Reorienting entrepreneurial support infrastructure to tackle a social crisis: A rapid response

Chile is experiencing its worst economic and social crisis in decades, which is adversely impacting entrepreneurs and SMEs. Chile’s Economic Development Agency is seeking to support recovery efforts by reorienting its entrepreneurship programs and ecosystem support capacity. What makes the reorientation especially challenging is the need to ensure all actions are sensitive to the causes of the social unrest, where arguably extant entrepreneurship policy has played a role. Theory and evidence in entrepreneurship literature seem insufficient to inform immediate actions. In this rapid response paper, we leverage and translate research on ecosystem democracy, spontaneous venturing and entrepreneurship-enabled social cohesion to inform decision-making and contribute to the development of policy solutions. We propose an entrepreneurship policy reorientation model, including interventions during and post crisis, potentially capable of minimizing the effects of the crisis and changing the orientation of future support.