Entrepreneurial Projects are at the Edge of Failure Unless a Corporate Accountability Program Emerges

Entrepreneurial projects are now considered one of the ultimate options for economic development due to the considerable impact on SMEs, which provides the most job opportunities in most cases. These expected goals cannot be achieved unless we solve the problems of the ecosystem. Unfortunately, many problems face the entrepreneurship ecosystem in Iraq. The following are examples of those issues: Lack of training in the local languages (Kurdish and Arabic),  lack of contextual curriculum, wrong industry target, ignoring corporate entrepreneurship. In addition, one of the dominant issues that face the ecosystem that I would like to address is the repetitive funding for some startups without any actual development and implementing identical projects by different organizations that target the same beneficiaries groups.

Unnecessary identical projects and double and triple funding of startups in the entrepreneurial ecosystem caused wastage of the international and local funds and created a new career, which is to build a pre-revenue startup, a prototype basically, and use it to get grants without spending the grant on the startup. It is one of the hazardous practices by part of the startup owners, and lack of regulation, coordination, and monitoring between the entrepreneurial service providers makes the case even worse.  

We need a new corporate accountability project to solve this problem. The project's goal must be to connect the key stakeholders to take advantage of the experience and lessons learned from each project. The result of the accountability program can be a cluster that both digitally and physically connects the key players in the ecosystem to address the problems better and develop more impactful projects. A platform can be developed that includes the name of the implemented projects, target beneficiaries, and the funded startups, in addition to the materials and lessons learned, which can be shared and accessed through a focal point by each organization. This stops double funding and implementing identical projects targeting the same beneficiary groups. It also creates an opportunity to exchange knowledge and materials. The names of the trained startup owners and funded startups can be found and accessed by the focal points of different organizations that are part of the ecosystem. This project stops repetitive funding and training through a basic background check for the beneficiaries while providing an opportunity for new untrained and unfunded startups to enter into the ecosystem.

This corporate accountability program enables key entrepreneurial players in the ecosystem to lobby for favorable policies and attract Angel investors' networks or any Venture Capitalist firms. At the same time, if it is collectively tried to draw them through a shared version can have a better impact which can be initiated in the cluster.