Introduction: Entrepreneurship, Competitiveness and Local Development

Abstract

The Research in Entrepreneurship (RENT) conference is an annual international research meeting for scholars and practitioners in the field of entrepreneurship and small business management, promoted by the ECSB (European Council for Small Business and Entrepreneurship) and the EIASM (European Institute for Advanced Studies in Management). Starting from the RENT conference in Copenhagen in 2004, an anthology containing the best papers presented at RENT conferences is published yearly thanks to the joint effort of the RENT Scientific Committee and the local conference organizers. This book in particular contains a group of 11 contributions selected among the 131 accepted for presentation at the RENT conference hosted at the University Federico II in Naples (Italy) in November 2005. The anthology is representative of the main research areas that are of interest to a community of scholars, which is undoubtedly the leading research community in entrepreneurial and small business studies in Europe and one of the most representative ones at the international level. The RENT conference has undergone a remarkable growth during the last 20 years. As a consequence it has experienced a marked increase in heterogeneity of approaches, research topics and theoretical backgrounds. This increasing diversity undoubtedly represents a valuable resource. At the same time a need for a unitary view and the search for point of contacts between different approaches seems to emerge. As with any growing and evolving research field, entrepreneurship studies also need to manage a trade-off. It is necessary to preserve internal diversity to foster innovation and at the same time to find a common background, shared values and a common language to ensure that the different research ‘souls’ are able to talk to each other and cross-fertilize the debate. In our opinion, two possible directions to manage this trade-off have been proposed at the 2005 RENT conference.