Efficiency Assessment of the Social Capital Capacity on Entrepreneurial Activity: A Perspective Driven From Social Media

Abstract

Innovation is the main engine of a sustained economic growth that leads to a vibrant economy. Meanwhile, the large and diverse array of participants and resources are constructing an ecosystem where the synergies contribute to ongoing innovation and flourish in a modern economy. One major dimension of a healthy innovation ecosystem is illustrated in the social-economical aspects of society known as entrepreneurship. Our research concern is to capture the efficiency of social capital capacity towards entrepreneurshiporiented activities in society at large. The approach is to look at the perspective in the form of an input and output where inputs are the governmental efforts for educating human capital in the society and the output is the entrepreneurial-oriented activities and desires. Special focus was given to social network services in order to capture entrepreneurial activity as well as leverage established reports in the country level performance benchmarking practices regarding innovation and entrepreneurship. The level of analysis is country level by looking at a sample of European countries. In order to assess the efficiency of input efforts to be transformed into output, a nonparametric method dominant in operation research and economics known as Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) has been utilized. Efficiency measures are calculated which generate a new scale and ranking accordingly, with an emphasis on efficiency rather than proficiency of social capital capacity.