Meena Chavan, Macquarie University

Christina Theodoraki, IAE Aix-Marseille University

Michelle Evans, University of Melbourne

Jane Menzies, University of Sunshine Coast

Anna Earl, University of Canterbury

Alex Maritz, La Trobe University

Bella Galperin, University of Tampa

Indigenous entrepreneurs worldwide are building ventures that intertwine economic ambition with cultural stewardship, together with sustainability and community well-being. These enterprises often act as engines of sustainable regional development even as they emerge from contexts of profound social, political, and economic marginalization. Many Indigenous communities continue to grapple with colonial legacies such as land dispossession, systemic exclusion, and racism that hinder their development. In the face of these historic injustices, Indigenous entrepreneurs have had to devise business strategies that double as acts of resilience and cultural survival.

Indigenous entrepreneurship is a global phenomenon, not confined to Anglophone settler societies. This Special Issue broadens the geographic lens to include insights from Latin America, Asia, Africa, and beyond. Pre-Columbian trade networks across the Americas show that Indigenous peoples engaged in extensive commerce long before colonial contact. Today, Indigenous enterprises in regions like the Andes, Amazon, Himalayas, Sahel, and Arctic carry forward these traditions, adapting them to modern markets. Examples range from Māori-owned film production companies in New Zealand and Maya ecotourism cooperatives in Guatemala, to Sámi reindeer-herding tech startups in Scandinavia and Maasai craft and safari ventures in East Africa, to music and dance companies in Australia. Across such ventures, entrepreneurs leverage deep cultural knowledge in diverse sectors.

Many Indigenous businesses are necessity-driven, launched to create livelihoods amid poverty or neglect, yet they also represent proactive efforts to assert self-determination. Rural Sámi entrepreneurs in northern Europe balance dual roles as cultural preservers and innovators. They offer traditional foods and crafts alongside high-tech services like GPS reindeer tracking and even video games based on Sámi folklore. These heritage-based enterprises foster community resilience. By integrating cultural values into business, they sustain their languages, arts, and ecological knowledge for future generations. Indigenous entrepreneurship is not just about pursuing profit under adversity but also about healing communities and revitalizing cultures.

Entrepreneurial activities are deeply embedded in specific socio-spatial contexts, shaping and being shaped by the places and communities in which they occur. Studies of rural entrepreneurship demonstrate how local embeddedness and networks enable opportunity creation in peripheral regions. Indigenous enterprises are often closely tied to particular lands, ecosystems, and social networks. Scholars have described such deeply embedded venture creation as 'entrepreneuring,' an embodied, collective process rather than a static economic outcome. This view aligns with broader understandings of the entrepreneurial process as socially constructed, involving social interaction, identity, emotion, and community practices.

Focusing on Indigenous enterprise brings issues of sustainability and socio-spatial justice to the fore. New ventures can promote not only economic growth but also social inclusion and environmental stewardship in their regions. Indigenous entrepreneurship exemplifies this integrative mission, inherently blending economic and social objectives. Yet the field of Indigenous entrepreneurship research remains emergent and fragmented, often confined to highly specific cultural contexts and a few geographic areas. This fragmentation calls for theoretical integration and broader comparative perspectives.

Many Indigenous entrepreneurs operate in marginal spaces, isolated reserves, and ancestral territories where formal infrastructure may be weak but social capital, cultural meaning, and local knowledge are strong. The notion of 'place-based entrepreneurship' is central: Indigenous entrepreneurs leverage deep connections to place as a resource for innovation and differentiation. Their ventures often aim to revitalize local economies while reinforcing socio-cultural ties to the land.

Indigenous entrepreneurship intersects strongly with sustainability and social enterprise themes. Many Indigenous ventures pursue a 'triple bottom line' of economic, social, and environmental goals. Indigenous entrepreneurs orient their ventures toward not just financial gain but also cultural and communal outcomes. These include stewardship of natural resources, intergenerational knowledge transfer, and community well-being, all crucial aspects of sustainable development. Many Indigenous businesses function as community-based or social enterprises at heart, redefining success beyond profit maximization.

