The harsh business environment in countries like Nigeria

Greg Fischer from the London School of Economics speaking on how to help youth entrepreneurs in Africa emphasized that “there has never been a history of any country developing where it is about low-skilled people starting a business. Entrepreneurship is about highly skilled people” (George, 2014). Entrepreneurship is “about learning the skills needed to assume the risk of establishing a business … developing the winning strategies and executing them with all the vigor, persistence and passion needed to win any game” (Inegbenbor, 2006).

Thus, an entrepreneur is an individual who is willing and able to seek for investment opportunities, to establish and run an enterprise successfully. Consequently, the survival of 21st century entrepreneurs requires more than the conventional ideologies of innovative idea and funding The conventional type of entrepreneur is usually beset with difficulty in accessing funds due largely to inadequate functional management strategies resulting in high mortality rate within the first five years of operation.

These start-ups usually lack adequate operational skill to sustainably run a business in ever changing and harsh business environment prevalence in developing countries like Nigeria. Also, emerging evidence in literature revealed that to develop and nurture current and future competitive advantages in businesses’, advantages that are grounded in innovation and expertise, businesses gradually have to rely on ‘entrepreneurs from the corporate world’.

The term “corporate world entrepreneurship” represents the framework for the facilitating change and innovation in quality and sustainable entrepreneurship development for real sector growth in developing economies (Morris and Kuratko, 2002). Thus, corporate world entrepreneurship can be used as a means for reversing the mortality rate of small business, to promote and sustain their global corporate competitiveness and contribution to employment generation in Nigeria.

however, in spite of its potential to create value by contributing to improved organizational performance of start-ups and existing businesses, many established businesses do not encourage entrepreneurial behaviour and often have structural barriers in place that prevent this from occurring (Ireland, et al. , 2006).

Corporate world entrepreneur is different from corporate entrepreneur because the latter is regarded as entrepreneurial behaviour inside an established mid-size and large business (Morris, et al., 2008) while the former are individuals previously occupying executive or management positions in established corporate organizations resigns to st up their own business. Corporate entrepreneurship is also entrepreneurship at the level of an existing firm while corporate world entrepreneurs are completely unattached to their previous company but leverage on their business network for the smooth take off and running of their new business.

Similarly, corporate entrepreneurs start business for or with their current employers while on the contrary corporate world entrepreneurs start business Examples of corporate world entrepreneurs in Nigeria include but not limited to Jimi Ovia, Tony Elumelu, These individuals have acquired global best business acumen and financial management skills which distinguished them among other entrepreneurs. Thereby, financial institutions are usually not risk averse to advance financial support to their business.

It is worthy of note that across the African continent, entrepreneurs are starting every size, and every type of business. Many countries have resounding declarations about entrepreneurial culture, and want the solutions to poverty and unemployment to be entrepreneurial, but what does this mean in practice? What are the challenges for African entrepreneurs? What have been the successes so far? And what steps – large and small – need to be taken to ensure that people starting their own businesses have the best possible chance of success?