{"id":766,"date":"2015-01-14T13:00:16","date_gmt":"2015-01-14T12:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/?p=766"},"modified":"2016-10-28T13:14:18","modified_gmt":"2016-10-28T12:14:18","slug":"a-new-era-of-indigenous-entrepreneurship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/2015\/01\/14\/a-new-era-of-indigenous-entrepreneurship\/","title":{"rendered":"A new era of indigenous entrepreneurship"},"content":{"rendered":"

I came across a short article by Ronald Coase<\/a> (1991 Nobel laureate in economics) published at the Harvard Business Review<\/a> a few months before he died, aged 103, in 2013. The article is a delicious call for economists to re-engage with the (real life) economy. I want to focus on just one sentence in the last paragraph of the article: “Market economies springing up in China, India, Africa and elsewhere herald a new era of entrepreneurship.”<\/strong> What makes it a new era? I don’t know what Coase had in mind specifically, but as I thought about it the idea of indigenous entrepreneurship<\/strong> came to mind.<\/p>\n

I became acquainted with indigenous entrepreneurship through the work of Henrietta Onwuegbuzie<\/a>, professor of entrepreneurship at Lagos Business School<\/a>. Indigenous entrepreneurship refers to entrepreneurial activities that are based on indigenous knowledge \u2013 local knowledge that is unique to a given culture or society.<\/strong> Indigenous knowledge is at the basis of the so-called grassroots innovations:<\/strong> need-driven innovations generated to address problems faced by indigenous communities, with the potential to provide solutions to contemporary problems, and which tend to use greener techniques.<\/p>\n

\"Innovative<\/a>
Innovative lamps for a market with restricted access to electricity<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Two examples<\/strong> Henrietta provided:<\/p>\n