Enterprise Support Systems : Nature and Relevance

The ‘nature versus nurture’ debate on entrepreneurship and new venture facilitation has been inconclusive. This is apparently because of an improper understanding of the differential roles of the various elements constituting the entrepreneurial environment. In an earlier paper by Manimala (2008)* the entrepreneurial environment was classified into the General and Task environments – the former constituted by the economic, legal-political, infrastructural, and socio-cultural (including the family socialization and early stage education) that contribute to the development of entrepreneurial individuals in the society, and the latter by the higher education and research institutions, banking and financial institutions, training and consulting organizations, legal and commercial services, and industry-specific infrastructure (such as industrial estates, science and technology parks, business incubators, etc) that channelize the entrepreneurial individuals into the fields of industry and commerce. The present paper renames these major categories as ‘Formative’ and ‘Facilitative’ environments respectively to bring out the nature of their impact more clearly, and describes the roles of their constituent elements more specifically based on a comprehensive review of prior research on them. Recognizing that the changes in the facilitative environment will be ineffective without the corresponding changes in the formative environment and that the latter is slower and more difficult to change, this paper recommends that the most feasible and productive intervention in this regard would be to make changes in the ‘Learning System’ of the country. [*Manimala, M. J. (2008) “Entrepreneurship education in India: An assessment of SME training needs against current practices”, international Journal of Entrepreneurship and Innovation Management, 8(6): pages 624-647]