Delineating the Domain of Development Entrepreneurship: A Market-Based Approach to Facilitating Inclusive Economic Growth

Development economists and management scholars have called for a more market-based approach to address the extreme poverty suffered by the billion people residing primarily in least developed countries. This article proposes a theory of development entrepreneurship that blends business entrepreneurship, social entrepreneurship, and institutional entrepreneurship to accelerate the institutional change necessary to make economic growth more inclusive. After examining various explanations of market failure in the base of the pyramid and social entrepreneurship literatures, I explain why entrepreneurial transformation of formal institutions is needed and what differentiates development entrepreneurship from related concepts such as social entrepreneurship, social business entrepreneurship, and socio-political activism.