Entrepreneurship Ecosystem and Development of Entrepreneurship in Pakistan

Abstract

The study has been taken in order to explore the concept of entrepreneurship ecosystem and how the development of ecosystem model has an impact on the development of entrepreneurship in Pakistan. Hence, the top-down and bottom up approach both were used simultaneously in order to comprehend the entrepreneurship ecosystem phenomenon under investigation. The entrepreneurship ecosystem has been analyzed through SMEDA SME policies, cultural tendency and private educational institutions’ capacities in Pakistan in the quantitative part of the study. This study is however, guided by Isenberg (2011) and Mason and Brown (2014) through their scholarly work on entrepreneurship and entrepreneurship ecosystem. The mixed methods research strategy and parallel convergent design were used to understand and explore the phenomenon and hence quantitative and qualitative data were collected simultaneously. Although, the quantitative data were collected through convenience sampling from six universities, interviews were conducted at the same time from academic professionals, incubation center representatives and entrepreneurs as well. The quantitative data were then analyzed through SPSS and qualitative data through trial version of NVivo 12. The quantitative results show the significant relationship between SMEDA SME policies and development of entrepreneurship; however, the strength of relationship was considered to be weak. Similarly, the significant relationship was also found between cultural tendency and development of entrepreneurship in Pakistan; however strength of relationship was also weak. Moreover, the significant relationship was found between private educational institutions’ capacities and development of entrepreneurship but, the strength of relationship was weak in nature. However, while testing the final hypothesis, the relationship between cumulative SMEDA policies, cultural tendency, private educational intuitions’ capacities and entrepreneurship development in Pakistan was also found with moderate strength of association. While converging the data from quantitative and qualitative part, it was observed that, both data do converge at some point, because factors emerged in the qualitative data (family system, educational system, entrepreneurial attributes, and legal framework and incubation centers) and the results found in the quantitative data do find the relationship between with the entrepreneurship ecosystem and the development of entrepreneurship in Pakistan.