Entrepreneurship research

A missing link in our understanding of the

knowledge economy
Hans Landstrom
Institute of Economic Research,
Lund University School of Economics and Management, Lund, Sweden
Abstract
Purpose A great deal of policy thinking in the last ten to 15 years has been driven by the insights
gained from the so-called new growth theory. The theory emphasizes that investments in knowledge
and human capital generate economic growth through spillover of knowledge, and the policy implication
is that investments in knowledge and human capital are the best way to stimulate growth. However, there
is a couple of missing links in the spillover argument in that the theory seems to disregard the role of the
entrepreneur. The paper aims to answer the question: Why havent entrepreneurship researchers become
a strong voice regarding the understanding of the development of the knowledge economy?
Design/methodology/approach The author argues that a dynamic and innovative research eld
is characterized by a balance between the pursuit of new issues and knowledge in research, for
example, by being sensitive for changes in society, and the development of existing knowledge, by
integrating and validating the knowledge base already existing within the eld.
Findings The paper shows that one important reason for the lack of visibility of entrepreneurship
research can be found in an internal scientic development of the research eld entrepreneurship
research has become more and more theory-driven and shows less sensitivity and openness for
changes in society.
Originality/value The article gives a critical reection on the development of entrepreneurship as
a research eld. In this sense the article provides an increased understanding of the knowledge that is
within the eld, and gives also suggestions for the future development of the research eld.
Keywords Knowledge economy, Social change, Entrepreneurialism
Paper type General review
1. Introduction
The economy is changing . . .
There is ample evidence that we are currently going through a dynamic era of change in
society. Adam Smith (1776/1976) in his An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the
Wealth of Nations dened land, labor and capital as the key input factors of the economy,
Joseph Schumpeter (1934) in Theory of Economic Development added innovation as one
more input factor, and Poul Romer and Robert Lucas, among others, identied
knowledge as a fth important driver of economic growth and prosperity in society.
In the last decades, intangible resources such as knowledge, know-how and social
capital have become the breeding ground for the development in society, and this trend
is punctuated by, for example (Carayannis et al., 2006):
.
a widespread adoption of innovative technologies in order to create new business
models;
.
the development of a service-based economy with activities demanding
intellectual content has become more pervasive;
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Journal of Intellectual Capital
Vol. 9 No. 2, 2008
pp. 301-322
qEmerald Group Publishing Limited
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DOI 10.1108/14691930810870355
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an increased emphasis on higher education and life-long learning; and
.
massive investments in research and development, training and education.
We are talking about the knowledge economy in which innovation through the
creation and use of knowledge has become a driver of economic growth. In this respect,
we can rely on Schumpeters reasoning (1942) about creative destruction in which
new technologies revolutionizes the economic structure from within and in the
knowledge economy this creative destruction is supported by the rapid development of
information and communication technologies (ICTs) that can be regarded as the
enablers of change.
Following this development in society, a great deal of policy thinking in the last 10-15
years has been driven by the insights gained from the so-called new growth theory
coined by Paul Romer (1986, 1990) and Robert Lucas (1988). In the previous neoclassical
model of economic growth, the conclusion was that labor and capital investments were
the main drivers of growth. On the other hand, the new growth theory emphasize that
investments in knowledge and human capital generate economic growth through
spillover of knowledge rms invest in knowledge to gain growth and return on their
investments, and if successful, they will create knowledge spillovers, i.e. exchange will
occur between organizations in the region and knowledge will disseminate that possible
will benet other rms as well. The policy implication is that investments in knowledge
and human capital are the best way to stimulate growth.
However, as pointed out by Acs et al. (2004), and of central importance for the
discussion in this article, there is a couple of missing links in the spillover argument.
For example, the growth theory seems to disregard the role of the entrepreneur.
Research and development is not enough per se someone has to combine the results
from R&D with other production factors in order to generate growth, i.e. someone has
to convert knowledge into economic growth, and it is in this aspect the entrepreneur
become of decisive importance. For example, neither Henry Ford nor Bill Gates
invented the technologies on which they built their successes. What they did was to use
existing resources and new available knowledge in a new and more valuable way
they were entrepreneurs and it was their way of exploit new knowledge that created
growth, not new knowledge per se.
. . . but entrepreneurship researchers are not a part of the conversation
Entrepreneurship is about the entrepreneur that recognizes economic opportunities
and takes action to exploit them into a market. Seen in this way, entrepreneurship
ought to be of great importance when talking about the changes towards a knowledge
economy during the last decades, and as a link between knowledge and economic
growth in society. However, and interestingly, entrepreneurship research has not been
a loud voice in the discussion of the changes in society, and entrepreneurship
researchers have not paid particular attention to this development.
The adequate question is of course: Why havent entrepreneurship researchers
become a strong voice regarding these emerging and important phenomena in society,
which obviously are of core importance in entrepreneurship research?
In this article my intention is to elaborate on this why-question. Of course, there
might be a lot of different explanations for the lack of presence and visibility of
entrepreneurship researchers in the vital debate about the development of the
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knowledge economy and growth in the society. However, in this article I will argue that
one important reason can be found in an internal intra-scientic explanation in that
entrepreneurship research has become more and more theory-driven and show signs of
a normal-science approach with weak links to and less sensitivity and openness for
changes in society.
My argument (based on Landstrom, 2005) will be that entrepreneurship is a
relatively new eld of research, not more than 20-25 years old or little more than half
an academic career that during the last few decades has gained extensive interest
beyond the usual areas of management studies. As in many other elds of research in
social sciences, entrepreneurship research has its roots in the development of and
changes in society. In this case we can go back to the 1970s and 1980s, decades during
which we experienced huge structural changes in society worldwide, an emerging
development of the knowledge economy, and far reaching political changes
emphasising stronger market-oriented ideologies. It was in this context that the
interest in entrepreneurship research grew, and entrepreneurship research was
strongly rooted in society. The topics raised were strongly linked to the development of
society and entrepreneurship researchers showed a strong practical orientation, i.e. it
was a question of making the phenomenon visible in society and to help individual
ventures to better performance.
