Futuristic Ecosystems for Digital Entrepreneurships: UK-India cross border collaborations for enhancing Knowledge-Economy

Entrepreneurship has been of interest for economists since Schumpeter (1954), who emphasised the "creative gale of destruction". In the process of exploiting new opportunities, entrepreneurs enhance productivity in the overall economy (Kirzner, 1973). The opportunities for entrepreneurship have expanded with innovation in digital technologies such as mobile computing, social media and data analytics (Nambisan, 2017).

The diffusion of skills and technology and its absorption by firms generate new kind of jobs, enhances productivity and prosperity for both UK and India. Advancements in digital technologies have been expanding rapidly during the current fourth industrial revolution and internet of everything, however, systematic analyses pertaining to the potential for trade and cross border investments is yet scare.

Thus, our study will analyse the potential for UK-India cross border trade and investments involving Digital Entrepreneurships.

UK and India are strongly committed to encouraging entrepreneurship. The exchange of knowledge, ideas and investment is facilitated strongly through established and emerging networks between India and UK both top down and bottom up, through students, working professionals and diaspora. The potential for joint action for enhanced prosperity between India and UK extends to collaborations in entrepreneurships, including small and medium enterprises (SMEs).

While there has been some work on examining the nature of industry, the business functions involved, the institutions that support it and the technologies (Gomber et al., 2017), there is little research on how this sector interacts with the rest of the economy. Hence we will examine current and future scope for UK-India trade and investment through digital entrepreneurship to enhance knowledge economy and provide a 360-degree view of the nature and impact for enhanced sharing of human and financial resources.

This study undertakes structured evidence-based trans-disciplinary research using mixed-methodology involving primary and secondary data. Primary data will be collected from universities-based incubators in UK and India.

In this context, we will conduct an overview of existing ecosystem within and between UK and India for digital entrepreneurships including financial services/FinTech firms. We will examine the opportunities and challenges for cross border collaborations in terms of the role played by such entrepreneurships for reducing transaction costs, enhancing credit flows, and creating a virtuous cycle of investment.

We will also examine existing and potential opportunities for supporting small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and the informal sector entrepreneurship, including trade financing, invoice financing and peer-to-peer lending. We will also explore existing and necessary mechanisms to enable inclusion and equal opportunity. This study will also examine current policies and regulations to ascertain opportunities for enhancing co-operation as well as identify challenges to suggest improvements to overcome potential bottlenecks to enhance co-operation and enable mutual prosperity.

Based on our analyses, we will develop potential future ecosystems toward further UK-India trade and cross border investments toward enhancing mutual economic growth and prosperity in a changing global environment.