Guest editorialCreativity, innovation and entrepreneurship (CIE) in South Asia Over the past three decades, academic and popular interest in CIE has increased tremendously. There is now widespread consensus among researchers and policy makers that the solution(s) to some of the most critical "grand challenges" of our times will require CIE, or some combination thereof (Shepherd, 2015, p. 489). The phrase "grand challenge" is credited to German Mathematician David Hilbert who listed important unsolved problems that have motivated mathematics research for more than 100 years. Several fields in the natural sciences, medicine and engineering have embraced the idea of grand challenges (Colquitt and George, 2011). Most organizational scholars would agree that research that addresses grand challenges requires the pursuit of bold ideas and the adoption of less conventional approaches to tackling large, unresolved problems (Ferraro et al., 2015, p. 363). These efforts are likely to be more effective when they take into account the local context (that is, culture, values and traditions), making indigenous solutions more salient to the study of grand challenges.This special section (SS) is devoted to examining CIE in South Asia, the most populous geographic region in the world.