Strategising for a Sustainable Entrepreneurship Ecosystem: The Pivotal Domains in the Omani Context

Purpose: The paper discusses the pivotal domains that can be leveraged towards building a sustainable entrepreneurship ecosystem in Oman’s evolving context. While the Government has stepped up measures to diversify the economy by implementing the ninth five-year Plan (2016-2020), which calls for a significant decrease of oil’s contribution to the country’s GDP, research to date have not provided conclusive answers to the question of how to achieve entrepreneurial development aspirations in the face of multifarious domains, pillars, programmes, institutions, and initiatives in the ecosystem. While the economic imperatives and challenges of a positive entrepreneurship ecosystem have been well-documented, designing an evidence-based strategic implementation framework has received relatively little research attention. Methods: Using primary and secondary data and a participant-observer source, the study adopted a descriptive statistical approach using summary ratios and percentages to analyse the data while mapping observations with the implied core domains for strategy implementation. Results: With higher education and government effectiveness emerging as the big two pivotal domains in the ecosystem development equation at approximately 40:60, a coalescent model for sharpening the focus of entrepreneurship development is developed and presented to guide robust strategy implementation. Consolidating various entrepreneurship development institutions into a “one-stop centre” for better coordination and effectiveness, especially for women and youth entrepreneurship, is one notable recommendation on the Government side. Ensuring that students and graduates continuously acquire practical skills relevant to the emerging entrepreneurship realities is underscored. Suggestions for possible further research are highlighted. Originality/Contribution to Knowledge: The study is perhaps the first attempt to unveil the pivotal domains that can be leveraged towards building a sustainable entrepreneurship ecosystem in Oman’s evolving context. Combining Joseph Alois Schumpeter’s theory of innovation and Jean Baptiste Say’s theory of coordination, organisation and supervision as the theoretical basis for the study, the paper argues that building an entrepreneurial ecosystem that works for Oman will require more than the knowledge of its diverse components, challenges, and supporting institutions. Designing and operationalising a coalescent strategic implementation framework leveraging pivotal domains as developed in this paper will also be apposite for an entrepreneurship ecosystem in a transitional market to deliver on its core mandate – sustainable development.