Qatar's Entrepreneurial Ecosystem - 2021 Edition: Empowering the Transformation

There is an emerging trend of discussing “entrepreneurial ecosystems” and the potential effects of entrepreneurship on the rapid growth of countries. This has been accompanied by a growing effort from governments to push innovation-driven entrepreneurial projects because of their relation to economic growth and job creation. Questions remain without an answer and much of the evidence is inconclusive or incomplete, but a growing number of academics are focusing on researching the different entrepreneurship-related questions. Understanding the process of entrepreneurship is key to creating the ideal conditions to foster business creation and development, ideally of high impact based on innovation because they have a bigger potential to provide jobs and income for the long term. Therefore, researching the entrepreneurship phenomena must be linked closely to the practical experiences of entrepreneurs and key stakeholders to be as accurate as possible. Following this trend, the entrepreneurial ecosystem appears in the entrepreneurship literature as the leading theory used by practitioners and researchers about entrepreneurship policy portfolios, regional clusters of entrepreneurs and specialized resources, as well as national systems of entrepreneurship. The concept usually underpins studies looking at the dynamics of competition and collaboration in co-specialized technology-intensive settings. Consequently, as explained in chapter 1, this report aims to examine the reality of an entrepreneurial ecosystem in a country that has made several efforts to transform into a knowledge-based economy, making the country a regional hub for knowledge and high-value industrial and economic activities. That country is Qatar.