – ‘growth is good’ providing this growth provides benefits to the poor. But can the planet sustain this concept of growth – unfortunately not. If poverty means tying billions more people into the same blinkered idea of development then we are facing a very bleak future.
1.5. Climate change requires us to take ‘risks’ – we need to think differently. We need to have the ‘guts’ and the passion to say that ‘we got it wrong’! There are different ways of seeing and envisioning the future but these alternatives have been hidden because there is no cerebral ‘space’ in the corporatized, globalised mind for alternatives to be considered. It is important to remember, that alternative development paths are not about keeping poor people poor; they are about seeing ‘value’ in different ways of living and reconstructing the debate in both human and environmental terms.
1.6. The challenge; however, is to take the risk and create ‘spaces’ for envisioning alternative futures – futures that may not be ‘fashionable’ but futures that can be experienced in a world that isn’t compromised by failing ecosystems, pollution, loss of biodiversity and climate change .