Entrepreneurship in Developing Countries

While there is no universally accepted definition of a “developing country” it is acknowledged that almost two-thirds of the countries in the world are significantly challenged in their ability to provide a basic standard of living for their citizens and participate competitively in the global economy. Developing countries can be distinguished by a wide range of factors such as per capita income, the availability and affordability of basic living items such as food and shelter, vulnerability to economic shocks and dependence on export-based strategies, literacy, health, demographic profile, access to natural resources and level of industrialization. Several suggestions have been made about how to generate economic development in developing countries, but relatively little attention has focused on entrepreneurship in those countries. This chapter describes types and definitions of entrepreneurship in developing countries and the link between entrepreneurship and economic development, the state of the institutional environment for nurturing entrepreneurship in developing countries, policies for entrepreneurship in developing countries and knowledge-based entrepreneurship in developing countries