The Role of Policy and Strategy in Entrepreneurial Ecosystem

This article is written by Munira Hussein, a Contributor Author at Startup Istanbul.

Entrepreneurship is about community transformation as much as it is about helping individual entrepreneurs. The sector comprises of so many players and they are intertwined in such a way that for one to function, it must have the support of the other.

Even with all the support entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship needs from the government, there is still a lot of bureaucracy and regulations that stand in the way of investments and growth of startups.

 There are four important lessons for government to take into consideration when making policies concerning entrepreneurship.

Favor Incumbents Less

 It does no good to set up funds, seed funding, and venture capitals when nine out of ten of the funding and policies are about supporting incumbent businesses making it difficult for new entrepreneurs to compete. If you close the market spaces through the 9/10 of government policies to entrepreneurs, the 1/10 that you do in 50 million dollar funds is simply not going to change much. It is important to allow businesses to compete for the sake of meeting market needs and hence value creation.

Listen to Entrepreneurs

Before you do anything to help entrepreneurs, talk to them, find out what their reality is. Their needs are different based on their location and kind of business. This will form a basis for information to the government, on what exactly is going on in the entrepreneurial sector and what developments are taking place. This will inform the choices and decisions they can make for the sector and see how best to accommodate new and old ideas. 

Map The Ecosystem and Then Do Something Systematic

This should come after you have listened to the entrepreneurs and taken into consideration, some of their needs.  The government can get some of the best research done because of the financial and manpower capacity. Emphasis should be put on not doing one thing for investors and another for entrepreneurs. These are the same people and one can always cross over to the other side. They should be listened to as one people and the systematic strategies implemented to benefit both parties.

Prepare to Capitalize On Crisis

With crisis comes innovation and development. The government should be able to major on using disasters as a chance to create new opportunities and invest in sustainable ideas.

In favoring incumbent less, the government is not trying to kill established businesses but allow for new entrants that are likely to have better and more efficient ideas that will create more value and even profit. It is important to see to it that as many startups as possible break the market. This is good for the economy and also for the people that will get access to better products and services. The nature of entrepreneurship is that there should be constant improvement in efficiency and usability and this can only be possible when new entrants are given way to bring out what they have created for the market.

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