Factors influencing the successful adoption of technopreneurship in the food processing sector in Zimbabwe.

Abstract

Technopreneurship has been found to be one of the modern approaches to lead economic development in such success stories like the Asian upcoming economies. From such a background, the study endeavoured to determine the factors which influence technopreneurship in such a developing nation as Zimbabwe. From theory and practice, technopreneurship is found to be the key to knowledge-based economies that can assist most developing countries that may struggle to industrialise. Zimbabwe as an economy is well positioned to produce food products for the domestic and other regional and international economies. The objectives of the study were: to examine factors that influence the adoption of technopreneurship in the food processing sector in Zimbabwe; to assess the importance given to technopreneurship by the food processing sector in Zimbabwe; to examine the feasibility of technopreneurship, and to test the relationship between factors that influence technopreneurship in the food processing sector in Zimbabwe. Current literature on technopreneurship addresses issues in developed countries and success stories of other upcoming economies like India and China. The study contributed to the context of technopreneurship in developing countries and especially in sub-Saharan Africa. The issues of a lack of development in such nations like Zimbabwe which may have natural endowments and what could be seen as good economic policies were addressed. A model of a technopreneurship system was proposed to contextualise the Zimbabwean technopreneurship situation and this could apply to most regional and global situations. The research onion was adopted to guide the research methodology and methods. The positivist research philosophy and a quantitative research approach were adopted to gather data through a questionnaire from the major industrial food processing technopreneurs in Harare. Nine companies were contacted to get a final sample of 147 respondents who included management, administrative and technical staff. SPSS was used for data management and quantitative data analysis techniques which included descriptive and inferential statistics adopted. Findings suggest that technopreneurship plays an important developmental role in the food processing sector and while several factors influenced technopreneurship such as internal processes; human factors; global factors; venture capital; partnerships, and government support was found to be the most important factor influencing all other factors. The major and determining factor influencing technopreneurship in the industrial food processing factor in Zimbabwe was Government support. A contribution to new knowledge and respective stakeholders in technopreneurship was made.