Understanding Of Entrepreneurship Research Articles

New look at creativity in the entrepreneurial process

AbstractIn this article I provide brief review and comments on three articles presented at the Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal's Launch Conference and published in this issue of the Journal. Arguing that creativity plays an important role in the entire entrepreneurial process and that contemporary research on creativity has much to offer in advancing our understanding of entrepreneurship, I suggest four new research directions that would expand the scope of entrepreneurship research. Copyright © 2008 Strategic Management Society.

The moment of truth—Reconstructing entrepreneurship and social capital in the eye of the storm

There are many images of entrepreneurship which all pay attention to the importance of social capital. Nevertheless, these understandings of entrepreneurship do not tell us about the capabilities and social ingenuity that people hit by a natural or man-made catastrophe may evoke. We have studied how the effects of the hurricane Gudrun, which hit southern Sweden in January 2005, were dealt with by civic and formal, private as well as public, organizations. The lessons from our rich case accounts are reflected upon in the perspective of ephemeral organizing and used to craft our notion of ‘emergency entrepreneurship’. Its proposed features include coping with rupture in everyday life by the acknowledgement of local knowledge and leadership and the use of bridging as well as bonding social capital facilitating immediate (inter)action and swift trust. This appears as a spontaneous collective effort, ‘social bricolage’, which means combining and locally—in time as well as in space—integrating chunks of everyday routines according to the events and associated needs that the drama produces.

A multi-level process view of new venture emergence

Entrepreneurship research has grown in both quality and quantity over the past decade, as many theoretical innovations and important empirical research findings have been introduced to the field. However, theoretical approaches to understanding entrepreneurship remain fragmented, and empirical findings are unstable across different contexts. This chapter describes features of a multi-level process view of new venture emergence that adds coherence to the entrepreneurship theory jungle and brings order to idiosyncratic empirical results, by explaining how ideas become organized into new ventures. The centerpiece of this effort is enactment theory, a general process approach specifically developed to explain organizing processes. Enactment theory – and Campbellian evolutionary theorizing more generally – has a long history of use within and across multiple levels of analysis. Consequently, the description here illustrates how organizing unfolds across multiple levels of analysis and multiple phases of development. After describing the theorizing assumptions and multi-level process view of new venture organizing, the chapter explores implications of applying this perspective by suggesting new research directions and interpretations of prior work. The aim is to advocate process theorizing as a more productive approach to understanding new venture emergence.

