144.KTM Lama

A national conference on “Entrepreneurial Ecosystem in Developing Economies” was held at King’s College, Kathmandu. Entrepreneurship has been one of the cornerstones of policymakers to promote employment and economic growth. To that end, the rate, as well as the quality of entrepreneurship, become important. Since the quality of entrepreneurial ecosystems often determines the rate and quality of entrepreneurship, researchers and policymakers have shown significant interest in the antecedents and consequences of entrepreneurial ecosystems. In developing markets such as Nepal, entrepreneurial ecosystems are less developed since not all the elements of the ecosystem are well-developed and/or functional. For instance, they often lag behind in terms of elements such as formal institutions, infrastructure, technology, intermediaries, human capital, financial capital, etc. In this context, facilitating the emergence of thriving entrepreneurial ecosystems in developing markets could be even more challenging.

Hence, a national conference titled “Entrepreneurial Ecosystem in Developing Economies” was held at King’s College, Kathmandu. This conference was organized in order to bring together various stakeholders who are the key players in the entrepreneurial ecosystem of Nepal in one single platform. The conference also invited research papers that shed light on various facets of entrepreneurial ecosystems, particularly in developing markets. The themes of this conference were startups in “Developing Markets: Strategy and Performance, Role of the State in Entrepreneurial Ecosystems, Digital Entrepreneurial Ecosystem in Developing Economies”.

Proceedings: Welcome Note

In the opening session, Anant Tamang, senior researcher at the Center for Research and Development (CERAD) at King’s College welcomed the guests and presenters and highlighted the need to organize a conference to create a dialogue to discuss entrepreneurship promotion, development, and facilitation considering the importance of entrepreneurship in developing economies like ours.


Keynote Presentation:

Drs. Ing. Wilco Braam talked about the community of technology and unleashing the power to educate. Firstly, he shared his views on social capital, human capital, and economic capital. He talked about the innovation arena which describes four important elements which were technology, organization, market, and application. He believes that a community of practice could help in learning and interacting in a better way while solving different problems together. He also shared some factors and activities that can be done to achieve the community of practice through the process of sharing, solving, committing, and making works visible. He showed a huge connection between information and communication technologies.He believes that thinking at both the organizational level and the individual level helps achieve things in better ways. Seven design principles of Wenger conclude that there can be important learnings and useful insights from the community of practice. He also shared about the design for evolution, ways of opening a dialogue between inside and outside perspectives, the importance of knowing the trends, the importance of inviting various levels of participation, the need of developing both public and private community spaces, and the importance of focusing on values. He explains technology subdomains and the relation of technology with the community of practice in his last part.