Bloom where planted: Entrepreneurial catalyzers amidst weak institutions

Abstract

Aggregated country-level statistics and regulatory aspects of institutions alone fail to explain the increasing emergence of promising ventures in developing contexts. We argue institutions have multiple dimensions and draw attention to the often overlooked heterogeneities within these institutional dimensions in developing nations. Using data from developed, emerging, and base of pyramid economies we show evidence of unequal endowments across regulatory, cognitive, and normative institutional dimensions. Drawing on exemplar ventures we then illustrate that some founders develop workarounds by compensating for the weaker institutional dimension/s. Thus, rather than waiting for weak institutions to be fixed, entrepreneurial catalyzers go forward by harnessing their weak institutional context, countering a common narrative in development research.