Entrepreneurship Model for Sustainable Economic Development in Developing Countries

Abstract

The pursuit of economic development and dominance by countries of the world is common to both advanced and third world countries. Economic theories and models propounded by Adams Smith in the 18th century and Ricardo in the 19th century among other scholars, have laid the cornerstone around which various economic strategies and approaches have been fashioned to reach this common goal. The result has been a wide gap that made some economies of the world to be known as “advanced, industrialised” and some others, “developing, third world” economies. While some past researches have attempted to pinpoint factors such as poor infrastructure, poor capital formation, weak institutional framework and so on as some factors responsible for back‐lagging of these “developing”, economies, recent emphases through empirical and academic researches have shown that the much needed economic “miracle” for the third world countries is embedded in the factor of entrepreneurship. In fact, the unravelling of this factor has produced what is termed “emerging” economies such as Brazil, India, Indonesia, Mexico, etc. This paper therefore explores a mix of entrepreneurship theories and models believed to underlie the rapid and sustainable economic growth and development of countries such as Argentina, Brazil, Thailand and Mexico with a view of framing a unique and an adaptable entrepreneurship model for other developing economies like Nigeria. The resulting model, being founded on the works of Schumpeter, is necessity‐driven; opportunity‐based; resources‐enabled; and result‐focused. Characteristically, the model has five pillars: “window”, “network”, “corridor”, “product” and “outcome”. Though novel, the five‐pillar‐entrepreneurship model is hoped to be proven useful in the academia and policy‐making parlance.