Editorial Note

This issue begins with Philip Kuhn's discussion of the "deep interconnection between modern Chinese history and the history of Chinese emigration." He argues that the two are aspects of the same social-historical process and presents his views on Chinese emigration into the wider world both comprehensively and concisely. He points out that Chinese migration can more fruitfully be seen in the context of market relationships in which families responded to various kinds of opportunity to make a living. This is still true in the present more globalized and transnational era. Philip Yang's discussion of transnationalism as a mode of immigrant adaptation shows how Chinese who migrated to USA live a transnational life, moving back and forth between USA and China to do business in China, USA or in both places. The expanding Chinese economy provides opportunity for a new kind of adaptation, and allows migrants to be engaged in what Yang calls "immigrant transnationalism." Based on unstructured interviews of Chinese transnational migrants in USA and China, Yang provides examples of how a transnational mode of incorporation provides entrepreneurial and non-entrepreneurial migrants with business and career opportunities. The article shows the dynamic and transnational nature of the "corridor" — to use Kuhn's term — between USA and China. Jia Gao's description of the Chinese in Australia shows how the PRC migrants live between two worlds. They try to remain relevant to both Australia and China and live as transnationals, and identify themselves with their original culture and their adopted culture. This "strategic identity formation" enables the migrants to escape marginalization at both ends of the corridor. While working hard to establish themselves in Australia, the Chinese have the mass media and information technology to help link them with China and satisfy their psychological needs. It is the Chinese side of their transnational world that makes them feel that they have achieved something and gives them "a sense of self-respect and respect from others." Gao's description illustrates a special way by which, as pointed out by Kuhn, a "migrant community" is a bilateral organism. The article by Steven Miles describes migration in the West River Basin in Guangdong. It highlights Kuhn's contention that internal and external migrations were aspects of the same adaptive processes. Arguing that the West River trajectory was "an important component of the larger Cantonese diaspora," Miles shows a migration trajectory up the West River and into inland northern Vietnam and a maritime trajectory along coastal Vietnam and other parts of Southeast Asia. He shows that the genealogies traced to the West River are useful for the study of Cantonese overseas migration, as shown in the case of the one compiled by a Kuala Lumpur-based Chinese businessman. [End Page v] Jing Tsu's article brings us to another kind of research, studying Chinese literature to analyze nationalistic and literary discourse in early 20th-century China. Some writers of the period, for example, hailed Chinese laborers in America and elsewhere as heroes. This representation was reinforced by literary and fictional writing that yearned for a strong China and the domination of Chinese over other "races." "The diasporic frontier," writes Tsu, "constituted a flexible threshold in the nationalistic vision, according to which the Chinese diaspora was not a physical dispersion but a greater national allegiance emerging from all corners of the globe." The fifth article by Wen-Chin Chang describes the trading culture of jade stones among the Yunnanese in Burma and Thailand. Unlike the usual emphasis on trust in Chinese entrepreneurship, Chang shows the distrust and tension in the organization of the trade in jade stone from Burma to Thailand. Chang's informants often talked of distrust and told her their stories of betrayal. She describes the jade trade as characterized by "the intensification and easing of political strains." The article contributes to our understanding of entrepreneurship in a difficult geographical and political terrain. In addition to the articles and five book reviews, we also have a timely report on...

A Garage and an Idea: What More Does an Entrepreneur Need?

There exists a common belief that entrepreneurs commonly start businesses in garages (or basements or dorm rooms or kitchens). The garage entrepreneur is a highly popular contemporary legend, but not quite accurate. An emergent notion in academic research is that entrepreneurs are often organizational products. They typically acquire confidence, business knowledge, and social connections via prior experience at existing organizations. These psychological and social resources aid entrepreneurs in forming companies. Although the belief of the garage entrepreneur contributes to the preservation of the American ideals of opportunity and upward social mobility, it offers misleading insights to would-be entrepreneurs because it suggests an undersocialized view of the entrepreneurial process. Individuals, companies, policy makers, and business schools will benefit from recasting the garage as a contemporary legend and focusing instead on the lessons that can be derived from an understanding of entrepreneurs as organizational products.

Innovation in the Pharmaceutical Industry: The Process of Drug Discovery and Development (review)

