Chapter 4 describes the debates that took place in the press immediately after the Balkan Wars (1912–13), which drew attention to the relationship between new concepts of the able body and the militarization of discourses of productivity. In the first Balkan War, the Ottoman armies were soundly defeated, and the empire lost its last landholdings in the Balkans. The perceived infirmities of the “Ottoman body” became a common thread in social critiques calling for all-out mobilization. This chapter traces the relationship between conceptualizations of the healthy, productive, and able body and discourses on the formation of an ideal citizen, as articulated by moralists, journalists, public figures, and memoirists of the Balkan Wars. I expose how calls for a productive body militarized a social issue during a time when Ottomans faced imminent threats of invasion. The militarization that characterized the last decade of the Ottoman Empire and the first decades of the Turkish Republic cannot be understood without first considering the process by which the body of the citizen became a site of national anxiety.

In this chapter, we explore the possibility that entrepreneurial ecosystems have become the engine behind innovation leadership in emerging markets. We study the experience of 11 Balkan nations and provide evidence of their dynamic entrepreneurial ecosystems, despite national institution shortcomings and low public R&D spending. We emphasize the role of entrepreneurial finance, technical talent and the culture and connectedness of the entrepreneurial community as the most significant drivers behind the bubbling entrepreneurial ecosystems in the Balkans. We also argue that these arguments are critical and can nourish innovation performance in emerging contexts. We argue that by supporting their entrepreneurial ecosystems, many emerging countries that present similar institutional shortcomings to the Balkans can become innovation leaders.