SPRU Research Seminar Series: Rodrigo Frias, Durham University

Rethinking Entrepreneurship Policy: Evidence, Practice, and Tools

Abstract:

Entrepreneurship is often presented through a narrow set of assumptions: that more start-ups are always better, that growth is the main signal of success, and that policy should simply back more high-potential firms. This seminar challenges those conventional views and invites a broader understanding of entrepreneurship as a field shaped by competing expectations, fragmented evidence, and ongoing tensions between theory and practice, including the different ways scholars, practitioners, and policymakers define problems and act on them.

The talk revisits how entrepreneurship has been framed in policy debates, moving from simplified narratives shaped by crises, myths, and conventional assumptions toward a more complex understanding of the field. It shows how entrepreneurship policy research has expanded over time, but also become increasingly fragmented, making it harder to see how different conversations connect and what this means for the development of the field.

The seminar then introduces two design science artefacts developed in response to this challenge. The first, REFLECT, recently published in Technovation, is a policy formulation tool designed to support more context-sensitive enterprise policymaking in peripheral settings. The second is a new Enterprise Policy Literacy artefact, built through topic modelling of four decades of entrepreneurship policy research, which makes the structure and evolution of the field more visible and interpretable. Together, the talk argues that entrepreneurship research can do more than generate critique or explanation: it can also help create practical tools that open up different ways of understanding and engaging with entrepreneurship policy.

Link to paper “Formulating better enterprise policy in the periphery: a design science approach”: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0166497226000465

Bio

Rodrigo Frías is a SPRU alumnus (2015), a PhD researcher in entrepreneurship policy at Durham University, and a former senior policymaker with over 15 years of experience across entrepreneurship policy design and implementation in Chile. He previously served as Deputy CEO of Start-Up Chile and Head of Early Investment at CORFO, Chile’s Economic Development Agency. He also co-founded the Evidence-based Policy and Innovation Research Lab (EPIC Lab) at the Engineering School of the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile and has advised entrepreneurship policy programmes in Latin America and Asia. His work has been recognised in the UK by the British Council, Apolitical, and, most recently, by the UK Young Academy, a cross-disciplinary leadership initiative hosted by the Royal Society in partnership with the UK’s other national academies.

More about Rodrigo: www.rodrigofrias.com