In the 1990s, entrepreneurship research grow exponentially in terms of number of
researchers, articles, conferences, journals, etc., and we can nd an increased
fragmentation of the eld with many parallel conversations in research. However, the
research was still rooted in society and the expanding knowledge economy of the
1990s. In many countries entrepreneurship became an important part of the political
agenda, and entrepreneurship research became a vehicle to solve regional and national
problems and to stimulate entrepreneurship, and a lot of entrepreneurship research, not
least in Europe, was nanced by policy-linked organisations.
But as many other research elds, the eld of entrepreneurship research has
matured a maturity that, as I will argue, has made entrepreneurship research less
sensitive for changes in society, and the research has been more inward looking,
research topics have stabilised focusing on some core questions of interest within
entrepreneurship research, and research has been more specialised and groups of
researchers are focused more narrowly on particular theoretical research issues, which
also indicate that there are stronger theory-driven approaches within the eld. Thus,
the eld has attained the characteristics of a more normal science approach (Aldrich
and Baker, 1997) a development of the eld that counteract its original openness
towards stimulus from and interaction with important changes in society.
In the following sections of the article I will further elaborate on the development of
entrepreneurship as a research eld. In the next section I will show the development of
the research eld from a research eld that was highly open for changes in society to a
more mature eld of research where research has become more inward looking and less
sensitive for changes in society. The development of entrepreneurship research will be
divided into three phases: the emergence of the research eld, the exponential growth
of entrepreneurship research, and the domain orientation approach to research. In the
nal section I will discuss what could be done in entrepreneurship research to maintain
a strong linkage to the development of society, and to research the important questions
in society.
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2. The development of entrepreneurship research
Researchers in different disciplines have long taken an interest in entrepreneurship,
represented by precursors such as Richard Cantillon, Jean Baptiste Say, Carl Menger
and Alfred Marshall in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Among economists, at
the beginning of the twentieth century there was already an extensive theoretical base
around the concept, even if it was difcult to identify a consensus that would enable us
to speak of a theory. For example, we can identify two traditions in economic theory:
the Schumpeterian tradition and the Austrian tradition.
Joseph Schumpeter recognized the role of innovation in economic growth, and he
understood that innovation had to be implemented by someone the entrepreneur.
The entrepreneur creates imperfections and growth in the market by introducing
innovations. On the other hand, the Austrian tradition, with roots in the thoughts of
Austrian economists such as Carl Menger, Frederick von Hayek and Ludwig von
Mises, and today, with Israel Kirzner as the leading exponent, sees the entrepreneur as
a seeker of imbalances in the economy an entrepreneur is alert in identifying
prot-making opportunities and help to restore equilibrium to the market by acting on
these opportunities.
However, in the course of the last half century, it seems that entrepreneurship has
more or less been overlooked in economic models. Economics as a scientic discipline
seems to more and more strongly focus on equilibrium models which constitutes the
dominant paradigm in the eld, and in which there does not seem to be any room for
the entrepreneur. The economist William Baumol (1968) expressed it as
entrepreneurship and economics have never been good travelling companions.
Instead, during the 1950s and 1960s behavioural science researchers assumed
responsibility for continuing the development of entrepreneurship research. Their
point of departure was: Why do some individuals tend to start their own business
whereas others do not? The answer was: it depends on the fact that some individuals
have certain qualities that others lack. In order to understand the entrepreneur as an
individual we could nd an interest in entrepreneurship among psychologist such as
David McClelland and Everett Hagen, but also social anthropologists like Fredrik
Barth and Clifford Geertz, and historians as David Landes. Thus, in the 1950s and
1960s we can nd a strong behavioural science tradition in entrepreneurship research,
but the interest was limited to a few individual researchers in different main stream
disciplines.
It was not until the end of the 1970s and beginning of the 1980s that we can identify
an emerging group of scholars from different disciplines interested in
entrepreneurship, and we could also nd some seminal studies on entrepreneurship
that made the phenomenon visible and which attracted other researchers to start
research projects on entrepreneurship. The development of entrepreneurship research
that followed these pioneering studies has been divided into three phases: emerging
phase, growth phase, and domain phase (see Table I), and below I will elaborate on
these phases.
2.1. Phase 1 the emerging eld of entrepreneurship research
2.1.1. Social turmoil. After the Second World War, Keynesian economic theory,
suggesting increased government interventions to manage cyclical uctuations,
seemed to be working, and there was a positive economic development in society. The
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importance of entrepreneurship and small businesses seemed to fade away, and many
scholars supported Schumpeters (1942) declaration that what we have got to accept is
that the large-scale establishment has come to be the most powerful engine of
progress (p. 106). At the same time, during the 1950s and 1960s in the USA there was
also a widespread fear of the Soviet Union, due to its ability to concentrate economic
resources and utilize economies of scale (Acs, 1992). In order to compete, many western
societies, not least the USA, assumed industrialization and economic development to be
based on mass production, and large companies were seen as superior in efciency as
well as the most important driving force behind technological development. It was
argued that economies of scale were of paramount importance for industrial
development, that only large rms could produce output in sufcient quantities to take
advantage of these economies and that, as a consequence, government policies in many
countries favoured large businesses.
The notion that large-scale production and a social order with strong collectivistic
elements were conducive to economic development was rmly established among
social scientists at the time and beliefs in the potential of economies of scale can be
traced back to economists like Adam Smith and Karl Marx. One of the most inuential
thinkers at that time was John Kenneth Galbraith who, in his books American
Capitalism (Galbraith, 1956) and especially in The New Industrial State (Galbraith,
1967), provided an important rationale for an economic policy oriented toward the large
corporations. Galbraith argued that innovative activities as well as improvements in
products and processes were most efciently carried out in the context of large
corporations. Similarly, in The Rise of the Western World (North and Thomas, 1973)
Nobel Laureate Douglass North gave the entrepreneur a very minor role in economic
development and hardly mentioned the topic at all, while Servan-Schreiber (1968)
warned Europeans to be aware of The American Challenge in the form of the
dynamism, organization, innovation, and the boldness that characterize the giant
American corporation (p. 153).
