Despite its status as a low-income country, India has produced the third highest number of unicorns in the 2010s. We offer a supply–demand model of start-ups to explain this surprising outcome. On the demand side, India’s large and fast-growing market, coupled with ‘leapfrogging advantages’, have encouraged start-ups in many digital businesses. On the supply side, India’s abundant and affordable technical talent, nurtured by the country’s IT/software companies and the R&D centres of foreign multinationals, have combined with a surge in angel investors, incubators, accelerators and local and foreign venture capitalists. Government policies have reinforced both demand-side and supply-side factors, as have global developments such as the COVID-19 pandemic and geopolitical tensions involving China. Although the climate for start-ups deteriorated in 2022–2024 in India (as it did worldwide), the fundamentals are strong for India to continue to be an important source of digital start-ups and unicorns.

Management is the only window to incentive bargaining. The result of the incentive bargaining, filtered by management’s own incentive, determines the direction of managing the firm. Chapter 3 categorizes managerial incentives into power-related, reputational, and monetary incentives, and compares the characteristics of managerial incentives in the three countries. For US management, monetary incentives are the most important among the three categories. For Japanese management, the monetary incentive is not the priority but is subordinated to power-related and reputational incentives. In China, managerial incentives are different in SOEs and POEs. For SOE management, monetary compensation is not so important, but political rank is more important, which is accompanied by monetary rewards. For POE management, monetary incentives are important, and stock options are widely used. At the same time, the political network is important to POE management, and POE management cares about its reputation in the party-state as well.

The venture capital ecosystem in Africa is thriving. With multiple large investor rounds and exits in the 2020s, the continent transitioned from having not a single unicorn in 2016 to seven start-ups worth over US$1 billion in less than a decade, while five unicorns were born in 2021 alone. Even though many start-ups on the continent gain traction organically, the current paradigm is no substitute for finding a competitive regional strategy that offers a sustainable flow of successful scale ups that then obtain unicorn status. There is a vast difference in institutional structure, resources and capabilities between African countries and what is found elsewhere. Africa faces different sets of challenges that require a unique approach to venture creation. Reforms capable of strengthening existing policy frameworks, skills development initiatives and a financing architecture that supports entrepreneurship along the entire value chain will be critical in the African context. This chapter situates policy innovation in the context of Africa’s bubbling venture capital ecosystem as a key contributor to unicorn emergence.

Chapter 5 examines the role of family relationships in employment within family-owned businesses, particularly the tension between kinship-based hiring practices and meritocratic standards. While familial hiring can be perceived as nepotism, the chapter challenges this reductive view by emphasizing that kinship preferences in family enterprises often reflect legitimate efforts to ensure business continuity and stability. It distinguishes between contexts where kinship preferences are appropriate and those where they undermine merit. The chapter also explores how family upbringing and long-term involvement can cultivate practical skills that align with business needs, suggesting that family ties do not necessarily preclude competence. Through the case study of Burns Dance Studio, the chapter demonstrates how the integration of family values into business operations can foster both entrepreneurial resilience and sustainable succession planning.