Küreselleşmenin tecrübe edildiği günümüzde dünya genelinde benimsenmiş ihracata dayalı ekonomik kalkınma ve istihdam yaratma modellerinin yenilik tabanlı ihracat modeli olarak dönüşümü zorunlu hale gelmiştir. Bu dönüşümde en önemli aktörler girişimcilerdir ve girişimciler yeniliğin ana itici güçlerindendir. Girişimciler genelde yenilikçi iş fikirlerine veya icatlara sahiptirler. Fakat bu fikir veya icatlarını ticarileştirmeye çalışırken finansman sıkıntısından, üretim olanaklarına ve satış ve pazarlama problemlerine kadar birçok büyük problemle yüzleşirler. İhtiyaç duydukları destekleri bulamadıklarında tüm bu süreçleri tek başına omuzlamak zorunda kalırlar ve bu, girişimin başarı şansını düşüren bir zaman ve kaynak israfı sürecidir. Yenilik süreçlerini hızlandırabilmek ve yenilikçi iş fikirlerinin veya icatların ticarileşmesini sağlayabilmek için belli yardımcı unsurların devreye girmesi gereklidir. Kamu, girişimcilerin ihtiyaç duyduğu finansal kaynaklar hususunda teşvikler sağlasa da diğer ihtiyaçlar konusunda destek verememektedir. Bu durumda dünyada iş melekleri olarak bilinen ve belli sermaye gücüne sahip, sektörlerinde uzman ve gelişmiş iş bağlantılarına sahip kişilerin sisteme entegre edilmesi özellikle çok gereklidir. İş meleklerinin girişimlerin sayısının artması, yenilik kapasitesinin yükselmesi, şirketlerin performansının iyileştirilmesi ve istihdam yaratma konularında etkili oldukları görülmüştür. Türkiye'de yeterli sayıda iş meleği bulunmaması sebebi ile bu alanda özendirici uygulamaların özellikle de kurumsallaşmayı hızlandırıcı şekilde yapılması gerekmektedir. Artan sayıda iş meleği ve artan sayıda yenilikçi girişimcilik sayesinde ülkelerdeki ekonomik büyüme ve özellikle de istihdam sorunlarına daha etkili çözümler bulunabilecektir

Currently the globalization is still in effect and export-oriented economic development and job creation models that have been adopted throughout the world become mandatory to be converted into the innovation-based export models. Entrepreneurs are the most important actors in this transformation. Entrepreneurs are the main driving forces of innovation. They possess innovative business ideas or inventions. But they are confronted with several major problems when they want to commercialize this ideas or inventions from funding shortages to production issues and to sales and marketing problems. When they could not find the support they need, they have to shoulder all these processes alone and therefore time and resources are wasted and this reduces the chance of success of the enterprise. To accelerate the innovation process and to commercialize the innovative business ideas or inventions some proper persons or institutions must come into play. Even though public institutions provides some financial incentives that needed by the enterprises they cannot provide support for the other requirements for the success. As a result, integration of the suitable persons who are known as business angels, who have financial resources and expertise in their sectors and advanced business connections, to the system is very crucial. Business angels have been shown to be effective on increasing the number of entrepreneurs, the rise of innovation capacity, improvement of the performance of companies and employment creation. Because of the absence of a sufficient number of business angels in Turkey incentives must be given to this area aiming especially to accelerate the institutionalization. Owing to the increasing number of business angels hence the increasing number of innovative entrepreneurship it will be possible to find more efficient solutions on economic growth and especially on employment issues in countries Today, unemployment which has a direct impact on the economic and social development of a country has become an important issue to ponder upon. In Turkey according to the unemployment figures of October 2015, the unemployment rate calculated as 10.5% , the number of unemployed was over 3 million and youth unemployment was close to 20%. Governments in Turkey have searched for remedies to this critical and chronic problem for a very long time. After the 1980s, to boost economic growth and solve the critical unemployment problem, Turkey has changed its economic model to the export-oriented growth model that gives special emphasizes to the international competition, targeting integration with the world economy and the dominance of market economy instruments. Export-oriented development model is an accurate model that is used by developed and developing countries in the world today. But today’s main issue that should be considered is what kind of export model is needed to be implemented. Nowadays, even countries rich in resources and also have large export incomes have begun to realize that the model of exporting only natural resources is an unsustainable model for the economic development due to the big fluctuations in external demand and prices. In both developed and developing countries knowledge and innovation-based development is seen as a means of maintain the stability and dynamism in the economy and now all countries and especially the resource-poor countries are beginning to understand that for exports and growth they have no other alternatives than innovationbased development model. In a global competitive environment sustainable innovation is a need to be strong and have the advantage. Small and big entrepreneurs are the indispensable elements of this new model of innovation based export. Medium and large companies are one of the sources of innovation but they usually focus on their own industries and business sectors and therefore their innovation targets are generally restricted to the improvement of existing products and services. Therefore, the innovation objectives are focused on a narrower area. Although they always cannot enjoy all the benefits, it was expected from small and new ventures to create game-changing