Of course, not all researchers accepted this interpretation of reality. There were also
researchers that were skeptical to the large-scale production argument, many of which
could be found in strategy and organization theory, such as Chandler (1962) and
representatives of the contingency theory on organization: Burns and Stalker (1961),
Woodward (1961) and Lawrence and Lorsch (1967) who state that when an
Emerging phase Growth phase Domain phase
1980s 1990s 2000s
Strong link to society
Individualism
Pioneers
Strong link to the topic
Social infrastructure
Fragmentation
Strong link to the domain
Cognitive development
Segmentation and emerging
research circles
Explorative driven
Practical orientation/society
orientation
Empirical driven
Policy orientation
Theory driven
Knowledge orientation
Pragmatic approach Multi-disciplinary approach Normal science approach
Importation of exportation ! Exportation of knowledge
Table I.
The development of
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organization facing turbulence and heterogeneity in the environment more organic
structures and diversication would be preferable, making smaller units possible.
However, during the 1970s visible changes began to appear and with them stronger
signs that large systems are not always preferable. The twin oil crises triggered an
appraisal of the role of small and medium-sized rms. Many large companies were hit
by severe economic difculties, and unemployment became a major problem in many
western societies. Large companies were increasingly seen as inexible and slow to
adjust to new market conditions. During the 1970s changes in the industrial structure
in the USA began to emerge, primarily in the manufacturing sector, where there was
evidence that small rms were outperforming their larger counterparts. At the same
time, many sectors of the economy that were related to newtechnologies in information
and biotechnology showed an increased small rms share of employment (Acs et al.,
1999). Thus, there were a major shift in the industrial structure in favour of small
companies, a phenomenon that appeared not to be specic to the USA it was a trend
in most developed Western countries.
There may be several explanations for this shift in focus from large companies to
small rms. Carlsson (1992), for example, found two explanations:
(1) a fundamental change in the world economy, related to the intensication of
global competition, the increase in the degree of uncertainty, and the growth of
market fragmentation, and
(2) changes in the characteristics of technological progress, i.e. the recession of the
1970s and 1980s initiated a series of technological waves rst the
development of information technology followed by the biotechnological wave.
According to Audretsch and Thurik (2000), globalization and technological advances
were the necessary preconditions for the knowledge economy becoming the driving
force behind the move from large to small businesses in the economy. In addition, there
were other trends in the economy that gave rise of a larger proportion of small
businesses, such as changes in consumer tastes and a privatization movement that
swept over the world, but maybe most important, the fact that it was a period of
creative destruction in which new technologies were gaining grounds the
emergence of what we later on would dene as the knowledge economy (Brock and
Evans, 1986, 1989).
As a consequence of this shift, new areas of interest emerged, and topics such as
entrepreneurship, innovation, industrial dynamics, and job creation (Acs, 1992)
increasingly came to dominate the political debate. This development received
additional support from politicians such as Ronald Reagan in the USA and Margaret
Thatcher in the UK, who pursued a policy strongly in favour of promoting small
business and entrepreneurship. For example, President Reagan referred to the decade
as the Age of the entrepreneur in his 1985 address to the nation.
Thus, during the 1960s and 1970s some major societal transformations took place
resulting in questions being raised about the efciency of large systems, which
coincided with a political will to create change changes that were driven by
entrepreneur-ship, industrial dynamics and job creation. In this context, some
researchers could see what was happening and could challenge the assumptions of the
past, and we could identify a couple of pioneer researchers within entrepreneurship
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research researchers that could show that the future differs from the past, not least in
terms of the importance of entrepreneurship, innovation and industrial dynamics.
2.1.2. Pioneers in entrepreneurship research. It was in this context that David Birch
(1979) presented his seminal work The Job Generation Process. Birch was interested in
understanding how jobs were created. The main problem was to obtain adequate data
existing databases were not equipped to cope with large longitudinal data. Birch
used Dun & Bradstreet data in the USA, and considerable efforts were made to
facilitate the analysis of the data over time Birch and his research group had data
from 1969 to 1976. The study focused on job creation, and some interesting ndings
emerged. For example, migration of rms from one region to another played a
negligible role, and job losses seemed to be about the same everywhere. Thus, it was
not the rate of closures that varied from one region to another it was the rate of job
replacements that was crucial for the growth or decline of a region. But what kinds of
rms played a critical role in job creation? Birch found that the majority of new jobs
were created by rms often independent and young rms with 20 or less
employees. The conclusion was that it was not the large rms that created new jobs,
but the small and young rms in the economy.
The report was only sold in 12 copies, but its inuence was enormous, not least on
policy-makers. The report was in line with the new political winds that had started to
blow across the western world with Reagan and Thatcher as the most prominent
protagonists. The report alerted not only the Congress in the USA but politicians and
policy-makers all over the world. However, the report also had an enormous impact on
the research community even if it has been a source of considerable controversy and
criticism (see, e.g. Storey and Johnson, 1987; Storey, 1994; Kirchhoff, 1994). It provided
the intellectual foundation for researchers throughout the world to incorporate smaller
rms into their analyses of economic development. A number of researchers interested
in small rms and job creation, for example, David Storey in the UK, and Catherine
Armington and Marjone Odle in the USA, to mention a few, followed in David Birchs
footsteps.
In addition, there were researchers who showed a more general interest in new and
small businesses. In this context, William Brock and David Evans book Economics of
Small Business (Brock and Evans, 1986), in which the authors took a holistic view of
small business economics as a distinct research area, deserves to be mentioned, as does
Robert Hebert and Albert Links (1982) book The Entrepreneur describing the
history of economic thought and the role of entrepreneurship. In general, and not
surprisingly due to the fundamental technological changes and dynamics experienced
in society at that point in time, many researchers took the Schumpeterian view on
innovation as a framework for their studies.
