Entrepreneurship, poverty, and Asia: Moving beyond subsistence entrepreneurship

Approximately 1.7 billion people in Asia live in poverty today. To date, efforts to address poverty in Asia have largely focused on subsistence entrepreneurship rather than on creating ventures that empower them to break out of poverty. That is, the mechanisms that have been used, such as microlending, generally lead entrepreneurs to create businesses providing basic life essentials rather than helping them build businesses that generate capital to improve the entrepreneur’s standard of living. This article initially reviews what we know about entrepreneurship as a solution to poverty in Asia. We then examine what we know about other major tools to address poverty in Asia. Next, we propose a research agenda on poverty in Asia. Finally, we introduce the articles in this Special Issue of the Asia Pacific Journal of Management, “Asia & Poverty: Closing the Great Divide through Entrepreneurship & Innovation,” on new approaches to entrepreneurship to help address the key issue of the alleviation of poverty.