Entrepreneurial Success: What India Can Learn From American Entrepreneurship Ecosystem?

Abstract

Entrepreneurship is a vehicle for capitalizing on innovative ideas, creating new jobs, enhancing productivity, generating revenue, and improving business models & processes. An Enterprise is a principle engine of economic growth and Entrepreneurship is the basic pillar of nation’s Economic Development. Entrepreneurship creates wealth and generates employment. Across the globe, various countries have different levels of entrepreneurial tendencies. Some countries are more entrepreneurial than other countries. Countries like United States, Switzerland, Canada, UK, Australia, Israel etc. are amongst the most entrepreneurial populations whereas the African Countries like Nigeria, Burundi, Malawi, Uganda are amongst the least entrepreneurial (GEDI 2018). The most entrepreneurial populations are also world’s most developed nations. The connection between entrepreneurship and nation’s economic development is clearly evident from GDP-wise ranking of the nations. The fundamental reason for entrepreneurial spirit is the Entrepreneurship Ecosystem of the nation. An Entrepreneurship Ecosystem is the function of a number of factors - Sociocultural Factors, Education System, Business Environment, Start-up Ecosystem, Availability of the Resources, Infrastructure, Access to Early-Stage Finance, Individual Motivations and other personality attributes etc. But more than personal factors, it is about the external factors. For instance many Persons of Indian Origin (PIO) in United States are amongst the top entrepreneurs, technocrats, venture capitalists, innovators etc. in America – (From Vinod Khosla - Sun Microsystems Co-founder to Shantanu Narayen, President & CEO, Adobe, many examples can be cited). However, they could fulfil their dreams only after getting educated in the US and then taking up entrepreneurship in vibrant Business landscape there. Their genius perhaps wouldn’t have been realized here in India. So what makes American Entrepreneurship Ecosystem one of the Best in the World? What does United States have that India doesn’t and what can we do to improve our Entrepreneurship Ecosystem? In view of these questions, this paper studies American Entrepreneurship Ecosystem and tries to understand factors contributing to its success. At the same time, an attempt has been made to understand the challenges faced by India’s Entrepreneurship Ecosystem. And lastly, the article tries to suggest ways to improve India’s Entrepreneurship Ecosystem based on learnings from American Entrepreneurship Ecosystem.