For a long time economists were embedded in the idea of mass production and
economies of scale. However, reality looked different and there was a need for a more
dynamic approach to study the development of the economy. Richard Nelson and
Sidney Winter (1982) provided a new framework that helped researchers to understand
the economy in a more dynamic way. A number of researchers started to examine the
evolutionary process regarding: the size distribution between large and small rms; the
dynamic process from the entry of new rms into industrial markets, their survival
and growth or their exit from the industry; and the importance of knowledge that
generates innovative activities in different industries.
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Another theme of interest was small business and regional development. A loose
conguration of researchers emerged, who studied the regional development in Italy,
for example, researchers like Giacomo Becattini and Sebastiano Brusco two Italian
economists, who resurrected the concept of industrial districts, originally formulated
by Alfred Marshall at the turn of the 19th century. The empirical work of Becattini was
mainly based on the development of the Tuscan economy, whereas Brusco studied the
industrial district of Emilia Romagna. However, their results about the importance of
small rms for regional development were not internationally recognized until Michael
Piore and Charles Sabel (Piore and Sabel, 1984) published their book The Second
Industrial Divide in 1984, in which they performed a macro-historical analysis of the
transformation from Fordist mass production to exible specialization using the
Italian industrial districts as the main example. The concept of industrial districts has
prompted many researchers to draw attention to the region as a vehicle for economic
growth. Of course, Michael Porter has exerted the greatest inuence, but also
researchers like AnnaLee Saxenian (Silicon Valley) and Ray Oakey, Doreen Massey
and David Storey in the UK have received a lot of attention.
Finally, David Audretsch and Zoltan Acs can be regarded as pioneers in their
studies of the connection between smallness and innovation. Zoltan Acs (1984) book
The Changing Structure of the US Economy: Lessons from the US Steel Industry
argued that small rms should not be viewed as less efcient copies of large
enterprises, since small rms have an innovative role in the economy. Acs empirical
data were collected from the US steel industry, and to elaborate on the ndings from
this industry, Zoltan Acs together with David Audretsch began to systematically
investigate the determinants of innovative activities in different industries. David
Audretsch and Zoltan Acs also played a crucial role in bringing together researchers
with an interest in small business economics and organizing a number of seminars at
the Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin fur Sozialforschung in Berlin, where David
Audretsch was active at that time. Later (1989) they also established Small Business
Economics as an outlet for researchers interested in the economics of new and small
rms.
The conclusion that can be made is that in the late 1970s and early 1980s we
witnessed the publication of a number of pioneering scientic studies, not least in the
area of what can be termed small business economics, and in Table II some of these
pioneers are presented. The studies highlighted some important changes in the society
towards a more knowledge-based economy, and the importance of entrepreneurship
for societal dynamics and development.
As we have seen, a number of pioneering studies were published in the late 1970s
and early 1980s, primarily within small business economics. A factor contributing to
the cognitive development of the eld was the building of different databases of
information about young and small companies, making it possible for researchers to
identify new patterns that could not previously be discerned. The development of
databases on young and small companies must also be linked to the increase in data
capacity it was not until the 1970s that it became possible to process large amounts
of data. This aspect also contributed to making the research eld attractive to
researchers outside the management area. Researchers within the elds of economics,
industrial organization, and economic geography became aware of the advantages of
studying large amounts of data on small companies, which was not possible when
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studying large companies. Therefore, several of the researchers who opened up the
research eld and contributed to highlighting the importance of new and small
companies for societal development both to policy-makers and members of the
research community had a background in what we can call small business
economics, with an academic grounding in disciplines such as economics, industrial
organization, and economic geography.
2.1.3. Social development of entrepreneurship research. At the same time as we can
identify a cognitive development founded on small business economics, a community
of academic scholars emerged within the eld of entrepreneurship. This social
development of the eld had its academic origins in the area of management studies.
Entrepreneurship gained a foothold in the curriculum at US business schools and
among scholars within management studies. Management studies are in themselves an
eclectic research eld, or what Whitley (1984) calls a fragmented adhocracy as well
as a research eld that lacks a strong paradigm. These facts naturally contributed to
entrepreneurship gaining acceptance and legitimacy among scholars in management
studies. We can also identify an increasing interest in entrepreneurship and small
business management courses in the late 1960s and early 1970s in the USA. However,
this was many years before most business schools in the USA and Europe began to
offer such courses (Cooper et al., 1997). It could be argued that the development of
entrepreneurship education was to a high degree demand driven, and Vesper (1982; see
also Cooper, 2003) identied a couple of reasons behind the increase in the number of
entrepreneur-ship courses in the USA. First, a greater interest in entrepreneur-ship
courses on the part of students during the 1960s. Leading schools like Harvard and
Stanford, where the students are extremely demanding customers, introduced
entrepreneurship courses at an early stage, whereas other universities gradually
capitulated to student demand, leading to the introduction of a large number of
entrepreneur-ship courses in the early 1970s. It was primarily the US business schools
Themes Examples of pioneers
The entrepreneurial function in society William Baumol, Mark Casson, Israel Kirzner
Economics of innovation Erik Dahmen, Bo Carlsson, Gunnar Eliasson,
Gerhard Mensch
Job creation and employment David Birch, David Storey, Catherine Armington,
Marjorie Odle, Graham Bannock, David Evans,
James Medoff
The dynamic development of industries Richard Nelson, Sidney Winter, Boyan Jovanovic,
Giovanni Dosi, William Brock, David Evans
Size distribution William Brock, David Evans, Gary Loveman, Robert
Lucas
Enter survival growth exit David Evans, Linda Leighton, Bruce Kirchhoff,
Boyan Jovanovic, Paul Geroski
Innovation Zoltan Acs, David Audretsch, Bo Carlsson, Roy
Rothwell
Agglomeration in space Giacomo Becattini, Sebastiano Brusco, Michael
Piore, Charles Sabel, Michael Porter, Paul Krugman,
David Storey, AnnaLee Saxenian, Ray Oakey,
Doreen Massey
Table II.