Conventional entrepreneurship models often fail Indigenous peoples. These models have been described as suffering from 'cultural captivity' of entrepreneurship paradigms, and there is a need for approaches that embed entrepreneurship in community development and cultural continuity. The Special Issue pushes the theoretical frontier by challenging mainstream entrepreneurship and management theories to broaden into more inclusive, community-centric frameworks.

The political economy of Indigenous entrepreneurship must be considered within broader institutional contexts and regional innovation systems. Historically, many Indigenous businesses have been under-supported or even undermined by government policies, market dynamics, and external stakeholders. Power imbalances and marginalization have directly shaped entrepreneurial opportunities. Indigenous founders frequently face systemic barriers reflecting structural inequities. Many Indigenous ventures struggle with lack of access to capital and financing, exclusion from mainstream supply chains and markets, and misappropriation or theft of cultural products and intellectual property.

There is growing recognition that empowering marginalized entrepreneurs can transform regional economies and foster more inclusive growth. Cultivating Indigenous entrepreneurial ecosystems can yield dual economic and social benefits in regions. By anchoring Indigenous entrepreneurship research in core conversations of Entrepreneurship & Regional Development on context, sustainability, and inequality, this Special Issue aims to enrich those discussions and advance Indigenous entrepreneurship as a field of inquiry.

Indigenous entrepreneurship has received limited attention in mainstream business research, often treated as a niche topic or viewed only through narrow lenses. Where it has been studied, research frequently centered on how extractive industries affect Indigenous communities or on fitting Indigenous businesses into existing paradigms. This Special Issue proposes a different framing: Indigenous entrepreneurship should be understood on its own terms, as a driver of innovation, resilience, and sustainability in regional economies. Indigenous businesses play pivotal roles in their local economies and social landscapes, and developing these ventures often requires novel approaches that integrate cultural values with enterprise development.

Many Indigenous ventures explicitly pursue social and cultural development objectives alongside economic goals. These objectives are inherently place-based: Indigenous entrepreneurs seek not only profit but also to improve community well-being and to act as stewards of land and culture within their regions. Māori filmmakers in New Zealand's screen industry balance commercial success with cultural storytelling, enriching both their industry and the region's cultural vitality. Indigenous enterprises in Australia integrate community development aims—education, health, employment—into their business models, and there is momentum toward building Indigenous entrepreneurial ecosystems that support such dual goals.

Indigenous knowledge and practices are increasingly valued in fields like sustainable management, conservation, and corporate social responsibility. Indigenous approaches to land, water, and resource management offer valuable models for sustainability at the regional level. However, persistent concerns remain about cultural appropriation, exploitation, and the incursion of global markets on Indigenous lands and resources. Indigenous entrepreneurs often contend with globalization's negative impacts: extractive industries and supply chains that can erode local autonomy and harm sacred environments. Community artisans may struggle against cheap imitations of Indigenous crafts in global markets, and Indigenous farmers are sometimes displaced by multinational agribusiness.

This Special Issue will critically engage with the dilemmas facing Indigenous enterprises by examining how they navigate power asymmetries with external actors, protect their intellectual property and traditional knowledge, and assert forms of economic sovereignty. By doing so, it aims to advance Indigenous-centered entrepreneurship theory and frameworks that foreground ethics, equity, and cultural survival alongside conventional success metrics. The contributions seek to broaden entrepreneurship and regional development discourse by demonstrating how ventures rooted in Indigenous culture and community can drive sustainable, inclusive regional growth.

This Special Issue offers a platform for rethinking entrepreneurship through an Indigenous lens. Through a holistic view of Indigenous entrepreneurship, contributions will be both conceptually innovative and grounded in real-world relevance. The issue seeks to unite scholars, including Indigenous academics and allies, in advancing theories that better reflect entrepreneurial diversity and in spotlighting Indigenous experiences that have been too long on the margins of academic inquiry.

In line with the mission of Entrepreneurship & Regional Development, the special issue will draw connections between micro-level entrepreneurial practices and macro-level regional outcomes, between historical injustices and contemporary innovations, and between local Indigenous knowledge and global sustainability challenges. The collected papers will demonstrate how Indigenous enterprises worldwide are crafting pathways to sustainable success—pathways that often differ from mainstream business trajectories, but which hold lessons for regenerating economies and societies far beyond Indigenous communities themselves.

