India enjoys largest jump in entrepreneurship rankings
India has enjoyed the largest jump in the rankings, moving up 29 spots from last year to land in 69th in The 2017 Global Entrepreneurship Index (GEI) monitor. The authors of the report estimate that improving conditions to help entrepreneurs create new companies could add $22 trillion to the global economy. The GEDI report, which provides key information for policymakers and government leaders worldwide to strengthen their digital ecosystems and promote high-growth, high-impact entrepreneurship, shows the United States remains the country with the most favorable conditions for entrepreneurs to start and scale new businesses but with a slowly narrowing gap as other countries increase their support.
“China and India are strengthening their entrepreneurial ecosystems and creating billion dollar startups while Malaysia, Iceland and the Baltic states are emerging as digital entrepreneurship leaders,” said Zoltan Acs, co-author of the report and university professor at the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University. “While institutional variables still need to be strengthened in emerging economies – where individuals are running ahead of policymakers – in developed countries individuals need to be shaken up. In other words, not enough people in developed countries – including the United States – are starting productive high-growth businesses.”
The top of the rankings were dominated by countries in the innovation-driven stage of development. The United States topped the rankings again this year, with a GEI score of 83.4 – a slight drop from its score of 86.2 the previous year. It was followed by (in order): Switzerland (78.0), Canada (75.6), Sweden (75.5), Denmark (74.1), Iceland (73.5), Australia (72.5), the United Kingdom (71.3), Ireland (71.0) and Netherlands (67.8).
India (25.8) enjoyed the largest jump in the rankings, moving up 29 spots from last year to land in 69th. Tunisia (40.5) had the second largest jump, from 62nd to 42nd. China (36.3) moved up 12 spots to 48th.
The GEI measures a country’s entrepreneurial ecosystem by combining individual data such as opportunity recognition, startup skills and risk acceptance, with institutional measures, including urbanization, education and economic freedom. These measurements help distinguish self-employment and replicative entrepreneurship from the innovative, productive and rapidly growing entrepreneurial ventures that drive real economic growth.
Unlocking the potential of Indian women; adding $700 billion in GDP by 2025
In August 2016, McKinsey Global Institute predicted that India could create sustainable economic conditions in five ways, such as promoting acceptable living standards, improving the urban infrastructure, and unlocking the potential of women.
‘Mckinsey research suggests that women now contribute only 17% of India’s GDP and make up just 24% of the workforce, compared with 40% globally. In the coming decade, they will represent one of the largest potential economic forces in the country. If it matched the progress toward gender parity of the region’s fastest-improving country, we estimate that it could add $700 billion to its GDP in 2025. Movement toward closing the gender gap in education and in financial and digital inclusion has begun, but there is scope for further progress.
Public-sector efforts to address the five areas are under way. The government is attempting to improve the investment climate and accelerate job creation—India’s ranking on the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Report climbed to 55 in 2015–16, from 71 a year earlier. Officials are moving to make the government more efficient, using technology that can leapfrog traditional bottlenecks of a weak infrastructure. One billion Indian citizens, for example, are now registered under Aadhaar, the world’s largest digital-identity program and a potent platform for delivering benefits directly to the poor.’
This year, GEDI included four new components of the digital entrepreneurship ecosystem: Digital Citizenship, Digital Governance, Digital Marketplace and Digital Business.
The report was released by Global Entrepreneurship Network and the GEDI Institute so that findings from the Index can drive policy discussions at events around the world during Global Entrepreneurship Week.
“This is just the tip of the iceberg of the digital disruption revolution unfolding,” said Jonathan Ortmans, president of the Global Entrepreneurship Network. “The promise of jobs, economic growth and the optimism and hope that entrepreneurs bring to government efforts to create opportunity and prosperity for their citizens, has generated an extraordinary increase in attention from all levels of government in empowering their entrepreneurial ecosystems.”
Other interesting observations from the report include:
- The big surprise is the rise of Switzerland to 2nd place, primarily driven by the aspiration index with very strong scores in high-growth firms, product innovation and process innovation.
- Three of the five Nordic countries, Denmark, Iceland, and Sweden, are in the top ten.
- Taiwan, the highest Asian country, is in 16th place, and Singapore is 24th, which virtually ties it with Japan.
About The GEDI Institute
The GEDI Institute is a research organization that advances knowledge on links between entrepreneurship, economic development and prosperity. The Institute was founded by world-leading entrepreneurship scholars from the George Mason University, University of Pécs and Imperial College London. The flagship project of the Institute is the Global Entrepreneurship Index, a breakthrough advance in measuring the quality and dynamics of entrepreneurship ecosystems at a national and regional level. The GEI methodology has been validated in rigorous academic peer reviews and has been widely reported in media, including in The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times and Forbes.
Click here for the 2017 GEDI Report.
About Global Entrepreneurship Network
Global Entrepreneurship Network (GEN) is a year-round platform of programs and initiatives created by the communities that celebrate Global Entrepreneurship Week each November. Aimed at creating one global entrepreneurial ecosystem, GEN helps people in 160 countries unleash their ideas and turn them into promising new ventures—creating jobs, unearthing innovations for society and strengthening economic stability around the world. For details on the programs and initiatives that make up GEN, visit weareGEN.co and follow @unleashingideas on Twitter.
