Entrepreneurs' innovation benefitting from their education and training and from national policy and culture: A global study

Abundant ideology and scarce evidence favour ideas about benefits for entrepreneurs' innovativeness from their formal education and entrepreneurial training during and upon schooling and also from policy supporting entrepreneurship and culture emphasising individualism. The ideas are tested using hierarchical linear mixed modelling on an approximately representative sample of 21,174 entrepreneurs in 38 countries surveyed in Global Entrepreneurship Monitor. Entrepreneurs' innovativeness is found to benefit from education, especially from training during schooling and also from training upon graduation, controlling for other characteristics. Innovation is also promoted by public policy support for entrepreneurship. A culture emphasising entrepreneurial individualism moderates the benefit in the way that it amplifies the benefit of education for innovation.