Entrepreneurship is about identifying, developing and bringing vision to life. In Pakistan, industry is perceived as large plants and factories with huge machines and large number of employees but surprisingly it is the small scale sector which is breeding ground for innovation and creativity and actually catering our demands and dominating our lives. Unfortunately small scale sector and informal sector have always been ignored in our economic policies and continually facing unfavorable policies despite of the fact that the small industry covers 40 percent of the total businesses in Pakistan.
There is no appropriate statistical data regarding the growth rate of small scale sector, which shows that how this sector is neglected. Historical growth rates are pointing towards the fact that this sector is continually ignored. During the time periods of 1950-1962, 1963-1970 and in 1990's the trend showed a stagnant growth rate of 2.35, 2.95 and 5.3 percent respectively and there is a possibility that actual growth rates of this sector are far more than the figures showed by government. 3.6 percentage points for share of urban informal sector and an annual increase of 4.3 percent in the employment rate during the period of 1972-1986 shows the labor intensive nature of this sector.
Coase believes economics has become a €theory-driven" subject that has moved into a paradigm in which conclusions take precedence over problems. "If you look at a page of a scientific journal like Nature," he said, "every few weeks you have statements such as, 'we'll have to think it out again. These results aren't going the way we thought they would.' Well, in economics, the results always go the way we thought they would because we approach the problems in the same way, only asking certain questions. Entrepreneurial Economics challenges fundamental principles, using insights from models and theories in the natural sciences."
Different institutes e.g. SMEDA, National Small Industries Development Corporation and Small Scale Industry Corporation etc are established for providing facilities to small scale sector but these institutions contributed very little for the growth of small scale industry and informal sector. Moreover, this sector is always been neglected by the state government and as there is no appropriate statistical data available, so, this sector also faces problems during policy making.
In Pakistan, small scale sector and informal sector has dominated employment in construction, wholesale, retail trading, transport, hotels and storage industry in urban areas but unfortunately this valuable sector is ignored by the state government and our government remained indifferent to small scale industries. As small sector is breeding ground for innovation so it urgently requires government attention so that we can have appropriate statistical data about its actual growth rates and to make this sector more productive by encouraging innovation and creativity.