New entrepreneurship policy in Russia after the 2020 crisis

Abstract

Nowadays the unpredictability and nonlinearity of macroeconomic processes are growing, due to the technological changes, the increasing economic complexity, and the environmental risks. The development of small and medium‑sized enterprises (SMEs) is considered as one of the tools for adapting to these processes. The decline in entrepreneurial activity can finally lead to long-term consequences. Thus, many countries introduce the entrepreneurial support policy. Our review shows that in the face of weak development of public control institutions, direct financial measures can lead to new institutional traps. This forms a need for new and alternative approaches to entrepreneurship policy. The purpose of the paper is to justify and describe an alternative entrepreneurial policy for developing countries, based on the concept of entrepreneurial ecosystems. The goals and principles of the ecosystem approach are formulated in the article. They have been used to identify new directions and evaluate existing measures of Russian entrepreneurship policy: local authorities and business agents are poorly motivated, local characteristics are not always taken into account, there is a distrust between contractors, support institutions are not open enough, direct support is mainly provided. As a result, the role of the sector in the economy is consistently low and declining. The new approach can become the basis for post-crisis policy in the context of reducing natural resource rent.