India’s innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem is recognised as one of the largest in the world, with global integration in terms of technology, financing, human capital, and administration. In the past two decades, the Indian economy has performed well in terms of overall averages. Its GDP growth rate in this period has been 5% or more, one of the fastest rates in the world among major economies (World Bank, 2018).

In a new special issue published in Management and Organization Review we provide an overarching view of the country’s journey toward integration with the global innovation and entrepreneurship network. We seek to track this journey and provide insights in to the strategy and leadership which have bought about this new era. Collectively, the five articles in the special issue paint a variegated and nuanced picture of the Indian innovation and entrepreneurship landscape.

 Why the comparisons with China?

The Indian economy has many unique characteristics that continue to puzzle scholars and policy makers, especially when it is compared to the economy of the other Asian giant, China. Any discussion of Indian economic performance must benchmark it against its giant neighbor to the north.

Whilst similarities are recognised in terms of development along local systems, especially infrastructure (Fan & Zhang, 2004), developed in tandem with its global connectivity (Breslin, 2007) a number of differences are considered including the pace of development. The global connectivity of the Indian economy has proceeded apace, especially in the service sector – and particularly in knowledge-intensive services (Dahlman & Utz, 2005), such as the IT, information technology enabled services (ITES), health care, and financial services. However, its manufacturing capabilities and physical infrastructure have lagged behind (Agrawal, 2015).

The Chinese entrepreneurship ecosystem, however, is both more mature as well as more focused than the Indian one. This corresponds to a smaller number of startups, along with a much higher success rate in terms of increasing scale.

This comparison between the two countries is also widened to consider demographic differences. India currently has a much higher proportion of young people who need to find first jobs which presents the the Indian government with the challenge of creating 10 million new jobs annually.

The entrepreneurship/innovation engine that powers this growth, and especially the symbiotic relationships between its domestic and foreign-owned components, have received relatively less attention. Our essay and the papers in this special issue are an attempt to address this under-researched aspect of the Indian economy.

Read the The Innovation and Entrepreneurship Ecosystem in India special issue published in Management and Organization Review.