Entrepreneurship Initiatives are Popping-Up Dispersed and Disturbed

There are thousands of entrepreneurship initiatives that pop-up like mushrooms every day. You can call them Excellent Polls, Innovative Clusters, Incubators, Hubs, Start-up Labs, Science-Parks, Tech-parks, etc. Initiatives with the ultimate goal to create the Next X Silicon Valley. An imitation effort to reproduce, without a single understanding of the context, the history, the resources, and the vision that led to the San Diego Silicon Valley, home of multi-billion tech-giants. Many concrete examples of these initiatives, which are still subject to critiques and sometimes to controversy, about their outcomes and real contributions to economic growth. Cases from the Munich Smart City in Germany; the Creative Cluster in Australia; Kista, and Ideon in Sweden; Technology Triangle of Waterloo in Canada; the Masdar of the UAE among many others. 

All these initiatives have different structures and their ways of contributing to the country’s GDP are also different. However, all of them have similar goals, which is the creation of a successful business environment for startups. An environment where several startups together with other stakeholders, play a vital role in the development of their national economy.

Many of these initiatives are mainly consequences of the principle of Knowledge-based economies. Other are the results of a combination of interactions between different stakeholders inside the ecosystem, following the Triple Helix Model (Etzkowitz & Leydesdorff, 1995). Because they are geographically dispersed, it is almost impossible to measure the value added by every initiative in a single country. The focus was always on limited targets at a local or national level. These initiatives are also characterized by limited resources and actors, to cover large scale targets and have a significant contribution to the country’s economic development.

Policymakers at the Governmental Level who are decision-makers in the economic development policies. They generally monitor and oversee the elaboration of long-term strategies and policies that contribute to solving social and economic problems. Such a book will provide them with essential tools that help in strengthening their efforts in promoting entrepreneurship and innovation, hence it will give them a detailed roadmap to build a suitable entrepreneurial environment for innovative startups to grow and flourish.

Corporate Leaders, Investors, and Serial Entrepreneurs who are in charge of running well-established corporations. They have a broad experience in driving successful businesses on a global scale. This guide may be useful for those willing to expand their businesses to wider markets, through a large network of small innovative startups that support and sustain the growth of the existed businesses.

Academia Researchers who are teaching innovation and entrepreneurship at different universities and schools. They are the source of knowledge and innovations that solve multiple problems we are facing. It is the university researcher who has the mission to advising policymakers, and corporate leaders on the latest breakthrough innovations, they are in charge to spread knowledge and innovations to a larger audience.

Mentors, Experts, and Consultants who are professionals from several fields of industry, passionate with entrepreneurship and innovation. They are in a continuous mission that is assisting and helping entrepreneurs through mentoring and transfer of expertise, so they can learn from their long-standing experiences. They are volunteers who accept to transfer knowledge and share their life experiences with others. Just to help them learn from the mistakes and take lessons in building and successfully driving their startups.