Entrepreneurship and sustainability: The need for innovative and institutional solutions

Abstract

The role of innovation and institutional quality for achieving sustainability are important issues tackled by current sustainable development debates, particularly in developing countries. Using a modified environmental Kuznets curve model, the present study improves our understanding of the critical roles of innovation, institutional quality, and entrepreneurship in structural change toward a sustainable future for Africa. Our empirical results show that formal and informal entrepreneurship are conducive to reduced environmental quality and sustainability in 17 African countries however informal entrepreneurship contributes more than formal entrepreneurship to this environmental degradation. The relationship between entrepreneurship and sustainable development turns strongly positive in the presence of high levels of innovation and institutional quality. This study contributes to this emerging research strand by clarifying the conditions that allow African countries to move toward more sustainable economies. Our results highlight the important roles played by innovation and institutions for achieving sustainability in Africa.

Entrepreneurship contribution to the three pillars of sustainable development: What does the evidence really say?

“…The relationship between entrepreneurship and environmental degradation is perceived as a zero-sum game where the nature is always a loser (Carson et al, 2003;Flannery, 2005). In the same line, Ben Youssef et al (2017) found that, based on a study of the relationship between entrepreneurship and environmental sustainability for 17 African countries, both formal and informal entrepreneurship in Africa positively contribute to environmental pollution.…”

“…entrepreneurship and small business can play in achieving these goals (Parrish, 2010;Rahdari et al, 2016;Ben Youssef et al 2017;Omri, 2017). Many of them agreed that entrepreneurship could contribute significantly to the world's economy, society as well as human kind through job creation, product innovation and exploitation of business opportunities.…”

“…Moreover, the economic literature advocates innovation as a vital catalyst to change toward sustainability (Lozano et al, 2013;Silvester, 2015;Ben Youssef et al 2017). For that reason, policy makers in developing countries should strengthen the innovation capacity of enterprises through more investment in training and education programs, patent protection, strengthening cooperation between industries and research centres, and stimulating applied research studies for innovative products and services.…”

Developing and Piloting a Pedagogy for Teaching Innovation, Collaboration, and Co-Creation in Secondary Education Based on Design Thinking, Digital Transformation, and Entrepreneurship

“…The 21 st century innovative and digital skills are essential skills for designing solutions to realworld problems and thus are considered fundamental competences for creating new valuable products or services. Entrepreneurial skills should also be considered essential 21 st century skills as it is described in several competences' frameworks and reports such as EntreComp (The Entrepreneurship Competence Framework) [19] and other frameworks regarding sustainable development goals [20,21].…”

The Positive Side of Feminist Theory in Entrepreneurial Finance: Feminist Themes and Tropes in Crowdfunding for Social Change

“…The sustainability discourse in the field of entrepreneurship is often associated with hybrid organisational forms (Battilana and Lee, 2014;Lehner and Weber, 2016) and looked at from an environmental (Meek et al, 2010) or internal social innovation perspective (Gerber and Hui, 2013;Youssef et al;Munoz and Cohen, 2017) only. When it comes to analysing, for example performance such endeavours often seem to follow a functionalist paradigm that does not fully capture the social discourse underlying funding processes.…”