Stimulating Innovative Entrepreneurship: How to Apply US Experience for Azerbaijan.

Many nations strongly reliant on natural resources are taking measures to diversify their economy. One of the opportunities for developing non-oil sector is stimulating and supporting innovative entrepreneurship. Emerging economies in the post soviet region including Azerbaijan view economic growth based on innovation as a tool for ensuring sustainable growth in the 21st century. As these nations develop models for stimulating innovative entrepreneurship, it is important to study the experience of the successful startup ecosystems. This paper discusses the factors behind the success of world’s highest ranked startup ecosystems, with special emphasis on the startup ecosystem in the US. It analysis the relationship between such elements as availability of talent pool, access to forms of risk finance such as angel investments and venture capital firms, existence of legal framework that protects the rights of entrepreneurs as well as investors and regulates relationships between them. The paper also discusses the importance of catalysts of innovative entrepreneurship – incubators and accelerators and their importance in increasing the innovative potential of startup ecosystems. The final section of the paper discusses the emerging startup ecosystem in Azerbaijan and analyses the newly established incubators and accelerators in Baku, capital of Azerbaijan. The paper concludes with recommendations on stimulating innovation based entrepreneurship in Azerbaijan. A strategy on increasing the role of universities and research centres in this process is discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]