Knowledge Entrepreneurship in Emerging Economies

Buoyed by high prices of resources and favorable global financial market conditions and increasing demand for labor-intensive and resource-based products in last two decades many developing countries have demonstrated a spectacular growth trajectory. However, due to the rapidly shifting global economic situation, exacerbated with slowing world economy and lower prices for resources recently these countries have started to face complex development challenges. Overcoming these challenges and setting a course of renewal growth track in the new economic realm will require redefining priorities. The focus should be on the quick adoption of structural reforms with the vision of faster integration into the global knowledge economy. Transformation to knowledge economy requires painstaking, complex and all-encompassing social, institutional, and infrastructural changes. The underlying components that are instrumental to this change are high-quality tertiary education, robust information and communication infrastructure, supportive institutions and legal system, and innovation-oriented entrepreneurial culture. Economic growth and wealth creation in a society largely depends on entrepreneurial activities. A country that relies on the entrepreneurship as its growth engine, where conversion rate of ideas to an enterprise is high, demonstrates better macroeconomic growth. In Knowledge Economy, entrepreneurs are one of the primary driving forces in the creation of disruptive innovation and dissemination of knowledge inventions. Because of this, the emphasis has to be on the creation of an environment that bolsters new company formation in knowledge-based industries and high productive service areas. In the present environment of global economic uncertainties, the author argues that one approach to regain lost growth track would be to put emphasis on the knowledge entrepreneurship. Developing countries willing to tap into their nascent potential and sustain growth with the help of knowledge entrepreneurship have to take some concrete steps though. These steps include enacting government policies of increased investment in ICT infrastructure, human capital development, adopting institutional regime and incentives conducive to entrepreneurship, and innovation, and R&D cluster development. This paper compares and analyzes country data from various global indices related to innovation, entrepreneurship, human capital and ease of doing business indicators for BRICS countries. The findings reveal which countries from the selected ones have the biggest opportunity to build a knowledge economy based on knowledge entrepreneurship. It also offers recommendations what others need to do to achieve similar competencies.