Exploring the Relationship Between Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Economic Progress: A Case of India with Evidences from GEM Data and World Bank Enterprise Surveys Arup Kumar Baksi* Introducion The entrepreneur has been a fundamental agent in most production, distribution and growth theories.The role of entrepreneurship as the driving force of economic growth found its most explicit foundation in Joseph Schumpeter’s * Assistant Professor, Department of Management Science, Bengal Institute of Technology & Management, Santiniketan, West Bengal, India. Email: baksi.arup@gmail.com, arup_bakshi@rediffmail.com Abstract Nations all across the globe are engaged in identifying the factors deterministic of economic serge, which is relective of contemporary domain of economics. Entrepreneurial ventures using technological innovations have emerged as a pivotal growth indicator in developing nations like India, though there has been a dearth of extensive studies on the impact of technology-based innovations in new venture creation and its subsequent contribution to economic growth and progress of a nation. This paper used the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) data alongwith World Bank Enterprise surveys (2006) to explore the probable link between entrepreneurship, innovation and economic progress pertaining to Indian context. The entrepreneurship measures were concentrated on Total Entrepreneurship Activity (TEA) data and its subcomponents. The indings were in line with the literature reviewed as both overall and necessity driven TEA accounted for growth in GDP as a mark of economic progress. Technological innovation was found to be a signiicant input to economic growth. Keyword: Economic Progress, Venture theory of long waves. According to Schumpeter, an en- trepreneur is someone who carries out new combina- tions of products, services, technologies, concepts etc. Considerable advances, even breakthroughs, have un- doubtedly been made during the last decades in our un- derstanding of the relationship between knowledge and growth on one hand, and entrepreneurship and growth on the other. Empirical evidence did conirm contribution of technology-driven innovation to the economic growth (Nadiri, 1993). Gabr and Hoffman (2006) and Hoffman (2005) observed causal link between the drivers of en- trepreneurship (opportunity, capabilities, and capital), economic growth (innovation, entrepreneurship, human resources) and innovation (knowledge building and man- agement and interactive communication technologies). Further to this, researchers emphasized on the fact that rate of entrepreneurial innovation ampliies with the proximity of knowledge generation sources (Breschi and Lissoni, 2001). Arrow (1962) and Nelson (1959), with their concept of ‘knowledge spillover effect’, explained distant-locus-generation of knowledge as an exhaustive input to innovation. Inspite of these discrete studies, there has been a dearth of substantial literature support explain- ing the nomological network between knowledge, inno- vation, entrepreneurship and growth, although it is ap- prehended that there existsa cause-&-effect relationship between the constructs, whereby entrepreneurship has been considered as a recombinant growth (Olsson and Frey, 2002), also considered to be a resultant vector of technological innovation. The relationship between microeconomic indices of growth and vis-à-vis macro-economic manifestations of Article can be accessed online at http://www.publishingindia.com Submitted on: 9th October 2013 Accepted on: 2nd December 2013