Measuring global entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurs are the drivers of economic and social development. They are the engines of growth, productivity, innovation and jobs. Entrepreneurship might be at its pinnacle in Anglo-Saxon economies but not in countries like Pakistan where it is still in its nascent stages, which is described as the factor-driven stage on the entrepreneurial scale in the latest Global Entrepreneurship Index.
Put simply, this global index is a mix of entrepreneurial attitudes, abilities and aspirations, along features of entrepreneurship that enhance productivity such as innovation, market expansion, being growth-oriented, and having an international outlook.
While it is not a definitive answer, the Global Entrepreneurship Index, seeks to provide more than just a countrys relative global ranking; It highlights the efficiency of national start-up ecosystems by analyzing a host of individual and institutional variables and tries to divulges the bottlenecks that erode the environment for the same.
Along with other facto-driven countries with low GDPs like Bangladesh, Uganda and African countries, Pakistan takes a 123 place on the Global Entrepreneurship Index (GEI) 2015 out of 130 countries with GEI score of 20.1. When compared to South Asia region, the bottom ranking of the country signifies weaknesses in the attitudes and abilities sub-index, highlighted by lower scores in pillars like human capital, technology absorption, start-up opportunity, start-up skills, risk acceptance, and networking. The bureaucratic red tape is a common in Pakistan that constrains entrepreneurial activity. However, the country performs better against the aspirational subindex, which includes pillars like high growth, product and process innovation, and internationalisation.
Where the Asia Pacific region has both global top performers (Australia, Taiwan and Singapore) and global laggards (Indonesia, Pakistan, Bangladesh), the developed economies have a more invariable trend. The report is cheery for US, UK and Canada where entrepreneurship has progressed from factor-driven stage to efficiency stage and finally to innovation stage. The report is pretty scornful of the other EU states, Germany, Japan, due to weak economic performance over the last decade.