Innovation, Entrepreneurship and the Complementary Skill Structure

This chapter provides a theoretical foundation to help identify the areas where the need for reform is the greatest. The theories of the experimentally organized economy and of entrepreneurial ecosystems are used to identify six competencies, in addition to that of the entrepreneur, that are necessary for ideas to be generated, identified, selected and commercialized. The competencies are those of inventors, professional managers, competent employees, venture capitalists, actors in secondary markets, and demanding customers. Importantly, no one is in charge of the ecosystem’s skill structure, which limits what can be achieved through top-down reform. We also draw on the varieties of capitalism literature, which identifies institutional complementarities as an important driver of the persistent institutional differences across polities. The existence of institutional complementarities implies that viable policy changes must be compatible with existing institutional patterns and that a specific change will have effects that extend throughout the institutional system. As such, they help explain both grid-locks and cascading changes.