Science-based Entrepreneurship in India: A Policy Glass (as yet) Quarter-Full

Tarun Khanna
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Tarun Khanna: Harvard University

India Policy Forum, 2023, vol. 19, issue 1, 1-53

Abstract: India is celebrated for a resurgence of de novo entrepreneurship in recent decades. Entrants have engaged in creative risk-taking to provide market-based solutions for private or social needs despite not being scions of wealthy industrial or business families. In this policy piece, I first document and celebrate this rise of entrepreneurship. I then turn to the inconvenient fact that this entrepreneurship is heavily circumscribed in a handful of sectors, even more so than the similarly skewed incidence that one sees in the US ecosystem (as an imperfect benchmark). A gaping lacuna is the lack of what I refer to as science-based entrepreneurship, increasingly understood as perhaps the key source of long-run dynamism of mature economies. The academic evidence is compelling. Science, through the recombination of past insights, provides the fuel for innovative entrepreneurial economic output. This requires universities that are not ossified into traditional silos, as well as vibrant local ecosystems that allow the translation of science into entrepreneurship. Then, I turn to relevant policy efforts underway in India within the last decade to address this lacuna. Preliminary data indicate that these experiments are likely on successful trajectories. They are, however, deeply insufficient in the magnitude of investment and policy ambition. The rhetoric and reality must be rethought if India is to capitalize on its deep talent reservoirs and move on from what I see as a glass yet only quarter-full.

Date: 2023
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