innovations to survive in the market since they have no alternatives other than bringing market some differences. Therefore, their innovative business ideas or inventions carry big potentials for economies. But one of the biggest problems they face is the commercialization of inventions or ideas. Commercialization accommodates many factor like financing, the need of strategic decision-making and the need for marketing and sales and usually entrepreneurs are the people with only brilliant ideas but not experienced with a setting and developing companies and managing them and they have shortcomings in terms of knowledge and experience in these areas. At this point, business angels are the only factors that can come into play. Business angels with their investment power, expertise and industry connections play a critical role for the commercialization of a products and especially the innovative products. By promoting entrepreneurs to make more commercial attempt through their investments they contribute to the strengthening of the eco-system for entrepreneurship and innovation. This study was conducted to reveal the effects of the angels on entrepreneurship, innovation and employment. Usually investments made to non-public and in early stage companies and since there is no legal obligation for the announcement of these investments, the detection of many business angel investments are not possible in Turkey and in the world. For this reason, accessing to the broader information about their investments is problematic. Under these limitations as much literature review as possible was conducted on business angels. With the help of this study the questions of who are business angels and what innovation is and what are the effects of business angels on entrepreneurship and innovation were tried to be answered. The business angels’ effects on the employment and the companies’ performance were analyzed based on the research results provided by EBAN (European Business Angels Network), one of the largest business angel network in the World, for 37 European countries’ business angel investment operations. Finally, brief information about the current situation of business angels in Turkey was given. Business angels are the individuals who invest their own money to someone else's business. They are called angels because they are the people who invest in companies that other investors does not find economically viable. Although new in our country, the system actively operates in the world for nearly 60 years. Gradually declining number of venture capital firms are investing in the incubation and start-up companies, therefore the importance business angels in this area became more evident. Angels are much more effective in the financing of innovative companies since they can invest in different sectors and different geographical regions. Business angels usually invest in their own geographic area and in the sectors they have expertise and thus contribute to employment growth in the region they live in. Private investors over the past 40 years have played a major role in the development of technological enterprises, increasing entrepreneurship and innovation. In 2013, 86% of all angel investments and 36% of all venture capital investments was invested in incubation and start-up businesses. Especially for the contribution to the economy, the support of business angels for early stage companies is very important. The companies with business angel investments are very successful in creating employment, according to research results of EBAN. At the end of 3 years, companies are 3-fold increase in the average number of employees. In terms of the performance of companies business angel investment made income and assets of the companies to increase by an average of 1.5 times. And especially the initial stage companies in the information and technology sector became profitable even sooner. Business angels’ supply is very low in Turkey since there are great challenges in terms of their habitat. The majority of companies are noninstitutionalized and therefore the businesses consist of professionals who are far off from the culture of institutional innovation and this does not facilitate the nurturing environment for angels and their qualifications. For this reason, the number of people who grow with corporate culture while performing certain functions of senior management and have the financial strength is very low in Turkey. Thus, entrepreneurs are deprived of any support, regardless of how valuable and economical the idea or invention, try to cope with all development and commercialization processes and try to overcome the problems by themselves causing waste of time and resources and of course, this reduces the chance of success of the enterprises. As a result, once the failure rate of entrepreneurs increases more people pursue towards more secure places to work so they look for the jobs in the public and private sector. And this kind of situation is big blow to formation of entrepreneurial eco-system. Therefore, government should promote growth and development areas of the business angels and also government incentives should be organized in such a way that accelerate especially the institutionalization. Institutionalization is important since the institutionalized companies are the most suitable areas for people to experience corporate culture, involve in decision making processes and have sectoral networks and experiences. It helps to create quality managers human resource pools as well. In Turkey, through angles many innovative business ideas might have the chance of commercialization. Thus, advantages will be provided to both in existing products and services as well as to the launch of new products and services to obtain higher value-added benefits for the country's economic development and consequently the increase in employment will be experienced through the development of the economy.