Entrepreneurship and Innovation Enhanced, Between Leading the Nurture and Awakening the Nature within Nations

: Focus on projects made to lead Innovation and Entrepreneurship in the Kingdom of Bahrain

Abstract

It is stated in the UK's enterprise and entrepreneurship education guidance for higher education providers that Entrepreneurship is a generic concept that could be applied across all areas of education. In contrast, calling it an entrepreneur gene created a great cloud of inquisitive thoughts around entrepreneurship. Thoughts around being able to teach it or not, other studies of maybe sparking it, if it was really there genetically. This stretched to organisations exploring the possibility of teaching their managers to act and behave like entrepreneurs (Thornberry, 2002), hoping to get a result of innovation from their managers like entrepreneurs. Between the theory and practice, how many examples are out there that can prove the possibility of teaching entrepreneurship vs the phenomenon theory behind that one is born with it? The researcher has created several projects to lead entrepreneurship within the young generation in the kingdom of Bahrain over the course of several years. Therefore, this paper, based on the research question, has demonstrated the possibilities of nature or the nurture of innovation and entrepreneurship within the small nation of the Kingdom of Bahrain around the effects of various political, economic, cultural effects and social influences within the entrepreneurial ecosystem of this nation. Results have been achieved by analysing and exploring these portfolio projects that hold few empirical evidence on the success and failure stories within their chapters. This paper further found that in both cases of nature or nurture, teaching or pushing the genetic action button, an essential part of the entrepreneurial equation, decides either's success. Many factors affect the entrepreneurial initiative. One element that this paper explored within the portfolio projects is the entrepreneurial ecosystem, which makes pursuing an entrepreneurial initiative a success or a failure. To elaborate further, for example, if given the opportunity for two entrepreneurs as test subjects, one is the entrepreneur by gene and the other is the entrepreneur by study, and both were to operate within an ecosystem that oppresses entrepreneurship. Then, the chances are very high for both to fail and vice versa. It is, therefore, difficult to define which entrepreneur would be the correct form for theory building. Meanwhile, the author also reviewed the literature around the research, touching on many aspects of entrepreneurship within the economy and further analysing the data around ecosystems nurturing the entrepreneurs, like the government's role within the ecosystem along with factors surrounding it that could affect the entrepreneurship ecosystems. For example, literature about the forms of entrepreneurship such as productive/unproductive, destructive, political, formal and informal entrepreneurship. Then, realizing the conceptual gap in the literature, such as the local ecosystem, after reviewing several concepts that break down the idea of leading innovation and entrepreneurship to different segments. Those segments left the research with additional questions around the possibility of leading the nurture/nature of entrepreneurship and the availability of an ecosystem for entrepreneurs around the effects of various political, economic, cultural effects and social influences to be able to operate from and within. Then, there is the intervention of other organizational theories like culture, innovation, and change.

Also, this paper presents the fishbowl concept, a fishbowl metaphorically represents an artificial echo system, while the fish is the entrepreneur. This fishbowl holds many attractive elementsfor the entrepreneur as illustrated in the fishbowl picture presented in this paper which will eventually attract the entrepreneur, who will be drawn by the beautiful elements displayed within the bowl and eventually jump into it with hopes of achieving business success. It’s only a matter of time before the fish will discover that everything is artificial and non-functional, whereby, no matter which direction it swims towards, it will end up in the same place. Thus, the researcher's recommendation for the entrepreneur who discovered the environment to be fake is to leave. In fact, to jump out, taking a strategic entrepreneurial leap of faith, even if one was a fish and jumping from the bowl could mean death! After all, the authors said, death will lead to birth. However, the entrepreneur leaving means searching for a better ecosystem to nurture his/her ambitions. Additionally, such a fake environment could be an environment that enables unjust control and bad influence, creates political entrepreneurs and nurtures corruption instead of nurturing genuine productive entrepreneurs with freedom of growth and prosperity for themselves and their surroundings.

Furthermore, the researcher questioned what would happen if the test subject entrepreneurs operated within this fake fishbowl environment. The result would likely be influenced by the fishbowl owner. Meanwhile, such a fake environment could be an environment that enables unjust control and bad influence, creates political entrepreneurs and nurtures corruption instead of nurturing genuine productive entrepreneurs with freedom of growth and prosperity for themselves and their surroundings. This brought the paper to the conclusion that, yes, it is possible to lead entrepreneurship within small nations like the Kingdom of Bahrain. But the ecosystem that nurtures the entrepreneurs cannot be guaranteed, that it enables them to freely and fairly operate and grow without the interference of a higher force. This higher force usually seeks control by creating a fishbowl environment, and the higher force decides who will make it and who will not. Eventually, the entrepreneur becomes the fish, waiting to be fed in the fishbowl at the mercy of the fishbowl owner. Therefore, the entrepreneur is caught within a fake ecosystem, that is driven by the system and not the free market. Thus, further looking around the available theories to support the parties looking for answers within our subject by making the correct recommendations within this research, that bring value to the readers and practitioners, along with a set of recommendations to both policymakers and entrepreneurs.

Date of Award	2024
Original language	English
Supervisor	Simon Thomas (Supervisor) & Naveen Madhavan (Supervisor)