Entrepreneurship and innovation in emerging economies: Conceptual, methodological and contextual issues

After presenting a brief review of the Schumpeterian and Kirznerian views on entrepreneurship, the purpose of this paper is aims to measure the two views within the economic and institutional contexts of emerging economies.

Configurations of innovative entrepreneurship, opportunity entrepreneurship and contextual variables were assessed using cluster analysis on 16 emerging countries.

Four profiles were found: innovative entrepreneurship of the Schumpeter Mark I type, innovative entrepreneurship of the Schumpeter Mark II type, opportunity entrepreneurship of the Kirznerian form and a fourth cluster described as a potentially emerging Schumpeter Mark II profile. The economic and governance indicators were favorable in the two innovative entrepreneurship clusters, whereas the contextual indicators of innovation were particularly favorable in the Schumpeter Mark II group.

The study demonstrated the importance of aligning theory, methods and context in comparative entrepreneurship research. Profiling countries on theory-based entrepreneurial dimensions appears as a viable approach. However, the results also pointed to the need for more attention to the dynamic aspects of country entrepreneurial activity. Another limitation lies in the low number of emerging countries for which complete comparable data are available.

For policy makers, it may be interesting to examine our results showing that the economic and governance correlates are more favorable in the two innovative clusters.

The study is one of the few recent attempts to clarify the relationship between entrepreneurship and innovation in the context of emerging economies.