Dr. Daniel Isenberg Speaks at National Innovation Policy Conference (ICTPI) in Bogota, Colombia
Dr. Daniel Isenberg, Executive Director of Babson Global’s Entrepreneurship Ecosystem Project, and Professor of Management Practice at Babson Global, spoke in Bogota before 300 international innovation experts and senior Colombian policy makers on “How to Foster an Entrepreneurship Ecosystem.”
In the speech Dr. Isenberg distinguished between entrepreneurship and innovation, arguing that often high aspiration entrepreneurship is often the root cause of innovation and competitiveness, and only secondarily its result. Furthermore, the path to developing sufficient quantities of innovative science and technology, and then commercializing it, is long and uncertain. Therefore, governments, and private sector leaders, must have an independent policy for fostering entrepreneurship, in particular if they want to see economic and social impacts in less than 15-20 years.
Using the experience of the Babson Entrepreneurship Ecosystem Project, Dr. Isenberg outlined some policy do’s and don’ts including being cautious about using venture capital and angel networks as policy tools. “It is critical to craft a small number of initial wins that will serve to inspire, inform, and motivate all of the stakeholders, including potential entrepreneurs. Often times, large scale policies backfire. It is important to create lots of small, very geographically focused experiments.”
Dr. Isenberg outlined the principles, methodologies and structures that the Babson Entrepreneurship Ecosystem Project uses in creating projects in locales around the world.
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The Babson Entrepreneurship Ecosystem Project (BEEP) is part of Babson Global, the global action research subsidiary of Babson College, the world leader in entrepreneurship education. BEEP creates projects around the world to foster substantially greater levels of entrepreneurship in specific regions. For more information contact Dr. Isenberg at revolution@babson.edu. More information can be found at www.entrepreneurial-revolution.com and www.facebook.com/entrepreneurial.revolution.