This issue aims to be more than a collection of articles—it aspires to be a cohesive scholarly statement that Indigenous entrepreneurship is a vibrant field at the forefront of redefining success in business and development. By bringing Indigenous voices and examples from across the globe into the pages of Entrepreneurship & Regional Development, this Special Issue hopes to enrich the journal's discourse and inspire future research that continues to bridge entrepreneurship with cultural equity, environmental care, and regional vitality.

Potential topics

• Indigenous entrepreneurial ecosystems: The role of community-driven support systems—mentors, networks, institutions in sustaining Indigenous enterprises and contributing to regional economic development.
• Indigenous enterprise in CSR/ESG: Contributions of Indigenous businesses to broader sustainability goals. How corporations engage with Indigenous entrepreneurs through partnerships, supply-chain inclusion, or social procurement, and the outcomes for Indigenous communities for sustainable outcomes.
• Leadership in Indigenous enterprises: Leadership styles and communal decision processes (consensus, elders' councils, etc.) that align business strategies with Indigenous cultural values.
• Market expansion and authenticity: Strategies for Indigenous businesses to expand into regional or global markets (e.g., exports, e-commerce, tourism) while protecting cultural authenticity and sovereignty.
• Branding and storytelling: Building brands around Indigenous cultural heritage and place-based identities. Effective marketing of Indigenous products (art, fashion, food, tourism) in ways that share culture without commodifying it.
• Cultural appropriation and IP rights: Safeguarding Indigenous arts, designs, and traditional knowledge in business. Navigating intellectual property laws and creating protocols for ethical use of cultural heritage.
• Indigenous worldviews in business: Integrating Indigenous concepts such as relationality, reciprocity, or the 'Seven Generations' principle into entrepreneurship and management frameworks, thereby broadening mainstream notions of strategy, innovation, and value.
• Entrepreneurship education and capacity-building: Community-based training, mentorship programs, and university partnerships (e.g., the MURRA Indigenous Business Masterclass in Australia) that build Indigenous business skills and leadership, and their impacts on communities.
• Enterprise as self-determination: The rise of Indigenous micro-entrepreneurs, small businesses, and cooperatives as pathways to self-determination. How does this trend affect local employment, community empowerment, and economic independence.
• Technology adoption: The use of digital platforms, renewable energy, social media, and other Industry 4.0 technologies by Indigenous entrepreneurs in ways that align with cultural values. Opportunities created (global market reach, new innovations) and tensions or challenges faced in the process.
• Challenges and resilience: Creative solutions to challenges in Indigenous business development, such as limited access to finance (e.g., innovative financing on communal lands), overcoming market barriers and discrimination, and building resilience against shocks like climate change or pandemics.
• Indigenous women entrepreneurs: Roles and contributions of Indigenous female entrepreneurs to economic development and community well-being, including their leadership approaches and the specific hurdles they face.
• Policy and place-based development: The influence of regional development policies or place-based initiatives (rural development funds, cultural tourism corridors, special economic zones on Indigenous territories) on Indigenous entrepreneurship. How Indigenous ventures engage with, adapt to, or resist these policy initiatives in their regions.
• Global comparative perspectives: Comparative studies of Indigenous entrepreneurship in under-researched regions (e.g., Mapuche or Quechua enterprises in Latin America, tribal communities in Asia, Indigenous businesses in Africa) to broaden the empirical base and glean insights beyond well-studied contexts (North America, Oceania, Northern Europe).
• Culture-based enterprise models: Indigenous enterprise models centered on cultural preservation and continuity (such as artisan cooperatives, community-run ecotourism, Indigenous media and digital platforms) that serve as both custodians of heritage and drivers of sustainable development.

Timeline

• Invalid DateTime: Publication year
• December 1, 2025: Launch of call and submissions open
• February 1, 2026: Virtual Paper Development Workshop
• May 1, 2026: Virtual Paper Development Workshop
• August 1, 2026: Virtual Paper Development Workshop
• October 30, 2026: Full paper submission deadline