At a seminal OECD workshop in 2013 in the Netherlands, leading thinkers came together and discussed this issue. One side focused on creating optimal enabling conditions wherein entrepreneurship would emerge. The other side focused not on this institutional perspective but instead on a functional approach wherein the community grew from the entrepreneurs and their champions. [Mason & Brown 2014[1]] One intriguing observation was that civic officials and large institutions (including universities) strongly favored the top-down approach. Meanwhile, the entrepreneurial community of entrepreneurs, investors, and entrepreneurial champions favored the latter, often vehemently. Self-serving biases aside, it is clear that the more one works closely with entrepreneurs, bottom-up becomes preferred.

To that end, major supporters of entrepreneurship turned their interest to the entrepreneur-led, bottom up model (to use Feld’s fortuitous phrase). In particular, the Kauffman Foundation realized the need to explicitly work to reduce or remove the hurdles to starting, running, and growing ventures for everyone. This model of “zero barriers” is intended as a “rising tide” strategy that empowers everyone.[2](Read more…).

In 2020, a social crisis, unprecedented in our modern society for its rapid and wholesale impact, descended upon the World, inflicting its force in nearly every corner of the globe, causing widespread loss of life and threatening the economic welfare of every community. We might have rationally thought that advances in medicine, technology, and communication would make us immune to an out-of-control virus. Perhaps we should be able to control the outbreak of a disease, no matter how aggressive. But the COVID-19 pandemic has taught us that much of this control is in retrospect, when we realize how extensively we were caught off guard, how we didn’t act when we should have. No longer able to anticipate and pre-empt, we can only react, taking the knowledge we have and amassing our understanding to minimize further social and economic damage. It was too early, in the spring of 2020, to think about the lessons we would take forward, but there will be lessons.

The social and economic costs of the COVID-19 pandemic have been viewed, by some, as tradeoffs. Do we accept some deaths as perhaps inevitable or, at the very least, a cost we must endure to avoid the economic consequences? Or do we avoid human loss at all costs, particularly when it is a family member, close friend, or a medical professional that risked their life to save others? Fundamentally, though, we recognize that we cannot have a functioning economy with an unrestrained health crisis. Nonetheless, we have to fight the social battle with all our might while recognizing that the economic fallout could have devastating results for society. Recognizing that entrepreneurs and business owners are critical to the functioning of every economy, most policy makers realize that small business has to be part of this conversation (Read more…).

The COVID-19 pandemic that struck Europe and the world in Spring 2020 has brought about many challenges and fears – for citizens, businesses and governments. But it has also demonstrated that we need to act as a global community in order to come out of the crisis stronger, more resilient and sustainable. This means breaking down barriers, sharing best practices and inspiring big ideas. It also means involving all elements of Europe’s social and economic fabric in the recovery process – and our micro, small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are key actors here.

Small businesses have been most affected by the COVID-19 crisis: they have often been cut off from customers, clients and suppliers and deprived of precious liquidity. Many have not survived and many others are only limping through, burning up valuable rainy day reserves(Read more…).

Micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) are important economic engines globally. Representing over 50% of all enterprises around the world, they contribute to more than 70% employment and 50% of GDP growth in developing countries. With the employment, income and livelihood opportunities they provide, MSMEs possess strong potential to act as a catalyst towards the progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in multiple areas, including poverty eradication, zero hunger, decent job creation and the stimulation of entrepreneurship and innovations among vulnerable groups, including women and youth.  In the Political Declaration of the 2019 SDG Summit, MSMEs were endorsed by heads of states as important forces for achieving sustainable development (Read more…).

In my recently accepted article “Oppan Gangnam Style! A series of Accidents – Place Branding, Entrepreneurship and Pop Culture,” which has been in the works since 2013, I sought to reflect upon the whole notion of opportunity recognition in Entrepreneurship discourse.

Drawing insights from an article I discovered purely by accident, Gorling and Rehn, that “discovery” as entrepreneurship researchers have often subscribed to, enabled me reflect upon, and reposition the place of “accident”, “arbitrariness,” or to put it simply – “dumb  luck” into that space. As point Gorling and Rehn out:

Three accidental ventures – HotOrNot.com; Save Karen – Help her pay off her credit card debt; and The Million Dollar Homepage – A US$1 million Web idea.(Read more…).