ABSTRACT
Entrepreneurship plays a critical role in economic growth. This chapter integrates the two approaches, using the case studies of three African entrepreneurs to examine how identities and structural barriers can jointly act as catalysts for entrepreneurship in global contexts. In all three cases, global entrepreneurial activity appears to have been stimulated by the experience of encountering structural barriers rooted in factors such as race, class, gender, and nationality in a global context. We identified three common catalysts like global transitions as jolts, prior status as a buffer and combined identities as unique resources. The case studies in this chapter suggest that when people choose to engage in entrepreneurial activities that resonate with marginalized identities in the face of discrimination, global entrepreneurship can become a form of resistance, and those identities can be a source of strength, giving the entrepreneur more power and passion to succeed in their ventures.