Reviewed by: Innovation in the Pharmaceutical Industry: The Process of Drug Discovery and Development Louis Galambos Takuji Hara . Innovation in the Pharmaceutical Industry: The Process of Drug Discovery and Development. Cheltenham, U.K.: Edward Elgar, 2003. ix + 271 pp. Ill. $95.00 (1-84376-050-9). Two complex historical phenomena have brought innovation to center stage in a number of academic disciplines and in policy circles during the past few decades: one is the third industrial revolution, the information-age revolution driven by the transistor, the integrated circuit, the computer, and lately, the Internet; the other is globalization and the intense competition generated by the rise of new competitors, the breakdown of national barriers to trade, and the shift away from public toward private enterprise. To many observers it is apparent that innovation plays a central role in both of these developments. The ability of various national systems, regional entities, industries, and firms to achieve leadership positions by producing important innovations has excited those who would emulate the leaders, as well as those who would merely achieve a better understanding of entrepreneurship. One of the industries most studied today is pharmaceuticals—in part because it has a good long-run track record for innovation, in part because its products can be matters of life or death for all of us, and in part because the business has whipped up an international sandstorm of controversy in recent years. Takuji Hara has made a decisive move into this field of scholarship with his Ph.D. dissertation (University of Edinburgh) and subsequent book Innovation in the Pharmaceutical Industry. The book is both less and more than the title indicates: It is, in fact, a comparative study of British and Japanese pharmaceutical innovation, with detailed studies of four classes of drugs (cardiovascular and antiasthmatic drugs, histamine H2 antagonists, and LHRH analogues) and three case studies of Japanese innovations. The "more" is the great technical depth that the author achieves in his explanation of the process of drug discovery. In writing the histories of modern high-tech industries and firms, most scholars have been limited by their unfamiliarity with the basic sciences at the heart of the innovations. [End Page 378] Not so in this case. Hara's command of medicinal chemistry, biochemistry, and enzymology serves him and his readers well. The author provides us with an interesting history and analysis of Japan's accomplishments and its problems in pharmaceuticals. In particular, he notes the conservatism of the leading Japanese firms. This, Hara says, left them engaged primarily in "modification-based innovation," which involved less risk than "paradigmatic innovation" of the sort conducted at ICI by Sir James Black, who guided to market the first receptor antagonist against hypertension (pp. 165–66). While most of the British innovations have already been covered in previous studies (see, for instance, Ralph Landau, Basil Achilladelis, and Alexander Scriabine, Pharmaceutical Innovation, 1999), the Japanese efforts have been less well documented and analyzed. In each of his case studies of R&D in Japan, Hara includes material from the interviews he conducted, as well as personal communications and reports in the medical journals and in business publications. His research is thorough, although not entirely exhaustive, and medical historians interested in Japan will find much here of interest. I wish I could say that the analysis is as strong as the research. It is not. The author's training is in the social shaping of technology, and to his credit, he acknowledges that the physical universe—in this case, the molecules and patients on whom they are used—are involved in an important sense in the process of drug discovery and, by implication, in the practice of medicine. But alas, he wants to include everything else that is involved, and this leaves him with long lists of causal factors: "In the shaping of the credible compound," he explains, "actors including the project leader, chemists, biologists and research management played a significant role. Nonhuman entities such as bioassay systems also contributed to the process. Institutional and structural factors were also involved," as were markets and regulatory bodies (p. 103). And so on. And so on. Hara gets our noses so close...

Entrepreneurship, management, and sustainable development

Successful management in the new millennium requires developing new methods and approaches to suit the challenges and opportunities of this new era of globalisation. An entrepreneurial approach is seen by many scholars and policy makers as a major option to enhance organisational performance in this era. The concept of entrepreneurship is multi-dimensional and often unclear. Various perspectives have different implications for how entrepreneurship is related to and can help promote sustainable development (SD). This introductory paper to WREMSD will attempt to explore viewpoints from around the world on entrepreneurship, management, and SD. The key objectives are to explain different perspectives on what is meant by the term entrepreneurship in a global context and to provide an overview of SD in relation to entrepreneurship. The paper argues that it is essential that research and policy development fully takes account of the differing perspectives of entrepreneurship and make explicit the particular perspective(s) that they are taking. No single definition necessarily fully captures the concept, but by being clear about our meaning of the concept and the underlying assumptions, we can progress our understanding of entrepreneurship and its relationships to SD.

Expanding the scope of methodologies used in entrepreneurship research

If we accept that entrepreneurs are influenced by culture, then the simplest possible unit of research for understanding entrepreneurship is not the entrepreneur. Nor is it a laboratory study of individuals nor even a field study comparing entrepreneurs, but rather it is useful to have a case study in which the important aspects of environment are analysed and understood. It is doubtful, then, that a mail survey or even interviews could be sufficient for a researcher to truly gain a holistic understanding of the entrepreneurial process.