Pioneers small
business economics
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that were sensitive and responsive to this demand. After this wave of course
introductions, the development continued every school had at least a few faculty
members who were in favour of the subject of entrepreneurship and many schools,
including some of the most respected institutions, launched entrepreneurship courses
which gave the courses a kind of legitimacy. Second, this was also a time when large
resources were directed toward US entrepreneurship education programs mainly
from external donors. An inow of money from wealthy alumni and foundations (e.g.
the Coleman Foundation and the Kauffman Foundation) whose wealth was often
founded on successful entrepreneurship therefore channelled their interest to fund
entrepreneur-ship chairs, centers and awards. Finally, the increasing interest in
entrepre-neurship on the part of politicians and policy-makers also led to the initiation
of several government support programs across the USA and Europe aimed at
stimulating entrepreneurship educations.
Thus, we can identify a whole line of scholars especially in management studies
who were deeply involved in the education of students of entrepreneurship as well as
pioneers who tried to encourage scholars interested in entrepreneurship to attend
seminars, conferences, etc. leading to the start of a community of entrepreneurship
scholars.
2.1.4. Research on entrepreneurship a discovery-oriented research approach. A lot
of scholars from different disciplines rushed into this promising eld of research. Due
to the newness of the eld and lack of identity of its own in terms of concepts, models
and methods, it was easy for researchers from different disciplines to carry out
entrepreneurship research without experiencing obvious decits in competence it
was a low entry eld.
What characterized the eld of entrepreneurship research during the 1980s? One
conclusion that can be made is that entrepreneurship research was deeply rooted in the
changes that occurred in the society during the 1970s and 1980s, but also in the
theoretical roots of earlier entrepreneurship research based on behavioural sciences.
Hence, the focus was on the individual, and a lot of attention was paid to the
characteristics of the entrepreneur. One category of entrepreneurs that attracted a lot of
attention consisted of those who established and managed the technology-based rms
that emerged out of new technologies such as information and biotechnology.
However, researchers soon discovered that the venture process was something more
than an individual phenomenon it was a social one and consequently, the research
on social networks in entrepreneurship became a prominent theme of research.
New technologies created new ventures, and there were a great interest among
researchers to study the commercialization of newtechnologies. Already in 1965, Harry
Schrage wrote the rst work on technology-based entrepreneurship in Harvard
Business Review (Schrage, 1965), but as new industries emerged, such as computer
technology, semi-conducters, and micro-processors, the interest among researchers
grow signicantly. New rms in these industries were often spin-offs from universities
or research institutes, which developed along Route 128 and in Silicon Valley a
phenomenon observed by, for example, Edward Roberts at MIT and Arnold Cooper at
Purdue University.
Finally, entrepreneurship researchers had for a long time close links to research on
strategic management several of the pioneers of entrepreneurship research was also
regarded as pioneers in the eld of strategic management which led to an early
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intersection between the two elds, and we can nd an early interest among
researchers in performance, expressed as an interest in nding predictors of success
for new ventures trying to create better performance in the ventures by identifying
success factors of survival and/or growth.
The pioneers in this section have a focus on micro-level analysis with a background
in management studies. In Table III some of these pioneers within the eld are
presented.
To conclude, the characteristics of entrepreneurship as a research eld at that point
in time could be described in the following ways:
.
Individualism, i.e. the research community was small and fragmented.
Entrepreneurship research was, to a great extent, dependent on individual
initiatives and projects.
.
Importation of knowledge, i.e. entrepreneurship research had not developed an
identity of its own. Instead, it was strongly inuenced by the mainstream
disciplines terms, concepts, models and methods.
.
Discovery oriented research, i.e. a focus on providing descriptions and insights
about a phenomenon that was previously unfamiliar. The level of
methodological sophistication and theoretical analysis in most of the studies
was quite low.
In the late 1980s, a number of reviews were conducted in order to summarize the
achievements made in entrepreneurship research during the decade (see, e.g. Carsrud
et al., 1986; Churchill and Lewis, 1986; Wortman, 1987; Low and MacMillan, 1988;
Bygrave, 1989: VanderWerf and Brush, 1989; Bygrave and Hofer, 1991; Aldrich, 1992;
Amit et al., 1993; Bull and Willard, 1993; Johannisson, 1994). Based on these reviews, it
can be argued that the eld was young and the phenomenon complex the research
could to a high degree be regarded as discovery-oriented it focused on providing
descriptions and insights about a phenomenon that was previously unfamiliar
(Churchill and Lewis, 1986). Churchill (1992) made an analogy to the story of the blind
men and the elephant, where six men touch different parts of the elephant and give
Themes Examples of pioneers
Individual and social networks
General Patrick Liles, Albert Shapero, John Stanworth, Jim
Curran, Robert Brockhaus, Elisabeth Chell
Technical entrepreneurs Arnold Cooper, Edward Roberts, Herbert Wainer,
Isaiah Litvak, Christopher Maule
Social networks Howard Aldrich, Sue Birley, Bengt Johannisson
Process and behaviour
Venture process William Gartner, Neil Churchill, Howard Stevenson,
Carl Vesper, Joseph Mancuso, Jeffry Timmons
Technology-based rms Harry Schrage, Arnold Cooper, Edward Roberts,
James Utterback, Robert Kazanjian, Norman Fast
Performance
Survival and growth Jeffry Timmons, Albert Bruno, Marc Dollinger,
Charles Hofer, William Sandberg, Arnold Cooper
Table III.
Pioneers management
studies
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quite different descriptions of its characteristics it was a relatively unstructured
exploration of the elephant, the researchers discovered that this animal was different,
that it was composed of a number of rather unusual parts, and that it was quite large.
Entrepreneurship researchers had a pragmatic view on methodology. In their
review of the research, Carsrud et al. (1986) and Wortman (1987) emphasized that the
level of methodological and statistical sophistication in most of the studies was quite
low. The discovery-oriented character of the eld made rigorous research
methodologies for rigors sake inappropriate (Churchill and Lewis, 1986).
