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Developing entrepreneurship policy in India – Looking for order in chaos

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 20

Developing Entrepreneurship Policy in India: Looking for

Order in Chaos
Raj K Shankar
Entrepreneurship Development Institute of India
Ahmedabad
Nithyananda K V
Indian Institute of Management
Tiruchirappalli

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.
Keywords: entrepreneurship policy, policy framework, policy creation, Indian entrepreneurship
Entrepreneurship policy is a growing interest for entrepreneurship scholars across the world. This is due
to the increasing interest shown by governments all over the world to attract, encourage, retain and enable
entrepreneurs for socio-economic benefits. Though there is considerable debate over specific ‘how’ of the
relationships between entrepreneurship and socio-economic development, there is little argument over
whether a relationship does exist. This has been amplified by the most recent World Bank reports,
Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) reports, Global Entrepreneurship
Monitor (GEM) reports and the growing publications around policy research in entrepreneurship.
Entrepreneurship continues to be confused with small business, though the boundaries between the two
streams are getting clearer by the day. Entrepreneurship has emerged out of the shadows of other domains
and established itself as a domain worthy of focused exploration and elaboration. While entrepreneurs are
slowly becoming better recognized in society, rising numbers of under graduate, graduate and doctoral
programs in entrepreneurship is a clear indicator of rising demand (Katz, 2003). Scholars in entrepreneurship
have over the years clearly laid down a set of foundational questions, which now makes entrepreneurship a
domain in its own right (Shane & Venkataraman, 2000). With literature in entrepreneurship growing rapidly,
186 Twelfth Biennial Conference on Entrepreneurship

it is also being better understood through numerous nuanced concepts, frameworks and theories.
Governments have been slow to understanding the power of entrepreneurship and its influence on socio-
economic development. But in recent times the practice of entrepreneurship policy is coming to the forefront
with numerous governments having a department and at times even a ministry dedicated to harnessing its
power. Geographies within nations such as Silicon Valley in USA (Isenberg, 2010) and countries as a whole
like Israel (Senor & Singer, 2009) have show that enabling and sustaining an entrepreneurial ecosystem
results in innumerable benefits for the socio-economic well being of societies and powerful sources of
national competitive advantages. Hence entrepreneurship policy as an area of research at the cusp of
entrepreneurship and policy studies has become important.
Entrepreneurship Policy is defined as one that is aimed at the pre-start, the start-up and early post-start-
up phases of the entrepreneurial process; designed and delivered to address the areas of Motivation,
Opportunity and Skills; with the primary objective of encouraging more people in the population to consider
entrepreneurship as an option, move into the nascent stage of taking actions to start a business and proceed
into the entry and early stages of the business (Lundstrom & Stevenson, 2005). This definition is based on a
conceptual model, which suggests that motivation, opportunity and skills are the foundational outcomes of
policy interventions. Entrepreneurship policy when designed and implemented will need to eventually
increase motivation amongst individuals to attempt entrepreneurship, create a conducive environment where
motivated individuals will find potential opportunities for exploitation and/or exploration, and they will
have the required support in terms of education, skill development, resources, and support services to create
and capture value from these opportunities. But, research in entrepreneurship policy is limited. Most of the
studies that exist too are based on a few developed nations in the Western world. Empirical studies
highlighting the importance of creating and maintaining entrepreneurial ecosystems and entrepreneurial
societies are based on correlation studies based on large existing datasets. While they do provide a beginning
to entrepreneurship policy research, they do not explain many aspects such as – what are the conceptual
underpinnings of entrepreneurship policy? How should entrepreneurship policy be formulated? Since
context matters in policy studies, are there frameworks for entrepreneurship policy creation within different
types of economies (ex. Emerging economies)? How does entrepreneurship policy influence
entrepreneurship within a nation (directly or indirectly)? What relationships can be established between
policy elements and entrepreneurship manifestations so as to monitor and evaluate their impact? How
should a policy maker go about designing an entrepreneurship policy, especially considering that it needs to
interface with a plethora of other departments, policies and stakeholders? A number of questions remain
unanswered, which makes scholarly input to entrepreneurship policymaking, limited and of limited use.
While it is clear that entrepreneurship is a critical force that needs to be nurtured and used by all nations,
it remains unclear how they, especially emerging economies, should use it. This leads us to the question
‘How should India (and other emerging economies) design, develop and monitor entrepreneurship policies?’
As part of ongoing project to answer this question, we have begun to unravel how emerging nations must
possibly use entrepreneurship policy for creating and sustaining entrepreneurial ecosystems within their
economies. This paper is a presentation of our initial structure for an India specific entrepreneurship policy
framework. We believe that developing a framework, with India as a context, will provide the basis for
entrepreneurship policy development in India; will enable future development of a more tailored, emerging
economy, entrepreneurship policy framework; and will hopefully permit more empirical work by suggesting
more micro-level relationships of macro-level phenomena.
The remaining paper is structured as follows. In the section ‘Entrepreneurship and MSME - Defining the
contours’ we attempt to demarcate the boundary between entrepreneurship and MSME while
acknowledging the grey areas that exist. We then describe a brief review of existing knowledge in the domain
and the need for more contextual frameworks for India and emerging markets in the section
‘Entrepreneurship Policy’. In the last section ‘India Entrepreneurship Policy Framework – Preliminary
Structure’ we present our initial framework for designing, developing and monitoring entrepreneurship
policy using India as the context.
Developing Entrepreneurship Policy in India: Looking for Order in Chaos 187

