Overview
The entrepreneurship industry—public and private actors that package, fund, teach, mediate, and narrate entrepreneurship—can widen access and action while narrowing legitimate venture models. This series traces legitimacy, venture-building routines, intermediary use, and evaluation, showing that better support requires usable access, aligned objectives, additional and durable outcomes, fair distribution, visible costs, and evidence matched to context.
Learning outcomes
- Support can widen access and entrepreneurial action while narrowing the venture models that gain legitimacy.
- Participation, belonging, asset growth, or entry do not by themselves prove additional, durable impact.
- In 50 selected reliable OECD evaluations, 23 were positive, 21 mixed, and 6 no or negative; this is not a universal estimate.
- Better support matches a real constraint to a defined population, usable access, fair outcomes, and evidence that includes time, survival, costs, and spillovers.
Keywords
Preview every chapter · Unlock full text, audio, and video from chapter 4
PlansFAQ
What is the entrepreneurship industry?
The entrepreneurship industry is the sector of commercial, public, educational, media, and intermediary actors that package, fund, teach, narrate, and institutionalize entrepreneurship. It is not a centrally managed organization or the same thing as an entrepreneurial ecosystem.
Why can more entrepreneurship support produce mixed results?
More support can expand access or action while narrowing venture choices, changing ownership, or improving one outcome without changing another. The OECD’s selected set of 50 reliable evaluations included 23 positive, 21 mixed, and 6 no or negative results, not a universal estimate.
How should entrepreneurship support be evaluated?
Entrepreneurship support should be evaluated against a clear objective and counterfactual, with implementation, Sales, Employment, Survival, time horizon, expenditure, distribution, and spillovers considered. The design may use matched comparisons, statistical methods, or randomized trials, depending on the intervention and data.
When does more support become better entrepreneurship?
More support becomes better entrepreneurship when it addresses a real constraint for a defined population, is usable and inclusive, produces additional and durable value, and makes benefits, costs, spillovers, and uncertainty visible.