2.2. Phase 2 exponential growth of entrepreneurship research
2.2.1. The new competitive landscape. An interest in entrepreneurship within society at
large remained high in the 1990s. This interest seems to be related to the turbulence of
the new competitive landscape, resulting from rapid technological advances and the
globalization of world trade. It is the quick changes, the complexity and uncertainty in
society that constitute a hotbed for entrepreneurship, i.e. it is the dynamics in the
knowledge economy that facilitate the emergence and utilization of new business
opportunities. These circumstances have meant that societal interest in
entrepreneurship has remained high and the subject has featured prominently on
the political agenda in many countries. At the same time, the changes taking place in
the economy have constantly given rise to new research questions old questions
quickly disappear while new ones attract attention. As a consequence the eld of
entrepreneurship research developed in many different directions, and it was difcult
to achieve a convergent theory development within the eld.
2.2.2. The development of a social infrastructure. Since the beginning of the 1990s
we can nd an enormous growth of entrepreneurship research. This expansion can be
measured in various ways with respect to the number of researchers, the number of
published articles, number of conferences and journals focusing on or opening up to
entrepreneurship contributions and the expansion is obvious, irrespective of the
measurements employed. After a decade of growth, by the late 1990s, there was
evidence of a growing internal culture and knowledge base as well as an increased
social structure within the eld, expressed in terms of:
.
organized forums for communication between researchers (e.g. conferences and
scientic journals);
.
role models and ideals (e.g. chairs and awards for important scientic
contributions); and
.
education programs in entrepreneurship (Landstrom et al., 1997).
To give some examples of this improved social structure in entrepreneurship research:
.
At the start of the new millennium there were more than 2,200 courses in
entrepreneurship and small business, 277 endowed positions in the USA, and 44
English-language refereed academic journals (Katz, 2003).
.
The number of trade- and textbooks in entrepreneurship and small business has
increased dramatically, and in 1998 numbering 3,555 titles in small business and
1,132 in entrepreneurship (Katz, 2003).
.
We can nd an increased number of PhD entrepreneurship programs at various
universities but also jointly organized doctoral programs.
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From this development it is also possible to discern an emerging liberation from
mainstream disciplines, where the researchers increasingly start to view themselves as
entrepreneurship researchers. However, entrepreneurship is a complex phenomenon
that can be studied from many different angles. It is therefore hard to include all
research issues and questions under the umbrella of entrepreneurship. In this respect,
we can see a strong fragmentation of the eld with several more or less loosely related
subgroups researching entrepreneurship (Reader and Watkins, 2001). Thus, during the
1990s research on entrepreneurship could be regarded as rather fragmented, with
many parallel conversations in the research eld but little convergence and
knowledge accumulation, i.e. entrepreneurship as a research eld expanded in topics
but not in depth (or knowledge accumulation).
In addition, many of the researchers in entrepreneurship during this point in time
could be regarded as transient, i.e. researchers who belong to some form of
mainstream research community and who only temporary enter the eld of
entrepreneurship research, whereas the number of researchers who work with
entrepreneurship research on a continual basis was rather small (Landstrom, 2001).
Thus, entrepreneurship research was a fragmented as well as a changeable eld of
research.
2.2.3. Research on entrepreneurship an empirical-oriented research approach.
What changes can we observe in terms of the issues that have constituted the core of
the research during the 1990s?
On the one hand, and important for the argumentation in this article is that the
increasing number of topics in entrepreneurship research was still rooted in society
the new research questions that were generated was often based on new phenomena
developed in society. Not least in Europe, entrepreneurship research was rather
policy-oriented and entrepreneurship research was in many cases nanced by
policy-linked organizations. As a consequence, the research was often based on
regional or national problem solving, which contributed further to the lack of a general
knowledge accumulation within the eld (Landstrom et al., 1997).
On the other hand, we can identify a development of issues in entrepreneurship
research generated from within the research eld, not as a consequence of changes in
society but as a consequence of changes in the research eld. One of the more
fundamental changes that took place which can more or less be regarded as a
systematic shift is that the research interest in the entrepreneur as an individual, i.e.
entrepreneurial traits declined in favour of a focus on contextual and processual
aspects. The research on psychological characteristics of the entrepreneur seemed to
reach a dead-end both on conceptual and methodological grounds. In this shift in
interest, the pioneering works of William Gartner deserve to be mentioned. As early as
1988, Gartner claimed Who is the entrepreneur? is the wrong question, arguing that
more relevant questions were: How are new organizations created? (Gartner, 1988). In
a number of articles, Gartner (1990, 1993) has stressed that entrepreneurship is about
the creation of new organizations (see similar reasoning in Bygrave and Hofer
(1991)). Even if this development toward a process-oriented approach has taken time,
Gartners ideas are now rmly anchored within entrepreneurship research.
We can also nd other quality changes in entrepreneurship research. For example,
Davidsson et al. (2001) argued that the focus of research seems to have shifted toward
topics that open up new possibilities such as behavioral and cognitive aspects of the
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313
entrepreneur, an increased emphasis on context and the entrepreneurial process
(especially concerning the emergence of new entrepreneurial activities), and an
introduction of theoretical perspectives into the research (e.g. the evolutionary
approach and the resource-based view to mention a few). Davidsson and Wiklund
(2001) modied this line of reasoning somewhat and provided a whole range of
examples of progress in entrepreneurship research, such as:
.
The psychological traits approach has changed to an application of more modern
psychological theory in entrepreneurship research (see, e.g. Sarasvathy, 1999).
.
A broader acceptance of entrepreneurship, which is not only restricted to
independent small rms, indicating an increased interest in corporate
entrepreneurship and in entrepreneurial strategies.
.
Considerable progress has also been made regarding the inuence of regional
environments on entrepreneurship and small rms (see, e.g. special issue of
Regional Studies, 1994).
.