Entrepreneurship and MSME: Defining the Contours

One of the reasons for the limited development of entrepreneurship policy is the confusion that has
persisted since a long time – the difference between entrepreneurship and small business. The small business
policy development is an old area popularly available under the phrase ‘MSME Policy’ and other equivalent
names. Entrepreneurship, crudely referred to as setting up of new enterprises was considered a small part of
this bigger MSME policy. But in recent times a growing voice within entrepreneurship also acknowledges
that ‘enterprise creation’ is not entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship is now centered on ‘opportunities’ and
how individuals of certain types, create/exploit them, in numerous ways. This makes the small sections
within MSME policies making fleeting mentions and doing tangential service to entrepreneurship both
irrelevant and insignificant. All this has led to stunted growth in the literature on entrepreneurship policy.
For the purpose of our research and this paper we provide a few fundamental differences between
entrepreneurship and MSME. This is presented in Table 01. While we do acknowledge that there could be
places at the borders of these two domains, which overlap and create gray areas, the above definition of
entrepreneurship policy and the differences presented should reduce them and possibly suggest ways to
resolve them too.

Point of Distinction Entrepreneurship Policy MSME Policy

Focus On Individuals On firms already established

Generate interests among individuals to

Objective On encouraging firms to grow their business
become entrepreneurs

1. Create a favorable entrepreneurial

1. Create a favorable business climate
climate and culture
2. Help small firms become stable
2. Encourage more people to start
Goal of the Policy (despite their smallness and
entrepreneurial ventures by
resource poverty) and improve their
enticing them about the benefits,
competitiveness
and equipping them with necessary
skills to become entrepreneurs

Support the business after it has actually

Support nascent stage, as well as the critical
started till it reaches the growth and
Stage of Business cycle first few years (pre-startup, start-up and
maintenance stage (startup, post-startup and
early post-startup stages)
growth/ expansion stages)

1. Reduce red tape and procedural

Policy Priorities
1. Reduce barriers to creating new
ventures (like setting up single
window processes, etc.)
2. Educate individuals about the
benefits of entrepreneurship
3. Create awareness
4. Facilitate micro-loans, seed capital,
and incubation facilities
burden for existing SMEs
2. Facilitate easy access to resources,
information, and benefits to existing
SMEs
3. Foster R&D and Technology
adoption among SMEs (eg:
technology transfer)
4. Improve access to financing

