Introduction to the Special Issue: Towards a theoretical understanding of innovation and entrepreneurship in India

Over the past few decades, India has become one of the world’s most vibrant economies. While the first forty years after India’s independence in 1947 was characterized by a sluggish annual growth rate (of approximately 3%), economic reforms initiated in 1991 have resulted in the GDP growing at a rate of around 6.8% in the last quarter century. In this spirit, the editors of APJM expressed the need for developing a deeper understanding of two closely related academic domains that are vital to India’s sustained economic growth: innovation and entrepreneurship. The papers that do appear in this Special Issue of Asia Pacific Journal of management, including this introductory paper, provide consolidation and expansion of the themes identified in prior work related to entrepreneurship and innovation within the Indian context.