Thursday, October 8, 2015
In his opinion analysis "Advice for Greece: Don’t let a crisis go to waste" for Fortune Magazine, Dr. Phil Budden, Senior Lecturer and Diplomatic Advisor at the MIT Sloan School of Management, suggests that the Greek people have an opportunity to turn their economy "around by creating a business-friendly climate for start-ups".
According to Budden, despite the grim perspective of "hardship and privation for the Greek people" in the coming years, this could actually be regarded as an opportunity, a momentum to "turn adversity into advantage". In this respect, it is necessary for "the country’s institutions, government leaders, and people to abandon some of the failed approaches of the past and to embark in new directions", choosing as their main strategy a practice which mainly promotes "innovation and entrepreneurship", as happened elsewhere in the world with positive results.
Such an effort would require for the country to invest in the creation "of an innovation ecosystem", a task that is not necessarily hard for the Greek people, "since they are known for their entrepreneurial spirit"-the Greek diaspora in particular- but also because Greece can invest in its higher education system, given that Greek universities, despite budget cuts, "still conduct world-class research, which can fuel an innovation economy".
Risk capital is also a key component, argues Budden, explaining that although "capital may appear to be in short supply in Greece", risk capital could be encouraged through new government regulations "on risk capital investing and by establishing targeted tax breaks for the kinds of investments that would promote an innovation-driven economy", bringing money back to Greece.
