Entrepreneurship, Human Capital, and Regional Development: Labor Network Flows, and Industry Growth

摘要

The growing importance of knowledge and the knowledge economy, as well as the emergence of innovation as the main determinant of competitiveness, has highlighted the importance of intellectual capital in organizations' performance and economic development in regions and countries (OECD, 1999). Intellectual capital, understood as the level of formal and informal education, professional and individual training (Becker, 1962), has been associated with both individual development and organizational performance, and so its study has proliferated at various levels. The work compiled by Rui Baptista and Joao Leitao in Entrepreneurship, Human Capital, and Regional Development focuses precisely on the relationship between human capital and the development of entrepreneurial activity, at both the individual and organizational levels. It is proposed here that individuals with greater intellectual capital will be more able to recognize opportunities and mobilize and organize the resources necessary to exploit them and so to achieve the economic change required for regional development. In this connection, intellectual capital emerges as one of the drivers of entrepreneurial activity able to contribute to job creation and the development of opportunities that create individual, regional and national wealth.