RMIT Classification: Trusted

Technopreneurship and
informal institutions
14 Sept 2023

Dr Manjit Sandhu,
Senior Program Manager, SL, Department of Management
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Conceptualization of ‘Technopreneurship’

• The term “technology-based entrepreneurs”, “technical entrepreneurs”, “high technology

entrepreneurs” or even “high tech new ventures” to describe new businesses that combine
entrepreneurial skills and technology (Florida and Kenney, 1988; Dahlstrand and Lindholm,
1999; Renko et al, 2002; Oakey, 2003; Kakati, 2003).

• “Technopreneurs” use technological innovations and translate such technology into successful
products or services

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Conceptualization of ‘Technopreneurship’
• Technology entrepreneurship, also known as ‘technopreneurship’, has received increasing
attention.. because it is a means to encourage innovations.
• Countries that have sustained economic growth and competitiveness are countries that have
sustained significant investments in technology
• Some of the most prominent technopreneurs top the list of the richest men/women in the world.
A few examples are: Bill Gates (Microsoft), Steve Jobs (Apple), Larry Elisson (Oracle), Jeff
Bezos (Amazon), Sergey Brin and Larry Page (Google), Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook), Jack Ma
(Alibaba), Jack Dorsey (Twitter), and Kevin Systrom (Instagram)

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Recent start ups in Indonesia. Malaysia and

Singapore

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Growth of technopreneurship in Indonesia

• As of 2023, Indonesia is in sixth

place among countries with the
most startups. We have more than
2,400 startups ( Ministry for
Economic Affairs) followed by US
(74944), India (15405), UK (6833),
Canada (3712), Australia (2638)

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Characteristics of technopreneurs

 Technopreneurs are technological pioneers and intelligent, have

remarkable capacity for innovation, creativity, dynamism, and differ
in their ways of thinking.

 They are eager to work, not afraid of failure, and do not consider
loss as an endpoint but as a starting point for new and stimulating
successes.

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Technopreneurship Ecosystem

The entrepreneurial ecosystem for technology start-ups is defined as a

structure having the three layers:

 A nucleus (start-up entrepreneurs and prospective entrepreneurs)

 i) financiers, ii) markets, iii) human resources, iv) business and
technology mentors.
 Additional factors such as supportive culture, active media, and
government.

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How do technopreneurs emerge or what factors or

circumstances make them to thrive?
Formal institutions Figueiredo and Brochado (2015), Lee and Wong (2004)
and McKenzie et al., 2007
 National level technology business incubation program
(create incubators)
 Providing entrepreneurship education; i.e. introducing
entrepreneurial university; IIT, IIM in India
 Generating science and Technology (S&T) capabilities;
creation of National Plan for Science, Technology, and
Innovation (NPSTI).
 Policies to incentivize technopreneurial efforts for start-
ups
 Formation of regional clusters
 Supporting and mentoring institutions for incubation
centers
 Funds/Financing
 Develop ICT infrastructure
 Political stability
 Support from strategists 8
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Informal institutions and

technopreneurship

 Cultural cognitive institutions

 Social normative institutions

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Informal institutions and technopreneurship

 Entrepreneurial activities are significantly influenced by both formal (rules

and regulations) and informal (culture and social norms) institutions.

 Valdez and Richardson (2013) indicate that informal institutions including

cultural-cognitive and social-normative are more likely to promote
entrepreneurial activities in comparison to formal institutions.

 This suggests that cultural values, beliefs and social norms descriptive
power in explaining entrepreneurship is higher than rules and regulations.

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Informal institutions and technopreneurship

 Cultural-cognitive dimension of an institution generally reflects the shared social

knowledge and individuals’ cognitive abilities that they use to understand
entrepreneurship (Kostova and Roth, 2002).

 These cognitive abilities highlight the individuals’ resources such as the

entrepreneurs’ social capital (Shu et al., 2018), prior knowledge and
entrepreneurial experience (Frederiks et al., 2019) and fear of failure that may
influence entrepreneurial activities.

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Informal institutions and technopreneurship

 Saeed et al. (2015) suggest that entrepreneurs’ perception of their

ability and confidence toward recognizing an entrepreneurial
opportunity increase the occurrence of entrepreneurial activities.

