Rethinking Enterprise Policy Can Failure Trigger New Understanding?

Policies to increase the level of enterprise and entrepreneurship, in many countries and regions, have often failed. This book explores this and gives alternative views to derive a different model, based on social influence, which is consistent with the evidence and which might therefore lead to better policy. In many countries, policies to increase levels of enterprise and entrepreneurship have been pursued for up to 30 years, but now there is evidence to suggest that they do not work. These failures need to be addressed and this book provides answers to the many questions that have resulted from this failure. Simon Bridge considers the models of enterprise that have supported policy and examines some of the thinking behind them. He suggests a categorisation of entrepreneurship to try to introduce some clarity to a sometimes confusing debate about its meaning and an interpretation of social capital to try to explain its relevance. Finally he brings such considerations together to derive an alternative model of enterprise which is consistent with the evidence and which might therefore lead to better policy.

SIMON BRIDGE is an Enterprise and Economic Development Consultant. Before that he was Enterprise Director of a small business agency and he is a Visiting Professor at the University of Ulster, UK. He co-wrote Understanding Enterprise, Entrepreneurship and Small Business (Palgrave Macmillan, 2003) and Understanding the Social Economy and the Third Sector (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008).

Introduction
PART I: THE CURRENT MODELS AND APPROACHES
Government Agenda
Models of the Influences on Entrepreneurship
The Problem: the Facts don't Fit the Theory
PART II: EXPLORING THE POSITION
Different Perspectives
Perspectives on Entrepreneurship and Enterprise
Nature or Nurture?
Comparisons
PART III: AN ALTERNATIVE MODEL
An Enterprise is a Goal-realisation Device
The Basis of Choice
The Social Dimension
An Alternative Approach
A View Forward