The scope of operation of the plan would

The scope of operation of the plan would be
start with seeding the idea about
Time Period immediate, wherein it aims for results to
entrepreneurship and would sustain for a
remove the hurdles for existing SMEs.
long time, till the business stabilizes
188 Twelfth Biennial Conference on Entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurship Policy
The previous section clearly highlighted the differences between entrepreneurship and MSME. Table 01
provided some salient differences from a policy focus. In spite of differences it is also pretty clear that some
gray areas between the two domains will remain unresolved. This brings us to an important aspect of
entrepreneurship policy, namely, the need for entrepreneurship policy to interface and coalesce with
numerous others policies. Hence we strongly argue for entrepreneurship policy to take a more horizontal
approach, rather than a vertical approach in both formulation as well as implementation. In our
conceptualization we clearly demarcate that entrepreneurship policy has to do certain things within itself and
work along with number of other government departments and their policies, in parallel, so as to create a
thriving entrepreneurship ecosystem in the economy. But before we present our conceptual framework
(preliminary) for entrepreneurship policy formulation, it is important to understand the present development
of entrepreneurship policy literature, and the importance of context in policy formulation. These highlight
the need for our research work and the preliminary framework presented in this paper.
This section is divided into two parts, namely ‘present understanding’ and ‘need for a contextual
framework’. While the former provides a brief overview of the present knowledge in this domain, the latter
presents the idea of context argues for a more tailored entrepreneurship policy framework for India and other
emerging economies.
Present Understanding:
Entrepreneurship policy deals addresses the motivation, opportunity, and skills of individuals willing to
become entrepreneurs, with a primary focus of encouraging them take to entrepreneurs. In addition, it also
helps them during the early stages of the organizational growth. The governments, through its
entrepreneurial policy intend to address four policy challenges, viz., (1) promoting the benefits of the
entrepreneurship as a culture and as a career opportunity; (2) encouraging and educating the entrepreneurs
about the skillset as well as the know-how needed to succeed as an entrepreneur, along with removing career
disincentives; (3) helping nascent entrepreneurs become growth entrepreneurs by assisting them and
reducing hurdles and facilitating access to opportunities; (4) supporting the initial years of entrepreneurial
journey by providing the necessary support infrastructure including removing information asymmetry,
facilitating financing, etc. Lundstrom and Stevenson, 2005 suggest that to achieve these four objectives, the
entrepreneurship policy would focus on the following six policy measures, addressing either the motivation,
opportunity or the skill of the individual / entrepreneur.
1) Entrepreneurship promotion;
2) Entrepreneurship education;
3) Reducing administrative, legislative and regulatory barriers to entry and exit;
4) Start-up and seed financing;
5) Business support for start-ups; and
6) Target group measures.
Each of these policies address different sets of objectives and utilize a range of policy instruments,
frameworks and measures. Entrepreneurship Promotion intends to create awareness about the benefits of
entrepreneurship coupled with motivating individuals to take up entrepreneurship as a career option. It tries
to highlight the achievements of entrepreneur role models, the pathway of an entrepreneurial success, and
the schemes available to individuals who intend to become entrepreneurs. Some of the policy measures
adopted by the government are educating the youth during their school and college education about the
benefits of entrepreneurship, instituting awards programmes for successful entrepreneurs, profiling the role-
models, promoting them widely in the mass media, and organizing entrepreneurship events. For this, the
government takes the assistance of the media, the education system, the community organization, as well as
the business associations, foundations and the private sector.
Developing Entrepreneurship Policy in India: Looking for Order in Chaos 189

