Darrell West examines mobile entrepreneurship’s key role in expanding opportunities for social and economic development around the world. Examining places like Nigeria, Egypt, and Indonesia, West notes that micro-entrepreneurs generate 38 percent of the gross domestic product, generating new ideas, business models, and ways of selling goods and services.
As part of the Center for Technology Innovation’s Mobile Economy Project, West analyzes the importance of wireless technology for entrepreneurship, how mobile improves access to capital and market information, how it helps entrepreneurs serve broader geographic areas and reach new customers, the manner in which it empowers women and the disadvantaged, and the way mobile payments stimulate economic development.
West offers policy recommendations that outline the steps needed to overcome current barriers to m-entrepreneurship.