Service provision for street-based traders in Pietermaritzburg, KwaZulu-Natal: comparing local findings to lessons drawn from Africa and Asia

South Africa's informal economy absorbs approximately one-quarter of the labour force of 15 million people and is therefore the fastest growing sector of employment. Street-based trading constitutes a major subsector within the informal economy and is continuously expanding through unrelenting proliferation of survivalist micro-enterprises. However, few organisations that support enterprises are accessible or appropriate to survivalist and informal sector micro-enterprises. Interviews were conducted with 98 Pietermaritzburg street-based traders and ten KwaZulu-Natal service providers to determine service provision requirements. The results are compared with findings of four international studies. The findings suggest that for survivalist enterprises to benefit from entrepreneurial education and training services, obstacles with regard to South African traders' understanding of entrepreneurship and cultural limitations to enterprise growth should be overcome. Service institutions also require incentives to serve the informal sector, as well as the capacity to design and deliver appropriate services.

Opportunities and Entrepreneurship

This article extends and elaborates the perspective on entrepreneurship articulated by Shane and Venkataraman (2000) and Venkataraman (1997) by explaining in more detail the role of opportunities in the entrepreneurial process. In particular, the article explains the importance of examining entrepreneurship through a disequilibrium framework that focuses on the characteristics and existence of entrepreneurial opportunities. In addition, the article describes several typologies of opportunities and their implications for understanding entrepreneurship.

Opportunities and Entrepreneurship

This article extends and elaborates the perspective on entrepreneurship articulated by Shane and Venkataraman (2000) and Venkataraman (1997) by explaining in more detail the role of opportunities in the entrepreneurial process. In particular, the article explains the importance of examining entrepreneurship through a disequilibrium framework that focuses on the characteristics and existence of entrepreneurial opportunities. In addition, the article describes several typologies of opportunities and their implications for understanding entrepreneurship.

Entrepreneurship and Learning: The Double Act in the Triple Helix

This paper examines the three concepts of learning, knowledge and innovation in the context of the triple relationship of government, industry and higher education, with particular reference to the UK. The authors argue that a consideration of the three concepts enables a proper understanding of entrepreneurship and its role in sustaining competitiveness for the wider economy and value in society. They conclude that entrepreneurship not only provides the spur for economic development but also shows the route forward to managing personal and organizational development in the new economy. It is through entrepreneurship, the authors suggest, that the fundamental requirements of learning, knowledge management and innovation can be effectively addressed.

Female and Male Entrepreneurs' Managerial Behaviour: A Brazilian Study

In the last two decades a large number of papers have investigated gender and its relationship to entrepreneurial activities. Most of these studies analysed a small number of variables. In general, the results have not been very significant in terms of identifying differences between men's and women's entrepreneurial behaviour. Integrative perspectives involving a diversity of variables to explain entrepreneurial behaviour can represent an important contribution to studies of this nature. Our purpose in this paper, which presents the results of an investigation conducted in two cities in Parana, a Southern Brazilian state, is to illustrate how this can be done. Results indicated similarities in male and female entrepreneurial behaviour in most of the variables studied in this piece of research. However, some significant differences were found, mainly associated with characteristics of managerial style, relationship with the market, and strategies adopted by the entrepreneurs. We conclude this paper with suggestions for future studies that can contribute to a better understanding of entrepreneurship. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]

The virtual web as a new entrepreneurial approach to network organizations

The term ‘virtual organization’ has become a very popular expression to describe a new evolving organizational form. However, for many people it is difficult to distinguish between the different forms of virtual organizations. From an inter-organizational perspective the virtual organization is a network of companies. This paper reviews first the different typologies of interorganizational networks before it presents a case study of a stable SME network. The member companies of this stable SME network have decided to extend their network, which leads to a virtual web. The ‘virtual web’ is basically a pool of independent enterprises that have generally agreed to co-operate. The partnerships deriving from the virtual web are called ‘virtual corporations’, which exist only for a certain period of time or for a particular project. Both concepts are described in detail. Based on the presented case study, possible implications of the evolution process from a stable network to a virtual web are identified. One of the major concerns of this development process is that it leaves the virtual web with a managerial vacuum. A possible solution to overcome the lack of management at the macro-organizational level is to implement the ‘net-broker concept’. The net-broker's task is to initiate and maintain the virtual web as well as to facilitate the formation of virtual corporations. A discussion of the traditional understanding of entrepreneurs and the net-broker identifies the net-broker as an entrepreneur, but an entrepreneur with a different understanding of conducting business.