An increased interest in cross-national studies. This research is still in its
infancy, but initial attempts to compare institutional and cultural differences
have been made in the Entrepreneurship Research Consortium (ERC) and Global
Entrepreneurship Monitoring (GEM).
In a similar way Aldrich and Martinez (2001) argue that we have seen important
advances in the area of theory a shift in emphasis from the personal characteristics
and intentions of entrepreneurs themselves to a stronger concentration on their actions
and the outcomes. Empirically, the 1990s have led to an increase in our knowledge, not
least regarding how entrepreneurs use knowledge, networks, and resources to launch
new ventures, but also a more sophisticated taxonomy of environmental forces at
different levels of analysis (population, community, and society).
In methodological sense, we can establish that, in the 1990s, entrepreneurship
exhibited a progressively higher quality of empirical research. Thus, there seems to be
increased sophistication in the statistical methods employed in entrepreneur-ship
research, which may be a sign of the internal progress of the eld (Chandler and Lyon,
2001). However, Gregoire et al. (2002) start to question this progress. In their analysis of
104 empirical articles published in six mainstream management journals between 1985
and 2001, they found, on the one hand, that the eld is converging in the use of some
identiable methodological practices an increased reliance on archival data and
regression-based analysis techniques, in addition to the integration of econometric
techniques but, on the other and, it can be questioned whether this crystallization
is a sign of progress archival data may prevent the observation of many relevant
dimensions of entrepreneur-ship and in the development of society.
The conclusions that can be made is that in the 1990s we could see an exponential
growth of entrepreneurship research and an increased social structure within the eld.
The research on entrepreneurship was highly fragmented, a lot of new questions
emerged before earlier issues in research were solved. In many cases these new issues
was rooted in the society and in the development of the knowledge economy as
entrepreneurship was highly valued on the political agenda, we can also nd a lot of
new policy-oriented issues in entrepreneurship research. At the same time, we can
identify a stronger and stronger internal intra-scientic development where issues in
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entrepreneurship research were generated from within the research eld in itself, not as
a consequence of changes in society. Entrepreneurship research had a highly empirical
focus, and an increased sophistication in statistical methods employed in research. In
my interpretation, the eld of entrepreneurship research started to travel away from
reality and the important questions in society, and the strong societal orientation that
has characterized entrepreneurship research since its beginning.
2.3. Phase 3 a domain oriented approach to research
2.3.1. Dening entrepreneurship. For a long time there has been ongoing uncertainty
and debate on what entrepreneurship research is about. Therefore, entrepreneurship
researchers have different views on the phenomenon we call entrepreneur-ship and
form different pictures of it (Brazeal and Herbert, 1999). This uncertainty is also
reected in the article by Scott Shane and Sankaran Venkataraman (2000), in which
they argue that entrepreneur-ship research has become a broad label under which a
hodgepodge of research is housed (Shane and Venkataraman, 2000, p. 217). In
addition, entrepreneur-ship seems to be extremely difcult to study. It is a complex
phenomenon, which includes many different approaches, levels of analysis, etc., and it
is a dynamic phenomenon entrepreneurship is constantly changing. This
uncertainty in the domain of entrepreneurship research and the complex and
dynamic nature of the phenomenon has contributed to a high degree of fragmentation
in the eld.
However, the article by Shane and Venkataraman (2000) triggered an intense debate
regarding the denition of entrepreneurship and the domain of entrepreneurship
research. In the area of management studies a process-oriented denition of
entrepreneurship gained a strong foothold, but there has been a lack of consensus
regarding what should form the focus of the studies on the entrepreneurial process.
Two different streams of interest can be discerned:
(1) the emergence of new organizations, i.e. entrepreneurship starts when the
entrepreneur makes the decision to start a company, and ends when the
entrepreneur has obtained external resources and created a market niche; and
(2) the emergence of opportunities.
Inspired by Austrian economics, Shane and Venkataraman argue that
entrepreneurship as a scholarly eld seeks to understand how opportunities to
bring into existence future goods and services are discovered, created, and exploited,
by whom, and with what consequences. Thus, Shane and Venkataramans framework
is much broader than the emergence of new organizations.
2.3.2. Domain focus of entrepreneurship research. At present, the eld seems to be
caught between the efforts to overcome the drawbacks of newness and the need to
achieve maturity a phase of development that is characterized by what I will call a
domain approach to knowledge the creation of a domain of research of its own.
If the eld is moving toward maturity, knowledge accumulation should reect:
.
an increasing internal orientation with researchers citing the work of other
entrepreneurship researchers;
.
a stabilisation of topics within the eld, i.e. some topics will crystallise as key
questions;
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315
.
an increased level of specialisation among groups of researchers focused more
narrowly on particular theoretical research issues; and
.
an identiable research community led by core researchers that have been highly
inuential in the elds development.
In Cornelius et al. (2006) these assumptions about the development of entrepreneurship
research were tested, and it could be concluded that entrepreneurship research has
been increasingly self-reective. The interest in entrepreneurship research in itself has
grown as disciplinary specialists examine the state of entrepreneurship research;
assess where we have been and where we are going. The number and inuence of
outsiders, of researchers not citing but being cited by entrepreneurship researchers has
decreased steadily over time.
In addition, the study by Cornelius et al. shows that there seems to be an increasing
stabilisation of topics within the eld (even if this tendency is less pronounced), and
also related to this, an increased specialisation of entrepreneurship research (a
specialisation that indicates a knowledge accumulation opposite to a fragmentation
of research). Entrepreneurship researchers have increasingly specialised thematically
which suggests that more autonomous research groupings or research circles will
develop. These research circles will involve networks where tacit knowledge can be
developed and exchanged, in which consensus can be reached regarding the problems
of interest, denitions, methodological approaches etc.
Finally, the research community on entrepreneurship research has grown
signicantly during the last two decades, at the same time we can identify a large
number of core and contributing authors who have led the research into a more mature
eld of research. Assuming that entrepreneurship research will follow the evolutionary
pattern of many other research elds, entrepreneurship research today show a strong
domain approach to knowledge characterised by a stronger internal orientation,
stabilisation and specialisation of research topics, and a research community led by
core researchers that set the research agenda in entrepreneurship research an
increased hierarchication of the research.
