6 cultural shifts to accelerate entrepreneurship in Bangladesh

In 2019, Valentina Assenova of the University of Pennsylvania published a study titled "Why are some societies more entrepreneurial than others? Evidence from 192 countries over 2001-2018." 

We presume that if a country invests in research and development (R&D) and has a strong STEM education system, abundant capital and pro-business policies, you have fertile ground for a thriving entrepreneurship ecosystem. However, the study suggests otherwise. 

It finds that cultural and social norms play a greater role in determining the level of entrepreneurial activities in a country. "The evidence shows that the strongest predictors of cross-national variation in entrepreneurial activity were normative, with social norms being the most strongly associated with entrepreneurialism and rates of organisational founding," observes Assenova. 

The paper shows that societies that value and reward performance and endorse status privileges had on average higher rates of organisational founding. 

If this is the case, we need a complete overhaul of policy thinking around how we can accelerate entrepreneurship in Bangladesh. Along with infrastructure and investment, we must also focus on the normative reality in society and across our policy landscape. 

Back in 2011-2012, the mainstream connotation of entrepreneurship was broadly negative. The dominant view was that if you don't come from a privileged background you can't build a successful business in Bangladesh. Additionally, people generally viewed businessmen as corrupt and greedy.

Both of these perceptions have a basis in reality. In Bangladesh, meritocracy doesn't always lead to the best outcome for individuals. One's background, family status, closeness to power, group affiliation and a host of other factors limit one's access to opportunities.

Like national politics, everything follows a dynastic norm that has created an extreme concentration of wealth and power— exacerbating the country's overall inequality and making social mobility difficult.

This reality has started to change to some extent in recent years, thanks to technology and globalisation. Technology has made exploring opportunities easy, making the playing field relatively equal for all resulting in a fascinating startup movement in Bangladesh. 

However, this movement could have reached a completely new level if we had the cultural imperatives in favour of entrepreneurship. In order to accelerate entrepreneurial activities in Bangladesh, along with policy changes, we need meaningful cultural changes. 

While we have seen certain changes over the last few years, such as more people are now interested in entrepreneurship, the broader normative reality remains the same. In this article, I explore six cultural changes that can lead to an acceleration of entrepreneurship in Bangladesh. 

1. Meritocracy and rewarding performance 

Bangladesh is still not a meritocratic society. The social support structure remains skewed towards the privileged. Unless we can change this normative structure, meaningful acceleration of entrepreneurship will remain elusive no matter what policy decisions we make.

Of course, there is no perfect meritocratic society. It is not realistic to expect one either. But you can think of it as a spectrum where in some societies meritocracy takes precedence whereas in others merit and performance don't take precedence. 

In Bangladesh, the culture is of Chacha and Khala. Success is often determined by one's background, family status, and connections rather than performance. This discourages people from working hard and reaching their full potential. We need to shift towards valuing merit and performance over privilege.

2. Being optimistic

Bangladesh needs cultural optimism and a habit of seeing upsides in things. Optimism is an essential quality of entrepreneurs. As a society, we are rather a bit cynical and prefer to see the negative side of others. While this is nothing unique to our society, it appears to be more pervasive in our society than otherwise. 

Cynicism leads to many limiting behaviours. You generally perceive the world as a difficult and unjust place, which the world probably is. But operating with a cynical outlook in an already difficult world does no good to anyone. A direct implication of this is a failure to imagine a better world. If you see the world from a negative outlook, nothing appears possible. 

Successful entrepreneurship ecosystems are optimistic to a fault. Silicon Valley is often accused of unbridled enthusiasm and optimism. Entrepreneurship is precisely that— imagine a new reality and go for it. 

We need to raise our bar of optimism to create a vibrant entrepreneurship scene in the country. We have to learn to encourage weird ideas and impossible-seeming dreams. 

3. Building trust in society

Bangladesh is a low-trust society where people generally trust only those within their own social circles— the same school, village, social class, etc. People generally don't help people who come from outside of their circle. Trusting someone we don't know by either supporting them or getting support from them doesn't come easily to us. 

Everything is quite dynastic like most of the things in Bangladesh. This makes it difficult for outsiders to access opportunities and collaborate. I often see where people don't get access to opportunities because they don't come from the same social class or are as well connected. 

This is also the reason why companies and people try to do everything themselves and often shy away from collaboration. Shifting towards a high-trust, serendipitous culture where people readily help each other would greatly benefit the entrepreneurial ecosystem.

4. Practising entrepreneurial philanthropy

Local businesses and wealthy people should support entrepreneurial people and entrepreneurship related initiatives through philanthropic initiatives. Across times and societies, philanthropies have played an important role in advancing innovation and entrepreneurialism. 

In countries like the US, thousands of grants and philanthropic initiatives support entrepreneurial initiatives. The same is true for our neighbouring country India. Relative to that, while many Bangladeshi wealthy people donate to and invest in charity, the initiatives of effective and productive philanthropy in areas like entrepreneurship and social problem-solving remain insignificant. 

5. Promoting entrepreneurship in the curriculum

Entrepreneurs and local business stories should be celebrated and incorporated into educational curriculums so that entrepreneurship is seen as a respectable and viable career path. This will create a culture of innovation aligned with the nation's goals of economic diversification and self-reliance.

6. Building innovation clusters

There have been substantial studies on the importance of clusters across the world. It has been found that almost everything happens in clusters. Innovation cluster in industrial policies is a widely practised concept. 

We have clusters of industries today. Tech in Silicon Valley. Movies and entertainment in Los Angeles. RMG in Bangladesh and so on. Studies suggest clusters make it easier for an industry to flourish by enabling concentration and free-flow of talents, ideas and resources. 

Policymakers should spend time understanding these phenomena and designing policies that can transform sporadic actions into clusters. 

To conclude, successful business ecosystems take a long time to build. We have a long way to go. However, if we focus on the right interventions and run the right experiments, these cultural shifts can help accelerate entrepreneurship in Bangladesh.