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Knowledge has emerged as the critical factor to generate economic growth, jobs, and competitiveness in a globalized economy. However, science, research, and human capital do not do the taxpayers much good if these investments in new knowledge are not translated into jobs and growth. There is no shortage of educated, scientific, and engineering, as well as creative and dedicated people. But the product of all of this is that their new ideas and insights are not always picked up by the great large companies. The reason is what scholars have only recently termed as, The Knowledge Filter. It is the knowledge filter that stands between investment in research and science, but also more generally knowledge and ideas on the one hand, and their commercialization through innovation, leading ultimately to economic growth, on the other. It is the knowledge filter that impedes the spillover of knowledge and ideas from actually becoming commercialized into innovations that become the basis for economic growth.

This chapter presents a synthesis of the discussions in the preceding chapters. It argues that entrepreneurship makes a unique contribution to economic growth by permeating the knowledge filter and commercializing ideas that would otherwise remain uncommercialized. Entrepreneurial opportunities are not at all exogenous, or given, in the Knowledge Spillover Theory of Entrepreneurship. Rather, they are endogenously generated by the extent of investments in new knowledge. Thus, a context rich in knowledge will generate more entrepreneurial opportunities than a context with impoverished knowledge.

By penetrating the knowledge filter and trying out ideas that might otherwise never have made it through, entrepreneurship serves as the missing link to innovation and ultimately economic growth and job creation. Entrepreneurship is an important mechanism permeating the knowledge filter to facilitate the spillover of knowledge and ultimately generate economic growth. Entrepreneurship provides the missing link to innovation and growth in virtually every context where people have ideas and starting a new firm is not blocked or impeded. For example, universities can be interpreted as being hotbeads for generating new knowledge and ideas. Entrepreneurship provides the vision to use this knowledge. If there is no vision there is no entrepreneurship. If there is a vision, but no action or activity, there is also no entrepreneurship.