Entrepreneurship is widely argued to be critical for economic development and alleviating extreme poverty. However, entrepreneurship research in sub-Saharan Africa has not received much attention over the last few decades possibly due to a lack of sufficient resources. It is becoming increasingly important as Africa, especially sub-Saharan Africa, is developing rapidly and moving from a resource-based economy to one of innovation and progress. Using data from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM), this paper discusses the opinions of national expert informants in Angola, Madagascar, Mozambique and South Africa and looks at the factors which are possibly hindering and inhibiting entrepreneurial development. The results indicate that there are four main inhibitors ranging from lack of access to finance, government policies, regulations and practices for entrepreneurs and the poor levels of entrepreneurship education. Some recommendations are made as to what can be done to assist in promoting economic development.

The term ‘entrepreneurial eco-system’ (EES) currently belongs to the most popular ones in economic geography – and in the practice of start-up support policies in many countries, too. Due to its exclusively positive connotations the usage of this term creates unrealistic hopes among entrepreneurship support practitioners. Scholars may be reminded to previous supposed panaceas of regional economic policies like clusters, ‘creative class’ members or high-tech industries. As for these predecessors as well, the concept is “fuzzy” (Markusen 1999), the available empirics are “scanty” (ibid.) and its perception among policymakers is oversimplified, exclusively positive and partially naïve. To a degree, this is a consequence of an extremely unclear definition of what is meant by an EES. The undertheorization of the EES discourse, as observed by some scholars, is not due to a lack of conceptual approaches per se, but due to a lack of convincing, theoretically strong approaches. In fact, the majority of the EES publications is conceptual or even theoretical, usually without any serious empirical underpinning. From our perspective the latter has one important consequence: EES theory is weak because there is a lack of representative, comprehensive and sophisticated empirical studies, indicators and methods to measure EES. This paper provides a unique attempt to measure EES at the sub-national level of regions, that is, from our perspective, the most appropriate spatial level to identify and measure (and theorize) EES as the regional entrepreneurship literature provides striking evidence in favor of entrepreneurship as being primarily a regional (or local) event. Our paper contributes to the current EES debate by arguing that a robust empirical measurement of various EES at the sub-national level may help to improve the quality of EES theory. We propose to start with Erik Stam’s interpretation of an EES based upon ten “conditions” for whom we develop specific variables for application in concrete data collection exercises in different regions. We develop an overall EES index as well as subnational indices for each of the ten conditions. We also propose a method to care for the various weighting problems to be solved. Our attempt has been successfully pretested in Germany and Spain and has meanwhile entered a more ambitious pilot phase in 2018. One of this paper’s aims is to get feedback from scholars studying EES regarding our proposed method.

After the UN’s adoption of 17 Sustainable Development Goals in 2015, it became clear that the relationship between sustainability and entrepreneurship was an area for re-examination. Traditional measures of entrepreneurial success rested largely on economic indicators; observatories like the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) extended them, including cultural and social indicators. There is now a real need to measure and analyze the relationship between sustainable entrepreneurship and eco-innovation and drive positive economic activity outcomes, sustainable development, and social welfare. For GEM’s consideration, this paper proposes a reimagined tool by which to measure sustainable entrepreneurship and eco-innovation in businesses and assess their level of alignment with UN SDGs. Specifically, it presents a new measurement method, incorporating, but simplifying, a complex range of variables, which can be crystallized into a set of items (questions) to determine businesses’ commitment to entrepreneurship sustainability—social, economic, and environmental. The results can be cross-referenced with other relevant variables, and indicators proposed by the UN, to determine what causal or explanatory relationships might or might not exist. The proposal represents a valuable extension to existing data gathering tools, and will be of use to researchers and practitioners in the field of entrepreneurship—especially as its sustainability credentials and environmental impact are in the spotlight.

Riyadh’s entrepreneurial ecosystem is one of the most important drivers of entrepreneurship and innovation in the MENA region, as Saudi Arabia aims to achieve economic diversification within its industry, and thus reduce its dependence on oil. This paper analyzes how Riyadh’s entrepreneurial ecosystem is achieving these goals and explores the differences between entrepreneurs and owner-managers operating in the Riyadh ecosystem to identify their strengths and weaknesses in guiding Saudi policymakers’ decision-making. Using GEM data for Saudi Arabia and analyzing the ten pillars (connectivity, leadership, knowledge, talent, finance, culture, formal institutions, services and intermediaries, physical infrastructure, and demand) of the Stem model, the authors applied ANOVA tests for the quantitative variables and Chi-squared tests for the qualitative variables and rescaled the results to 0–10-point scales for ease of interpretation. We found that among the ten pillars studied, there were four that have improved the most in the Riyadh entrepreneurial ecosystem: two systemic (networks, talent) and two environmental (physical infrastructure and formal institutions), while it was in the systemic pillars (leadership, financing, and knowledge) where the least progress has been made in the period 2019–2022.

Most of the nations forming the Eurozone are hoping to boost entrepreneurship as one of the leading elements for job creation, innovation, and wealth to overcome the economic crisis. However, the quality of the entrepreneurial activity changes when qualified initiatives tend to impact on the economic development, while non-vocational-driven entrepreneurship has a null or little impact on the economy. This research analyzes the average quality of the Eurozone entrepreneurial activity driven by innovation before and after an economic crisis. The primary results of this chapter are (1) the quality of the entrepreneurial activity increases when there is a public-private collaboration to foster entrepreneurship, and (2) long-term unemployment generates necessity entrepreneurship and diminishes entrepreneurial quality.