Time and Entrepreneurship

Temporal dynamics are at the heart of entrepreneurship. This Special Issue of Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice presents a collection of papers focused on the intersection of time and entrepreneurial organization. Traditional approaches to the interface between entrepreneurship and time are grounded in western logic, where time is linear and scarce, faster is better, and the future is held to be more important than the past. The papers in this issue are framed by the editors in this perspective, but also suggest alternative conceptualizations of time that offer compelling new ways of understanding entrepreneurship.

Gender, place and entrepreneurship

In this paper it is argued that feminist geographies may contribute to new insights about entrepreneurship. First, the implicit masculinism of conventional entrepreneurship research is challenged. Second, different conceptions of place and gender are explored to demonstrate that the way we conceive of place and gender is crucial to our understanding of entrepreneurship. Third, the interweaving of place, gender and entrepreneurship is focused. It is concluded that when studying entrepreneurs one is studying gendered individuals in gendered places. The difference that place makes to gender relations and entrepreneurship should be taken into account.

The development of an infrastructure for entrepreneurship

This paper takes a macroperspective of entrepreneurship, and focuses on the issues and events involved in constructing an industrial infrastructure that facilitates and constrains entrepreneurship. This infrastructure includes: (1) institutional arrangements to legitimate, regulate, and standardize a new technology, (2) public resource endowments of basic scientific knowledge, financing mechanisms, and a pool of competent labor, as well as (3) proprietary R&D, manufacturing, marketing, and distribution functions by private entrepreneurial firms to commercialize the innovation for profit. Although extensive research substantiates the importance of these infrastructure components, they have been treated as externalities to entrepreneurship. By incorporating these components within a single framework, one can systematically examine how various actors and functions interact to facilitate and constrain entrepreneurship. The paper makes three contributions to understanding entrepreneurship. First, I believe that the study of entrepreneurship is deficient if it focuses exclusively on the characteristics and behaviors of individual entrepreneurs, on the one hand, and if it treats the social, economic, and political factors influencing entrepreneurship as external demographic statistics, on the other hand. Popular folklore notwithstanding, the process of entrepreneurship is a collective achievement requiring key roles from numerous entrepreneurs in both the public and private sectors. Second, the paper examines how and why this infrastructure for entrepreneurship emerges. I argue that while this infrastructure facilitates and constrains individual entrepreneurs, it is the latter who construct and change the industrial infrastructure. This infrastructure does not emerge and change all at once by the actions of one or even a few key entrepreneurs. Instead, it emerges through the accretion of numerous institutional, resource, and proprietary events that co-produce each other over an extended period. Moreover, the very institutional arrangements and resource endowments created to facilitate industry emergence can become inertial forces that hinder subsequent technological development and adaptation by proprietary firms. This generative process has a dynamic history that is itself important to study systematically if one is to understand how novel forms of technologies, organizations, and institutions emerge. Finally, the paper emphasizes that the process of entrepreneurship is not limited to the for-profit sector; numerous entrepreneurial actors in the public and not-for-profit sectors play crucial roles. It motivates one to examine the different roles played by these actors, and how their joint contributions interact to develop and commercialize a new technology. This in turn makes it possible to understand how the risk, time, and cost to an individual entrepreneur are significantly influenced by developments in the overall Infrastructure for entrepreneurship. It also explains why the entrepreneurs who run in packs will be more successful than those that go it alone to develop their innovations.