Even though the study of innovation and entrepreneurship is a diverse, multi-disciplinary endeavour, the role of culture is often neglected or under-emphasized. Building on the cultural turn that has swept across the social sciences and humanities over the past couple of decades, Culture, Innovation and Entrepreneurship provides cutting-edge theoretical and empirical insights about how culture shapes innovation and entrepreneurship. It features novel contributions that enhance our understanding about a variety of important theoretical issues related to symbolic management, framing, legitimacy, optimal distinctiveness, institutional logics and the dynamics of cultural entrepreneurship in and across organizations. This book also addresses a diverse range of topics such as the design of craft goods, the creation of the Guggenheim museum, entrepreneurial ecosystems, open innovation, crowdfunding, the mafia and grand challenges. The chapters in this volume will be of interest to a diverse array of scholars, from those interested in entrepreneurship and innovation to cultural studies, contemporary social theory, organization studies and management. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the journal Innovation: Organization and Management.

The book is an innovative compilation of papers that explore the relationship between cultural features and entrepreneurship. The relative stability of differences in entrepreneurial activity across countries suggests that other than economic factors are at play. The contributions to this edited volume deal with the foundations of entrepreneurship and with the effects of different cultural settings on the incidence and success of entrepreneurs. Topics are individual decision making in a cultural context, regional aspects of entrepreneurship, cross-country differences, and the influence of culture on entrepreneurial activity.

How a bottom-up problem-solving ethos, multidisciplinary approach, and experimental mindset has nurtured entrepreneurship at MIT. MIT is world-famous as a launching pad for entrepreneurs. MIT alumni have founded at least 30,000 active companies, employing an estimated 4.6 million people, with revenues of approximately $1.9 trillion. In the 2010s, twenty to thirty ventures were spun off each year to commercialize technologies developed in MIT labs (with intellectual property licensed by MIT to these companies); in the same decade, MIT graduates started an estimated 100 firms per year. How has MIT become such a hotbed of entrepreneurship? In From the Basement to the Dome, Jean-Jacques Degroof describes how MIT's problem-solving ethos, multidisciplinary approach, and experimental mindset nurture entrepreneurship. Degroof explains that, at first, the culture of entrepreneurship sprang from such extracurricular activities as forums, clubs, and competitions. Eventually, the Institute formally supported these activities, offering courses in entrepreneurship. Degroof describes why entrepreneurship is so uniquely aligned with MIT's culture: a history of bottom-up decision-making, a tradition of academic excellence, a keen interest in problem-solving, a belief in experimentation, and a tolerance for failure on the way to success. Entrepreneurship is the logical outcome of MIT's motto, Mens et Manus (mind and hand) ), translating theories and scientific discoveries into products and businesses--many of which have the goal of solving some of the world's most pressing problems. Degroof maps MIT's current entrepreneurial ecosystem of students, faculty, and researchers; considers the effectiveness of teaching entrepreneurship; and outlines ways that the MIT story could inspire conversations in other institutions about promoting entrepreneurship.

Art and business are often described as worlds apart, even diametric opposites. And yet, these realms are close cousins in creative industries where firms bring cultural goods to market, attaching price tags to music, paintings, theater, literature, film, and fashion. Building on theories of value construction and cultural production, Culture and Commerce details the processes by which artistic worth is decoded, translated, and converted to economic value. Mukti Khaire introduces readers to three industry players: creators, producers (who bring to market and distribute cultural goods), and intermediaries (who critique and rave about them). Case studies of firms from Chanel and Penguin to tastemakers like the Pritzker Prize and The Sundance Institute illuminate how these professionals construct a vital value chain. Highlighting the role of "pioneer entrepreneurs"—who carve out space for radical, new product categories—Khaire illustrates how creative professionals influence our sense of value, shifting consumer behavior and our culture in deep, surprising ways.

Women’s entrepreneurship is an effective way to combat poverty, hunger and disease, to stimulate sustainable business practices, and to promote gender equality. Yet, deeply engrained cultural norms often prescribe gender-specific roles and behaviors that severely constrain the opportunities for women’s entrepreneurial activities. This excellent new volume of work from the Diana Group explores this paradox.

This book provides an empirical study of the increasing importance of the concept of the entrepreneur in the context of the neoliberal cultural paradigm. Using the theoretical framework of the post-structural discourse theory and methods of qualitative discourse analysis, the book describes the changes in political discourse that resulted in the increasing dominance of the figure of the entrepreneur after the late 1980s.

The purpose of this book is to examine the nature of organizational innovation and change by looking at the complex interplay between entrepreneurship, innovation and culture.

Joblessness is the root cause of the global unrest threatening American security. Fostering entrepreneurship is the remedy. The combined weight of American diplomacy and military power cannot end unrest and extremism in the Middle East and other troubled regions of the world, Steven Koltai argues. Koltai says an alternative approach would work: investing in entrepreneurship and reaping the benefits of the jobs created through entrepreneurial startups. From 9/11 and the Arab Spring to the self-proclaimed Islamic caliphate, instability and terror breed where young people cannot find jobs. Koltai marshals evidence to show that joblessness—not religious or cultural conflict—is the root cause of the unrest that vexes American foreign policy and threatens international security. Drawing on Koltai’s stint as senior adviser for Entrepreneurship in Secretary Hillary Clinton’s State Department, and his thirty-year career as a successful entrepreneur and business executive, Peace through Entrepreneurship argues for the significant elevation of entrepreneurship in the service of foreign policy; not rural microfinance or mercantile trading but the scalable stuff of Silicon Valley and Sam Walton, generating the vast majority of new jobs in economies large and small. Peace through Entrepreneurship offers a nonmilitary, long-term solution at a time of disillusionment with Washington’s “big development” approach to unstable and underdeveloped parts of the world—and when the new normal is fear of terrorist attacks against Western targets, beheadings in Syria, and jihad. Extremism will not be resolved by a war on terror. The answer, Koltai shows, is stimulating entrepreneurial economic opportunities for the virtually limitless supply of desperate, unemployed young men and women leading lives of endless economic frustration.

Many nations invite foreigners to work within their borders, but few welcome them. Those countries that do receive a torrent of immigrants create pressures that analysts expect to intensify as population growth and social unrest mount in the less developed countries of the world. Immigration and Entrepreneurship, now in paperback, offers a comparative analysis of worldwide immigration issues while focusing more specifically on the emerging influence of entrepreneurship as a potent factor in the economic and social integration of immigrants.In linking the common immigrant and settler experiences with the upsurge in self-employment, the contributors to this volume use California as their base of comparison. The state has both a huge and varied immigrant population and an entrepreneurial economy that has facilitated the formation of immigrant-owned firms. The Los Angeles riots of the nineties indicated the volatility of the mix. Aided by ethnic and familial networks, such firms have served as a route of economic advancement.Immigration and Entrepreneurship offers a comparative perspective unique in the literature of immigration by broaching the topic from both global and local perspectives. Whereas most studies examine the experience of a single group or groups in a particular destination economy, this volume emphasizes variations in the way different nations receive immigrants as causes of differences in immigrant behavior. Among the innovative themes discussed by a range of international scholars are the entrepreneurial efforts and tensions in the garment industry in Los Angeles, Paris, and Berlin; Koreans' enterprise and identities in Los Angeles and Japan; and U.S. immigration policies. The result is a genuinely global methodology.