Foreword

This book celebrates a special figure, that of the entrepreneur-innovator. It looks for his/her roots in economic thought, his/her symbiotic link with development. It examines the different ways of conceiving the role of entrepreneurship in the most modern conceptions of economic growth. It is also a work that questions the paradoxical link between entrepreneurship and innovation, as the latter is also called upon to explain economic development, the dynamism of countries, the strength of the creation of new opportunities in the economy. Macroeconomics, endogenous growth theories, industrial economics, firm theories, and even the theories of competitiveness have found it difficult to give a role to the entrepreneur in their models. As economic theory struggled to incorporate innovation, it also had difficulty in incorporating the role of the entrepreneur. Paradoxically, in the work of classic economists like Jean Baptiste Say and Adam Smith, the entrepreneur and the firm are the heroes of the economy. This alone says a lot about the questionable exploratory value of some of our contemporary models, especially when they are applied in developing countries.

Beyond Schumpeter's pioneering work, the firm reappeared as an important actor only after approaches in terms of innovation and learning systems (technological, economic, political) were developed. Even in the work of "heterodox" economists, where the microeconomic dynamic of the firm plays an explanatory role that neoclassical modelling had carefully set aside, the integration of the firm into economic theory is as complex as the phenomenon it attempts to explain. Our authors point to the numerous attempts to integrate entrepreneurship as key actors of economic dynamics in particular in the theories of development. This complete review of the conceptions of entrepreneurship in different economic analyses and theories is the first quality of the book.

Next, the authors examine the complexity of the relationship between entrepreneurial activity and development, allowing them to introduce a fundamental distinction between "classical" and "innovative" entrepreneurs, although they use a somewhat a different vocabulary. This shows that the entrepreneurial function is a vital component of the process of economic growth, and therefore of history, although here again, the authors use a different vocabulary.

Moreover, the authors highlight the close link between knowledge and entrepreneurship: firms innovate using knowledge flows and produce a dynamic impulse in the economy because of their energy as well as because of their ability to design and disseminate innovations (and thus also knowledge). A close relationship that makes it possible to overcome blockages in the economy by promoting opportunities, but also sometimes just as a response to necessity.

This close link between knowledge and entrepreneurship also indicates the importance of various contexts in which the analysis is carried out. The economy is highly dependent on the use of knowledge, far beyond the "knowledge economy" that international organizations have been insisting in defining and promoting. The authors propose to take into consideration innovative entrepreneurship as a component of the innovation system, to define what the authors call a national system of innovative entrepreneurship, with its local roots, its multiple forms of knowledge transfer between various actors, and its innovation policies. Public policies and institutional ecosystems are presented in these pages in a pedagogical manner. Pedagogy is undoubtedly necessary as the literature indicates not only the complexity of the link between the economy and entrepreneurs, but also the variety of links that entrepreneurs can establish with the State. All these considerations show how difficult it is to measure the contribution of entrepreneurs to a country's innovative capacity. It depends on the society, culture, habits and routines in a given society.

In contrast to the most common discourses that clearly expect (young) entrepreneurs to provide only benefits to the economy, the authors show that business creation is not necessarily associated with increased innovation in the economy as a whole. The positive or negative outcome is very strongly related to the complexity of development, which is reflected in the terms "developed economy" or "economy in transition".

The analysis proposed by Sonia Ben Slimane and Hatem M'henni shows that entrepreneurship is "embedded" in the social relations built by those economic actors. This explains why: "Entrepreneurship, as a determining element in the economic development of a country, has an aspect that is always unique to it, and therefore depends to a large extent on the behavior of its population towards entrepreneurship" (see section 3.6). Mainstream economists have found it very difficult to accept this "idiosyncratic" aspect, this uniqueness of economic relations, which are also, and perhaps above all, social relations. The analysis of networks has allowed to bring closer these political and sociological considerations to the most common economic analysis. This gap between the findings of the social sciences and humanities and economic analysis is due both to the difficulty of measuring the performance of entrepreneurial activities, and to ideological positioning. This is at least the wager of Hatem M'henni and Sonia Ben Slimane.

The authors use the composite indicators developed by the Global Entrepreneurship Index (GEI) and the Global Innovation Index (GII). These indicators are not direct measures, but they do allow to position different countries relatively to each other and thus allow for comparisons in order to disentangle the complex relationships between innovation, development and entrepreneurship. This is the subject of the second part of this book, which also provides its most original material and its real contribution to the literature. Through a series of statistical tests, the authors review the question of the determinants of entrepreneurship on innovation.

Classical tests, which measure the age, qualification, previous experience and demographic profiles of the population likely to provide future entrepreneurs, to more complex relationships, in an attempt to measure the effects of government programs dedicated to entrepreneurship, the ability to transfer the results of Research and Development (R&D) or differences in cultural and social norms in different countries.

These can be expected relations such as the relationship between a good business climate (and thus the ease of doing business) and innovation (always positive). Other relationships are less obvious, as they are true for developed economies but not for developing economies. Thus, a policy that encourages entrepreneurship seems to have as much a beneficial effect on business creation as on innovation capacity, but the national context acts differently depending on whether we are talking about developed or emerging countries. While all researchers would recommend government intervention, the authors seem to emphasize that no relation is automatic nor can be taken for granted. Indeed, the implications of this observation are far-reaching: if public policies in favor of entrepreneurship are virtually ineffective in less developed or emerging countries, it would also mean that these policies deserve "a thorough revision to be more effective" (see section 5.4.1).

Similarly, the ability to transfer R&D results positively determines the innovation performance of a developed country, but this is much less the case for emerging countries. These differentiated effects are too easily overlooked. The authors confront the possible implications of this finding. They examine the role and quality of scientific research in these countries, which rarely produces breakthroughs, thus reducing entrepreneurial opportunities; they underline the lack of effective institutions (when they exist) and/or programs dedicated to the transfer of R&D results to economic players. For example, is the fact that R&D results are transferred by R&D researchers not proof of a weak entrepreneurial capacity? We believe this is a courageous investigation because it opposes the rather soothing dominant discourse on technology transfer. In effect, the dominant view praises technology transfers, dissemination and "popularization" of research, and the mobility of researchers from public research to the economic sectors instead of encouraging the R&D in enterprises and the financing of R&D for productive purposes by private capital, as is the case in an efficient economy.

Finally, it should be noted that the authors support the idea that the creation of an "entrepreneurial ecosystem" should always have a strong positive impact on innovation in all countries, regardless of their development. Fostering the innovation ecosystem is much easier said than done. The authors are particularly critical of public policies dedicated exclusively to entrepreneurship. Their conclusions underline the ineffectiveness or total absence of public policies aimed at linking the research sphere with the economic sphere, as well as the absence of programs dedicated at promoting entrepreneurship and creativity. In short, the low capacity to engage in R&D or in the most innovative activities is closely linked to the lack of:

[.] policies that facilitate transfer, or encourage the creation of research-based start-ups (spin-offs), as for example the creation of...