About the MENA Entrepreneurship Lab
The MENA Entrepreneurship Lab is a research initiative dedicated to advancing our understanding of entrepreneurship in the Middle East and North Africa.
The MENA region is undergoing profound economic and institutional transformation, creating a unique setting for understanding how entrepreneurship emerges and evolves as markets, institutions, and societies change. We study who becomes an entrepreneur, who gains access to resources and opportunities, and what enables new ventures to succeed and grow.
Our research focuses on the social and institutional foundations of entrepreneurship, with particular attention to inequality and access, entrepreneurial networks, financing, labor markets, and institutional change. We combine large-scale administrative and proprietary data with field experiments, surveys, and other empirical approaches.
Co-Founders and Co-Directors
Dr. Ahmed Maged Nofal
Co-Founder and Co-Director of the MENA Entrepreneurship Lab, and Assistant Professor of Entrepreneurship at emlyon business school
Professor Olenka Kacperczyk
Co-Founder and Co-Director of the MENA Entrepreneurship Lab, and Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship at London Business School
Our Ambition
By building new data, partnerships, and research infrastructure in MENA, the Lab seeks both to deepen knowledge of entrepreneurship in the region and to use MENA as a setting for addressing fundamental questions in entrepreneurship and organizational research.
Our ambition is to make MENA a central setting for the study of entrepreneurship and economic transformation.