Entrepreneurship is activities and measures that a creative person tries to do by taking advantage of personal creativity and ideation power, resources, capacities, and infrastructures to create value added and produce goods and services based on current and future needs, Mohsen Tabatabaei said at a conference on “the position of resistance economy in urban development and entrepreneurship.”

Saying that entrepreneurship is counted as the main source of economic growth in national and local economies, he added that entrepreneurship is one of the key factors that should be identified and determined in economic growth of countries.

Regarding urban entrepreneurship as one of the most important aspects of entrepreneurship that is achieved in urban context and by considering municipal relations and facilities, he said, “currently, the world moves toward urbanization and its rate is two times more than global average in Iran.”

According to Iran’s Statistical Center, more than 73 percent of population lived in cities in 2011, he added.

Emphasizing that unemployment rate fluctuated between 14.3 and 10.3 per cent during 2000 to 2004 and there was no specific trend in this rate, he said unemployment rate in cities is worse than villages indicating more crime and violence in cities as compared to villages.

He maintained that unemployment rate increased to 11 per cent in the country in 2015 while in 2014, it was 12.2 per cent in cities and 8.1 per cent in villages; “Unemployment rate reached 12.7 per cent this summer and this rate was recorded at 14.4 per cent in urban areas and 7.9 per cent in rural areas,” he added.   

He touched upon the relationship between urban entrepreneurship and improvement of urban economy, saying “according to researches, nearly 1-1.5 per cent urban employment and 2.5-3.5 per cent of urban revenue increase by 10 per cent urban entrepreneurship in the cities of developed countries on average.”

Referring to the relationship between entrepreneurship and implementation of resistance economy in urban context, Tabatabaei said one of the most important topics of resistance economy is entrepreneurship and creation of productive employment in the country.

Attention to knowledge-based entrepreneurship, increase in social equity in cities, and supporting domestic production are some of the most important components of resistance economy in urban space with approach to urban entrepreneurship, Tabatabaei said.

It is worth mentioning that the book on “good urban governance” written by Mohammad Hossein Pourzarandi, the president of IUESA and his secratary Seyyed Mohsen Tabatabaei Mozdabadi was unveiled at this event.

Source : Mehr news agency