The conclusion that can be made is that entrepreneurship research more and more
has attained a normal science approach (Aldrich and Baker, 1997) with a growing
body of research that builds on specic empirical and theoretical work, and that
develops as a separate and distinct eld with its own literature and its own journals.
My argument is that in this way the methodological openness that for a long time has
characterized entrepreneurship research, and its sensitivity towards changes in society
and its linkages toward reality has been put at risk there is a risk that
entrepreneurship researchers not anymore focus their attention on important questions
that have an impact on the dynamics of the knowledge economy and on wealth
creation in society.
2.3.3. Disciplinary research vs a separate domain of entrepreneurship research.
During the last couple of decades we can discern the development of entrepreneur-ship
research within existing disciplines toward the establishment of a distinct domain of
research. What rationale can we nd for this development? It could, for example, be
argued that entrepreneurship research is best pursued within established disciplines
like economics, psychology and sociology. The reasoning behind this argument is that:
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.
there are few contingencies of interest to entrepreneurship scholars that are not
contained in existing disciplines and therefore there is no need to reinvent the
wheel; and
.
within existing disciplines entrepreneurship research is required to meet the
quality criteria of the respective discipline, which is a way for the research to
attain academic legitimacy (Davidsson, 2003).
As a consequence it would be possible for entrepreneurship researchers to use existing
theories from psychology, sociology, etc. and test their explanatory value in the
entrepreneurial context (Landstrom, 2001).
On the other hand, entrepreneurship may be regarded as a complex phenomenon.
Existing theories may not always be optimal for addressing these characteristics,
which indicates a need to pose new questions and build concepts and models to explain
the phenomenon (Landstrom, 2001; Davidsson, 2003). Leaving entrepreneurship
research to other disciplines also means the lack of a research community a
community with deep knowledge of and familiarity with entrepreneurship as
phenomena that transient visitors to the eld do not possess (Low, 2001). Finally, and
most importantly, if entrepreneurship is left to other disciplines, there is no guarantee
that research will focus on the most central questions in entrepreneurship as a research
eld (Acs and Audretsch, 2003). These arguments are summarized in Table IV.
Based on this development towards a domain oriented approach in
entrepreneurship research, Davidsson (2003) argues that in the future we need to
combine topical and disciplinary knowledge. This can be achieved by:
.
entrepreneurship researchers who learn more about theory and method from the
disciplines;
.
disciplinary researchers who read a great deal of entrepreneurship research; and
.
collaboration between disciplinary and entrepreneurship researchers and,
according to Davidsson, all three directions are like to be explored in the presence
of a distinct domain of research.
3. What could be done in the future to include entrepreneurship
researchers into the conversation on the knowledge economy?
In this paper I have argued that entrepreneurship as a eld of research has disappeared
in our understanding and policy discussion regarding the changes toward a knowledge
Disciplinary research ! Domain of entrepreneurship research
Integrated within main stream disciplines Liberation from main stream disciplines
No need to reinvent the wheel Complex phenomena (existing theories not
always optimal)
Entrepreneurship research is required to
meet the quality criteria of the discipline
(academic legitimacy)
Research community in entrepreneurship
(tacit knowledge)
Focus on the most central questions of
entrepreneurship
Table IV.
Entrepreneurship as
disciplinary research
versus domain research
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317
economy and the transformation of knowledge into growth in society. In this respect,
one important explanation can be found in an intra-scientic explanation in that
entrepreneurship research has become more and more theory-driven and show signs of
a normal-science approach with weaker links to and less sensitivity for changes in
society and a less attention towards questions of importance for society. What could be
done in order to create a dynamic and innovative research eld with strong links to the
changes that occurs in society, and that constitute a strong voice in the debate about
the knowledge economy and the growth of society?
Based on the reasoning in this article, I will argue that a dynamic and innovative
research eld is characterized by a balance between the pursuit of new issues and
knowledge in research, for example, by being sensitive for changes in society, by
introducing new phenomena, concepts and theoretical frameworks to the eld, and the
development of existing knowledge, by integrating and validating the knowledge base
already existing within the eld.
As indicated, for a long time entrepreneurship research has been very sensitive and
open for changes in society, the dynamics of the knowledge economy, and for new
ideas introduced into the eld, and this can be regarded as benecial for the
development of the eld. Based on Welsch and Liao (2003), one can argue that in this
way the eld has been enriched by innovative perspectives, new issues in research and
methodological approaches most of them imported from other elds elds that
harbour different philosophies, foci, concepts and theories, and methodological
approaches. But entrepreneurship researchers have also been highly innovative in
nding ways to understand the complexity of the knowledge economy a complexity
that presupposes a variety of perspectives and methodological approaches. However,
this sensitivity, openness and innovativeness have been made at the price of a lack of
conceptual standardization and replication as well as fragmentation of the research.
During the last couple of years, entrepreneurship research has become more inward
looking, research issues have stabilised focusing on some core questions of interest
within entrepreneurship research, and focused more narrowly on particular theoretical
research issues. As a consequence the eld has become less sensitive for changes in
society and the development of the knowledge economy a development of the eld
that counteract its original focus on important questions, and its openness towards
stimulus from and interaction with changes in society.
In order to create this balance between openness and innovativeness, and
conceptual robustness and theoretical development, entrepreneurship research needs
engaged scholarships (Van de Ven and Johnson, 2006) in which research enriches
practice and vice versa theory that is not informed by practice and sensitive for
changes in society is neither useful nor interesting; similarly, practice without theory is
uninformative. Entrepreneurship research should be developed in close connection
with society and the development of the knowledge economy. Only in this way
entrepreneurship research can be a strong voice regarding these emerging and
important phenomena in society.
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Corresponding author
Hans Landstrom can be contacted at: hans.landstrom@fek.lu.se
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