Malaysia transformed itself from a producer of raw materials in the 1970s into an upper-middle income country with a multi-sector economy by the late 1990s. The 1997 crisis significantly challenged this technology-exporting country, but it has since successfully sparked two main sources of economic resilience—foreign investment and new firm creation. To my surprise, Malaysian entrepreneurs I spoke with recently gave a great deal of credit to, of all actors on the stage, their government. Did government really do something right?
While governments set the rules and incentives, those trying to build more robust rates of new firm formation in their countries do not generally hold out much hope for any silver bullets from their public sector. The high point of most government programs is too often the day they are announced by high profile political leaders in the bright lights with cameras rolling! Malaysian leaders seem to have taken a more iterative and somber approach to some specific interventions in a national culture that, as was explained to me on my first visit there, did not embrace risk-taking and entrepreneurship easily.
To read the full, original article click on this link: Malaysias Progress with Startups - Entrepreneurship.org
