Teaching and research in business schools embrace almost exclusively the private entrepreneurship. The intellectual background of it is neoclassic economics and its associated liberalism that dominates the broader intellectual landscape of the West and much of the world. Clearly specified and secure private property rights are the cornerstone of economic prosperity because they are the premise of private initiatives in the marketplace.
Entering the 21st Century, however, knowledge and the technologies derivative from it have become the most important capital of economic growth. Public sector entrepreneurship is no longer exclusively about the production and provision of public goods. The inherent properties of the “cognitive capital” and the ensuing economic dynamics have opened up important new spaces for public sector entrepreneurship. This seminar is a preliminary report of a book manuscript the speaker is working on. It consists of four parts. Part 1 sorts out the conceptual issues and types of public entrepreneurship. Part 2 compares it with private entrepreneurship to highlight its characteristics. Part 3 scans the landscape of PE in China and its role in Chinese development, and Part 4 identifies the new spaces for PE created by the on-going technological revolution, surveys the trends of PE around the world, and works out the policy implications for China. Hopefully, this seminar could arouse more research interest in this important but severely understudied field.