ABSTRACT
Development is a process of social learning. Enterprises must learn meanings of competence that serve the greater competence sought by the market culture. This learning is individual and local, but equally collective and global. It is a self-sustaining process of learning and teaching amongst an entrepreneurial community. Once this collective learning process begins, it draws entrepreneurs inward; it makes them interdependent for continued learning. The role of the state in development is fundamentally to create and adapt norms, especially the property regime, within which the learning process can proceed. The capacity of a fixed norm to nurture an entrepreneurial learning process is always receding. Normative and administrative learning must accompany entrepreneurial learning, and the direction of each influences the direction of the other. There can be an alliance between an innovative majority elaborating their inherited skills and learning new skills, and a state with the vision to remove the obstacles from their path.
