Developing Entrepreneurship Policy in India: Looking for Order in Chaos

Abstract

Entrepreneurship is the buzzword today, not just in India, but also around the world. It is being touted as the panacea for most socio-economic challenges. While everyone acknowledges the power of entrepreneurship, it remains a mystery to most policy makers. What is an entrepreneurship policy? How should Governments create entrepreneurship policy? What should it contain and not? How should it interface with existing policies? These and a number of other questions create complexities, which have resulted in piecemeal policy solutions. This is reflected in the constant qualms and complaints from various stakeholders in the entrepreneurship ecosystem. In this paper we make an attempt to find order in chaos. Using the inputs from Babson’s BEEP Project and various GEM studies, we build on Lundstrom and Stevenson (2005) to build an indigenous framework, which can act as a starting point in reviewing and creating coherent, complete and competent entrepreneurship policies in an emerging economy setting. India serves as the context for this study. Since policy relies on contextualization for effectiveness, our research begins a much needed research stream (entrepreneurship policy in emerging economies). This paper contributes to literature by bringing in an emerging economy perspective to entrepreneurship policy and identifying areas of future research. We hope to positively influence entrepreneurship policy creation in India by providing one of the first contextually developed guiding frameworks.