Chapter 6: The Rising Young Saudi Entrepreneur Generation: An Empirical Analysis of the Role of Gender in the Rapid Growth of the KSA Small Business Ecosystem

The pivotal role of entrepreneurship in economic development is widely recognized for its profound impact on economic growth, job creation, and social transformations. This is especially important to energy rich countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. They must negotiate the difficult transition from inefficient and stagnant state managed economies, with bloated government bureaucracies, to nurturing the rise of a dynamic, private commercial sector that is characterized by innovation, labor efficiency, and risk-taking. Recent scholarly research highlights the social and cultural factors that influence entrepreneurial behavior, particularly among youth and women. These issues are especially relevant to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) where national development strategies, demographic pressures, and Western gender roles have converged to create a unique environment for incubating entrepreneurial aspirations (cf. Badghish et al., 2023; Eum, 2019; Forster, 2017; Hakami, 2021; Khan & Khan, 2020; Koelbl, 2020; Manning, 2018).