"Innovative Practices and Rural Non-Farm Sectors-An Empirical Study"

Abstract

Entrepreneurship and innovation can be considered as virtually synonymous. Out of necessity, a large number of rural poor choose entrepreneurship. They have less ability to take the risks related to the huge scale venture which could make a real effect on the rural population. There are a few, who are comparatively less poor, who have a chance to pursue some profitable venture. From a theoretical development point of view, we need to take into account that rural development theories and perspectives on innovation which have focused more on agriculture. It should also be noted that the guiding principle of rural development and innovations are urbanization, to be specific, innovations in the areas of industries and service sector activities are considered important. In this regard, some similarities could be drawn between entrepreneurial and innovation theories. They too focus on urban entrepreneurship and innovation from urban entrepreneurial perspectives. This paper attempts to understand the innovative practices prevailing among the rural entrepreneurs. In order to understand the kind of innovation prevailing among the rural entrepreneurs, a small study is made in two taluks, namely Devanahalli and Doddaballapura taluks of Bangalore Rural district. Data for the study was collected from 20 rural entrepreneurs and analyzed using simple analytical tools. The paper concludes that innovativeness prevailing among rural entrepreneurs is fundamentally different from the ideal picture of innovation. As per observation in the field survey, it is found that innovation for rural entrepreneurs is grounded on a number of aspects such as urban connectivity, investment capacity of entrepreneurs, customers' demand, socio-economic background of entrepreneurs and infrastructure like storage and transportation. The basic intention of rural entrepreneurs in non- farm sector is to survive. If we are ready to accept all those activities they take to survive as innovation then we can safely conclude that there are plenty of innovative practices. If we confine our definition of innovation to the ideal kind we can hardly find any innovative rural entrepreneurs.