Addressing the motivation factor within the entrepreneurship policy, Entrepreneurship Education aims to
integrate entrepreneurship skills and know-how into the formal education system. It tries to inculcate
entrepreneurial education to students at various levels like the secondary school, undergraduate, graduate,
and doctoral courses, highlighting not only the success stories about entrepreneurial icons, but also about the
skills required to become one. This component achieves this by including entrepreneurial education in the
National Educational Curriculum Guidelines for various levels of formal education, training the trainers and
teachers in entrepreneurship education, building best practices manual, setting up incubation centers in
universities and others places, supporting business plan and student venture events/programmes, and
providing awards and seed capital for student entrepreneurs.
Aiming to increase the opportunity for entrepreneurs, while enhancing their skill levels, Reducing
Barriers to entry and exit intends to reduce the time and cost of starting a new business, while also improving
opportunity for startups to grow and access resources. It also tries to reduce the stigma attached with failed
ventures, and remove disincentives of working as an employee vis-à-vis becoming an entrepreneur. This last
element is a critical item, which pushes entrepreneurial individuals to take up jobs, which in turn gets
reflected in the entrepreneurial ecosystem in the country. Governments implement this through policy levers
like facilitating single-window registration system; rationalizing the labor and taxation regulations; reviewing
competition law, company law, bankruptcy law, intellectual property law, and regulation governing the
transfer of business ownership; review and relax administrative burden on startups; and implement ‘better
regulation’ of businesses within the economy / industry / country.
Startup and seed capital financing tries to enhance the opportunity for the entrepreneur by addressing the
lack of access to financing, which would impede the venture’s existence, stability, expansion, modernization,
and growth. The government assists the entrepreneurs with funding to address the market failures and gaps
in accessing finances for new and early stage firms and to reduce information asymmetries within the
entrepreneurial ecosystem. This is achieved through policy measures like facilitating micro-loans, pre-
venture and starter funds for new entrepreneurs; guaranteeing the loans by new ventures; partnering with
banks and other financial institutions for providing easy and no-hassle loans for startups and nascent
ventures; incentivizing angel and venture capital firms to invest in new and nascent firms by making
necessary changes in the taxation system; and facilitating access to information about sources and types of
financing available to entrepreneurs.
Access to financing is not the only challenge, the entrepreneur has to overcome; he also needs ‘know-
how’ and access to information, advice, technical expertise, counseling, and mentoring services and
information networks, who can help him address the challenges of managing the business on a day-to-day
basis. As part of the Startup Business Support, the government facilitates the access to these services and
information as part of its entrepreneurship policy. It facilitates the setting up of enterprise networks and
startup service centers, which act as one-stop shop for all the needs of managing an enterprise. Setting up a
dedicated web-portal for this service can also facilitate this. Government also encourages institutional
mechanisms like business mentors, national incubators, entrepreneur networks, which can provide the
support infrastructure for the survival and growth of new and nascent ventures. Government also can
conduct and train business consultants who can provide dedicated and holistic consultancy services to
enterprises.
While other measures are generally applicable to all categories of enterprises, certain segments of the
population are generally left out from the entrepreneurial ecosystem, like women entrepreneurs, or
differently abled people, or religious minorities, or youth; who becomes critical to address the overall social
objectives for the government to support the under-represented groups in the mainstream entrepreneurial
ecosystem. Similarly certain specific policy initiatives have to be targeted towards high-tech ventures and
other techno-starters, in order to enable them to become self-sustaining and also grow. Towards this, the
government should focus on Target group support, under which it tries to reduce systemic barriers within the
society to increase entrepreneurial activity by under-represented groups, while also facilitating and
encouraging techno-starters who could be responsible for high-growth within the entrepreneurial ecosystem
from a long-term perspective. For achieving this, the government could focus on measures like specific and
190 Twelfth Biennial Conference on Entrepreneurship

dedicated funding for such target groups; instituting awards and recognition for target group entrepreneurs;
dedicating a certain portion of government procurements to be captured by such target groups; facilitating
the setting up of target group incubators and mentors; and funding facilities earmarked for target group
entrepreneurs.
These six policy areas have been identified and used by Lundstrom and Stevenson (2005), as part of the
overall entrepreneurship policy. The entrepreneurship policy so adopted by a country could take the form of
either an e-extension policy, which is an extension of the MSME policy already prevalent in the country; or it
could be a new firm creation policy, which focuses on those policy areas that facilitate creation of new ventures
by eliminating the hurdles associated with starting new ventures; or a niche policy, which would facilitate
target groups to become entrepreneurs. Apart from these typologies, the entrepreneurship policy could also
be a holistic policy, where it would contain elements of all these types and be comprehensive in its approach.
The type of policy initiative taken by the government is dependent on the social, economic, and/or structural
problems that the government aims to solve. For instance, if there is high unemployment rate in the country
and the government is under lot of pressure to control it, then it could focus on new firm creation policy,
which could help reduce the unemployment pressure on the government and the economy at large.
Irrespective of the typology of the entrepreneurship policy, the entrepreneurship policy proposed by
Lundstrom and Stevenson (2005) is generic in nature. If we have to understand it from a localized
perspective, then understanding the context within which the policy is designed become critical.
Need for a contextual framework:
Every nation around the world is in a different stage of their journey of development and progress. This
is evidenced in the World Economic Forum (WEF) classification of economies as ‘factor-driven’, ‘efficiency-
driven’, and ‘innovation-driven’. The importance of this to the study and influence of entrepreneurship is
also highlighted in the GEM reports. Countries across these three groups vary in their characteristics of
entrepreneurship. Hence the context is seen as an important factor in entrepreneurship. Though most studies
within entrepreneurship research seem to define context from an individual’s perspective; we use the broader
definition offered by Lundstrom & Stevenson (2005), which comprises of a range of economic, social, cultural,
attitudinal and structural aspects of a country. They define context, in the case of entrepreneurship policy, as
a combination of three sets of variables – Outcome variables; Structure variables; and SME/Entrepreneurial
variables.
Outcome variables are objectives used in policymaking. These include GDP Growth, GDP per capita,
unemployment rate, labor force participation rate, labor force participation by women, exports as a
percentage of GDP, and industrial productivity rate. All of these variables come from prior research on their
relationship with entrepreneurship. Many of these variables also have a two-way relationship with
entrepreneurship too. Importantly all these variables influence the ‘opportunity’ aspect within the economy.
Structure variables comprise elements that influence all three aspects of entrepreneurial activity within
an economy – ‘opportunity’, ‘motivation’ and ‘skills’. The variables that influence the ‘opportunity’ aspect
include: population size, population growth rate, immigration rate, ease of business entry, women’s business
ownership rate, access to startup capital, flexible labor markets, size of the public sector, decentralized
markets, ease of business exit, size and structure of industrial sector, age distribution of the population. The
structure variable influencing the ‘Motivation’ aspect of entrepreneurial activity include: exposure to role
models and entrepreneurship education, social security, inequities in tax treatment amongst self-employed,
employed and corporations, favorable capital gains tax, etc; and the structure variables influencing the ‘Skills’
aspect of entrepreneurial activity include: density of business owners and level of education.
SME-Entrepreneurial Vitality variables again comprise elements that influence all three aspects of
entrepreneurial activity within an economy. The variables that influence the ‘opportunity’ aspect of
entrepreneurial activity include: Entrepreneurs per 1000 inhabitants, solo-firms, SME share of total
employment, jobs created by news firms, micro-firms, micro-firm employment, business ownership rate, TEA
index, nascent entrepreneurship rate, startup rate, exit rate, amongst others. The variables that influence the
Developing Entrepreneurship Policy in India: Looking for Order in Chaos 191

