Creative entrepreneurship and FDI in Egypt: an empirical illustration from the ICT sector

This chapter explores if creative entrepreneurship in emerging market economies plays a relevant role in the attraction of foreign direct investments (FDI), thus generating the opportunity for economic and social growth. The chapter aims to deepen this important, but still understudied aspect of the economic growth potential of creative industries, using Egypt and the ICT sector as the empirical setting. The analysis of data using the fDi Database and Zephyr on greenfield investments and mergers and acquisitions confirm the relevance of the phenomenon. Moreover, three empirical illustrations allowed the identification of three ideal-types, represented by the three cases selected for the analysis: (1) a start-up that attracted foreign venture capital investments from Silicon Valley (the case of Wuzzuf); (2) a start-up that attracted foreign companies’ investments from Silicon Valley (the case of SysDSoft); (3) a start-up that attracted foreign and local investments from risk capital players (the case of Fawry).