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Informal institutions and technopreneurship

 Social-normative institutions reflect the collective “sense making” of a society,

and demonstrate what is socially favorable and acceptable (
Valdez and Richardson, 2013)

 Societal norms influence individuals aim to act to be accepted socially (

Scott, 1995).

 Krueger et al. (2000) argue that social desirability of entrepreneurship as a

career choice positively influence the entrepreneurial intentions of potential
entrepreneurs, and results in the creation of new venture.

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Informal institutions and technopreneurship

 Media attention tend to have a positive impact on societal norms of a country,

as it provides basis to construct the individuals’ understanding that starting a
new business is suitable career option (Levie et al., 2010).

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Informal institutions and technopreneurship

 Stephan et al. (2015) argue that cultural values and societal expectations are
considered appropriate actions which are based upon dominant and
prevalent norms in a given culture or society that foster entrepreneurship.

 These values and norms establish the ground rules through which members
in a society behave (Muralidharan and Pathak, 2017).

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How do technopreneurs emerge or what factors or

circumstances make them to thrive?
Informal institutions
(Social and Demographic factors)
(perceptual factors)

 Risk tendency
 Age
 Perceived skills
 Gender
 Experience
 Occupation
 Talent
 Income
 Attitudes towards innovation
 Level and quality of education
 Knowing other
 Lack of opportunity for paid
technopreneurs/entrepreneurs
employment
 Culture
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Empirical evidence (Figueiredo and Brochado ,2015)

H1: Involvement in entrepreneurship is higher among males.

H2: The likelihood of entrepreneurial initiatives decreases with the age of entrepreneurs.
H3: Self-employed people have a greater likelihood of participating in entrepreneurial
initiatives
H4: Higher levels of formal education are associated with higher levels of
entrepreneurial activity. H5: Knowledge, competence and perceived experience increase
the likelihood of entrepreneurial activity.
H6: Knowing other entrepreneurs increases the likelihood of entrepreneurial activity
H7: Higher risk aversion decreases the probability of entrepreneurial activities
H8: Giving more value to the importance of individual innovation increases the
probability of entrepreneurial activity.

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Culture and Technopreneurship  Institutional heterogeneity may

explain the different rate of
entrepreneurial activities across
developed and developing nations.

 Culture that values risk taking

behavior and independent thinking
uphold tendency to develop drastic
innovation.

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Culture and Technopreneurship

 Culture that displays compliance,
group control and control over the
future not likely to be risk taking and
entrepreneurial (Herbig, 1994;
Herbig and Miller, 1992, Hofstede,
1980)

 Female entrepreneurs are less likely

to engage in entrepreneurship
compared to male entrepreneurs, as
they are less familiar with other
entrepreneurs and lack resource
providers as well as role model

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Culture and Technopreneurship

 Women are less confident about
their abilities which further amplifies
the adverse impact of their limited
skills on entrepreneurship.

 Consequently, women tend to enter

in low-productivity entrepreneurial
activities which occur in the informal
sector of the economy and
concentrate less on high-productivity
sectors (Brixiová and Kangoye, 2020
)

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Culture and Technopreneurship

 A woman’s decision to start a
business is influenced by the societal
attitudes of an economy (Ahl, 2006
).

 Baughn et al. (2006) indicate that

the degree of legitimacy, respect and
admiration of women’s engagement
in entrepreneurship increase the
women’s participation in
entrepreneurial activities.

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Culture and Technopreneurship

 Besides normative support, women

are also required to negotiate
gender roles within society and
households to justify their
engagement in economic activities (
Roomi et al., 2018).

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Culture and Technopreneurship

 Negative relationship between
collective culture and early-stage
entrepreneurship (Herbig and
Miller, 1992 and Hofstede, 1980)

 Cultures that adopt individualism

have higher rates of technological
innovation (Bagchi, 2004)

 But several nations not

individualistic in nature (Finland,
India, S.Korea and Japan) have
emerged with significant
technological innovation

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Organizational culture and corporate technopreneurship

• Which organizational culture will most likely

promote technopreneurship?

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• Thank you for listening

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