‘Motivation’ aspect of entrepreneurial activity include: tolerance of income dispersion, social and cultural
norms, positive attitudes, entrepreneurship advocates, and fear and stigma of failure. The variables that
influence the ‘Skills’ aspect of entrepreneurial activity include: public sector procurement.
While these variables are indicative and illustrative, there will be numerous other variables that need to
be identified and incorporated. The policy makers also have to make choices on variables to consider, as this
will have an enormous influence on how policy is formulated. The complexity also increases due to the fact
that many of these variables are also interdependent. Keeping aside the inherent complexity and enormity at
a macro level, the above discussion provides a strong argument of why nations look different and evolve
differently. The variable choices clearly indicate the priorities of the nation’s policy makers and hence lead to
two levels of policy influences – policy changes and changes to policy. How policy changes influence specific
variables and how they in turn influence entrepreneurial activity cannot be defined with confidence, unless
there is clear contextual definition. While a number of studies attempt to correlate between various variables
mentioned above and entrepreneurial activity, we are far from clear measurements as one-to-one correlation
of such macro level variables do not truly describe the reality.
Based on the above discussion it becomes clear that a contextualized model is essential for not just
design and formulation of an entrepreneurship policy but also for identifying relationships between policy
instruments, variables, and entrepreneurial outcomes, which will help measure and monitor the
success/failure of entrepreneurship policy itself.
India Entrepreneurship Policy Framework: Preliminary Structure
On preliminary reading, the six components of the entrepreneurship policy proposed by Lundstrom and
Stevenson (2005) appears to be comprehensive and can be adapted to any country to analyze the
entrepreneurship policy. But applying that model in its existing framework to India would pose certain
challenges as we India is unique with its own regional, social, cultural, linguistic, political, and economic
diversity. Designing an entrepreneurship policy for India would be an enormous task, taking into
consideration all the nuances of these diverse factors, a few of which are detailed below. These provide the
initial scaffolding for our proposed framework.
The political structure governed by the Constitution, classifies India as a federalist state, with clear
delegation of powers between the central and the state government. The regulatory and the administrative
machinery in India is also complex. Policies designed in India cut across various ministries, departments, and
regulatory agencies. For instance, the entrepreneurship activity in India is the primary responsibility of the
Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship (MSDE) under the Government of India. But the
policies and guidelines on entrepreneurship and other related aspects are covered by various ministries like
Ministry of Human Resources Development (MHRD), which deal with the education component of the
policy; the Ministry of Women and Child Welfare, which deal with women empowerment including women
entrepreneurship; Ministry of Textiles, which deal with entrepreneurship in the field of textiles; Ministry of
Industry and Commerce, which deal with entrepreneurship policies dealing with manufacturing sector;
Ministry of Information Technology and Ministry of Biotechnology, which deals with entrepreneurship
within the information technology and biotechnology industries respectively; Ministry of MSME deals with
policy governing the MSME organizations and so on. We propose that the base / origin of the
entrepreneurship policy should be from the MSDE, which holds critical resources and the core portfolio
relating to entrepreneurship, while other ministries address a portion of this comprehensive
entrepreneurship policy, and are accountable to the MSDE for the overall impact on the entrepreneurship
culture and climate within India. These factors need to be kept in mind while considering an
entrepreneurship policy for India.
The Directive principles of the state policy acts as the overarching guidelines for framing the policies on
any topic in the country and understanding these nuances become relevant to decide on the framework of
any policy designed for India. Any entrepreneurship policy designed for India should adhere to these
guiding principles.
 192 Twelfth Biennial Conference on Entrepreneurship

