Developing a culture for entrepreneurship in the East of England The value of social and human capital Yazid Abubakar and Jay Mitra Abstract: Most UK Regional Development Agencies (RDAs) have committed themselves to developing an Enterprise Strategy for their region. This commitment is mainly in response to the current Labour government’s keenness to see enterprise and entrepreneurship at the centre of any economic development agenda. Pro-entrepreneurship policies have been embraced as a means of generating economic growth and diversity, ensuring competitive markets, helping the unemployed to create jobs for themselves, countering poverty and welfare dependency, encouraging labour market flexibility and drawing individuals out of informal economic activity. The regional dimension of economic regeneration has been influenced, in part, by increasing interest in the local ramifications of national innovation and entrepreneurship policies, and also by growing awareness of the local or regional phenomenon of enterprise creation and innovation. The authors examine the connection between R&D activities in universities and the creation of new businesses (in particular ICT firms), and especially the role that social capital plays in fostering these relationships or connections. Preliminary empirical analyses suggest the importance of university–high-tech industry social capital in generating technology based start-ups. The findings suggest a case for fostering ‘connectedness’ between research universities and high-technology firms in regions with interest in technology-based entrepreneurship. Keywords: regions; entrepreneurship; technology; R&D institutions; social capital; East of England Yazid Abubakar is a PhD student and Jay Mitra is Founding Professor of Business Enterprise and Innovation at the School of Entrepreneurship and Business, University of Essex, Southend Campus, 10 Elmer Approach, Southend-on-Sea, Essex SS1 1 LW, UK. E-mail: elyazid78@hotmail.com (Yazid Abubakar); jmitra@essex.ac.uk (Jay Mitra). Website: http://www.essex.ac.uk/entrepreneurship. While there is an increasing focus on the generation of new knowledge, innovation and technological progress for growth in modern economies (EC, 2002, p 7), high-tech start-up firms (Klepper, 2001, p 640) are seen as the embodiment of innovation, especially for radical new technologies that are not easily absorbed by INDUSTRY & HIGHER EDUCATION April 2007 129