1. Cultural : except for few communities (marvadis/gujjus etc) by nature we are very risk averse. For us a failure in business means a failure in life and Govt jobs having a Far higher "value". Especially in the US and Aus it is different and very often this is seen as a stepforward.
This could be because we are more education focussed, and a school dropout to start a business is seen as a failure of the parents as well. of course this is a generality rather than a rule !
2. Education: especially in the US the focus is on individual learning.ie the teacher gives a direction and expects a lot of self study and analysis while we have a more focus on Rote and rigour at a group level. soeven among educated folks we tend to be more conservative rather than pathbreakingly innovative.
Incidentally I rememeber a interview with Bill gates where he rated Indians one of the best at Problem solving ie given a problem we are very good at optimising..but we are not the ones to come up with the idea in the first place...the Americans are far ahead there.