India has rich cultural heritage, religious practices and customs, traditional religious institutional
mechanisms & practices, and historical legacies, which enhance its uniqueness. These factors also affect the
entrepreneurial competency and capabilities of individual in India. For instance, people from certain regions
and belonging certain religious communities are more entrepreneurial than others in the country. Creating a
straitjacket entrepreneurial policy for India, without considering these diversities and cultural practices and
traditions would significantly affect the entrepreneurial abilities of people belonging to these communities
and regions. These aspects need to be captured by the entrepreneurship policy designed for India.
Despite these constraints and considerations, the Government of India while formulating its
entrepreneurship policy should try to adhere to the two broad objectives: to inculcate, enhance, and nurture
the entrepreneurial spirit and culture among its citizens leading to an enriched entrepreneurial society
(Audretsch, 2009); and to increase the level of entrepreneurship activities in India leading to a higher
employment rate resulting in higher growth rate for the country. These objectives can be achieved by
designing an entrepreneurship policy, which considers the context relevant to India.
In addition to this, while framing the entrepreneurship policy, the Government of India should clearly
ascertain the expected outcomes from its policy, is it creation of employment, growing the economy,
innovation, etc.? After identifying these outcomes, it should identify the baseline measures for those
outcomes and set a target for those outcomes. Then appropriate policy framework has to be adopted and
implemented to achieve those outcomes. Once the policy is implemented, the relevant parameters /
outcomes have to be constantly monitored to see, if the objectives and the outcomes are being achieved. We
recommend that an annual review of the policy and outcomes be conducted, so that necessary changes in
either the policy and/or outcomes can be carried out.
This paper is a presentation of preliminary findings from our ongoing research programme on
entrepreneurship policy. Considering the dynamism of the government towards entrepreneurship policy it is
a struggle to capture all changes dynamically. As we make progress we hope to test this framework with
present policies at both Centre and State in India. Eventually we hope to arrive at a comprehensive
entrepreneurship policy framework, which can help in formulation and monitoring, while remaining
adaptable too.
Conclusion
As nations around the world grapple with unique domestic transitions and unpredictable international
environment, entrepreneurship policy is being seen as an important tool for sustaining and growing their
economies. While formulation of an entrepreneurship policy is both complicated and complex, search for a
single framework to support this endeavor seems like a lost battle upfront. We argue in this paper that the
design, development and monitoring of entrepreneurship policy is a contextualized activity requiring local
frameworks for differing economies. While presenting our initial structure of a possible framework for India,
we also make a strong suggestion that entrepreneurship policy cannot stand by itself, requiring a large
amount of interface and coalescing with numerous other departments, policies and stakeholders. We present
the beginnings of such a contextualized framework with its varied nuances in the Indian context in this
paper, which we hope will trigger future entrepreneurship policy research in India and the emerging market
context that is closer to real life.
References
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Isenberg, D. J. (2010). How to start an entrepreneurial revolution. Harvard Business Review, 88(6), 40-50.
Katz, J. A. (2003). The chronology and intellectual trajectory of American entrepreneurship education: 1876–1999. Journal
of business venturing, 18(2), 283-300.
Lundstrom, A., & Stevenson, L. (2005). Entrepreneurial Policy—Theory and Practice. Boston, MA: Springer.
Senor, D., & Singer, S. (2009). Start-up nation: The story of Israel's economic miracle. New York, NY: Hachette Book
Group.
Shane, S., & Venkataraman, S. (2000). The promise of entrepreneurship as a field of research. Academy of management
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