Context is everything in entrepreneurship research. This book compellingly demonstrates the ways in which the distinctive European cultural, societal and geographic environments enable research into new entrepreneurial phenomena. It also gives guidance as to how future research should endeavour to understand the influences of context.

This book aims to provide new approaches to analysing and thinking about how entrepreneurial ecosystems develop and evolve over time as well as shed light on the relatively unexplored area of entrepreneurship ecosystem dynamics. The concept of entrepreneurial ecosystems has emerged as a framework to understand the nature of places in which entrepreneurial activity flourishes. Time is fundamental to the analysis of the dynamics of an entrepreneurial ecosystem. New firm creation, survival, growth and demise all occur within a temporal context that is, over and within time. Systems approaches to research invariably model the influential effects of the actors and elements that shape, re-shape, maintain, shift and change the system itself. An entrepreneurial ecosystem point of view, therefore, is inherently time-dependent and provides an analytical framework that reveals how the number and diversity of entrepreneurial actors situated in a place and time influence the creation of new firms, their survival, growth, and ultimately the stability of markets and industry in a time and place. Whether for better or worse, the historic and present time dimensions underpin the functioning and trajectory of entrepreneurial ecosystem performances and how they are shaped over time. Each chapter in this edited volume outlines a particular perspective and/or a unique case drawn from a range of countries that collectively reveal the dynamics of an ever-changing entrepreneurial ecosystem. The chapters were originally published as a special issue of the journal, Entrepreneurship and Regional Development.

"This important Handbook of Entrepreneurial Dynamics reports on the Panel Study of Entrepreneurial Dynamics (PSED), the most comprehensive scientifically representative study to date of nascent entrepreneurs. The book is unique because the study identified individuals in the process of creating new businesses to understand how, at its very source, people move from considering the option of starting a new business to its actual founding. This has never been done before in the history of entrepreneurship research... I cannot recommend this book more strongly to entrepreneurship scholars and those interested in where entrepreneurs come from and how they move from their initial idea to new venture founding." --Claudia Bird Schoonhoven, University of California, Irvine "This Handbook makes a terrific contribution to understanding entrepreneurship and new business creation. Its 38 chapters report major findings from the Panel Study of Entrepreneurial Dynamics (PSED), an unprecedented research program involving more than a hundred researchers from 10 countries. This Handbook is ′must reading′ for anyone interested in entrepreneurship research." --Andrew H. Van de Ven, Carlson School of Management, University of Minnesota Entrepreneurial activity provides profound positive benefits across an important set of measures of social and economic well-being, much of it concentrated in new economic sectors such as information technology. Yet, even though entrepreneurship has been shown to provide many benefits, it is surprising that there has not been a systematic study of the entrepreneurial process. The Handbook of Entrepreneurial Dynamics: The Process of Business Creation fills this gap by offering theories, ideas, and measures that can be used to explore and understand the factors that encompass and influence the creation of new businesses. The chapters in the handbook provide the rationale for questionnaires used in the Panel Study of Entrepreneurial Dynamics (PSED). The PSED is a research program that was initiated to provide systematic, reliable, and generalizable data on important features of the new business creation process. The PSED includes information on the proportion and characteristics of the adult population involved in efforts to start businesses, the activities and characteristics that comprise the nature of the business start-up process, and the proportion and characteristics of those business start-up efforts that actually become new businesses. The handbook also describes the PSED data collection process; provides documentation of the interview schedules, codebooks, data preparation and weighting scheme; as well as offers examples of how analyses of PSED data might be conducted. The authors identify specific measures that can be used to operationalize theory as well as provide evidence from the PSED data sets on these measures′ reliability and validity. The Handbook of Entrepreneurial Dynamics is ideal for a sizeable audience, including graduate students, academics, and librarians in schools of business and management who need a comprehensive reference on business creation. In addition, researchers and policy makers at the federal, state, and local level will find this an invaluable reference covering all of the factors involved in new venture formation. Key Features: * Considers categories of data not available prior to the PSED * Includes a comprehensive overview of theories about new business formation * Provides demographics of nascent entrepreneurs * Analyzes the cognitive characteristics of nascent entrepreneurs * Explores all of the processes of new business formation

New organizations do not emerge full blown from the idiosyncratic minds of individual entrepreneurs. Their ideas for new organizations, their ability to acquire capital and other essential resources, and their likelihood of survival as entrepreneurs derive from the contexts in which they live and work. The Entrepreneurship Dynamic explores the conditions that prompt the founding of large numbers of new organizations or entirely new industries, and the effects on existing industries, economies, and societies.

As the breadth and empirical diversity of entrepreneurship research have increased rapidly during the last decade, the quest to find a "one-size-fits-all" general theory of entrepreneurship has given way to a growing appreciation for the importance of contexts. This promises to improve both the practical relevance and the theoretical rigor of research in this field. Entrepreneurship means different things to different people at different times and in different places and both its causes and its consequences likewise vary. For example, for some people entrepreneurship can be a glorious path to emancipation, while for others it can represent the yoke tethering them to the burdens of overwork and drudgery. For some communities it can drive renaissance and vibrancy while for others it allows only bare survival. In this book, we assess and attempt to push forward contemporary conceptualizations of contexts that matter for entrepreneurship, pointing in particular to opportunities generating new insights by attending to contexts in novel or underexplored ways. This book shows that the ongoing contextualization of entrepreneurship research should not simply generate a proliferation of unique theories – one for every context – but can instead result in better theory construction, testing and understanding of boundary conditions, thereby leading us to richer and more profound understanding of entrepreneurship across its many forms. Contextualizing Entrepreneurship Theory will critically review the current debate and existing literature on contexts and entrepreneurship and use this to synthesize new theoretical and methodological frameworks that point to important directions for future research.

The Theory of Entrepreneurship examines the interiors of the entrepreneurial value creation process, and offers a new unified and comprehensive theory to afford empirical investigations as well as delineate a broader view of the entrepreneurial contextual milieu.

This comprehensive volume explores the phenomenon of refugee entrepreneurship and advances the discussions and debates in the domain. The growing number of refugees across the world creates a compelling need to study the social and economic activities of refugees in different contexts, and to share experiences and debate how to better support refugee populations. This book covers academic, practical, and policy issues in refugee entrepreneurship, seeking to present the current status of research in this evolving field. The topics include how to identify and differentiate refugee entrepreneurship; refugees’ business practices; the personal, economic, and social values and impacts of refugee entrepreneurship; and the institutional support and role of ecosystems in facilitating refugee entrepreneurship. Future research directions are also outlined. This book provides scholars with the theoretical foundations and evidence base to advance refugee entrepreneurship research. Support agencies will learn from the experiences of others about the delivery of tailored support and policymakers will recognise the need for empathy and consistency in developing host country strategies for refugees.

Entrepreneurship and intrapreneurship have become a vehicle that offers solutions for social, environmental, and economic problems. Even though the level of entrepreneurial activity and its diversity have been motivated through public policies, social support has also played an important role in encouraging people to think of entrepreneurship as a desirable career choice. This book brings together analyses of those elements required for entrepreneurial and intrapreneurial intention and action, which ultimately become important leverages of development. Chapters highlight the importance of rural, urban, university, organizational, and family environments for a bunch of intentions and behaviors such as green, sport, social, corporate, innovative, traditional, and gender entrepreneurship. This entrepreneurial diversity is translated into higher development through the empowerment of women, environmental consciousness, and efficient production. Policymakers, scholars, and practitioners can find different examples and cases useful for decision-making, learning, and practice in this book.

This book investigates, compares, and contrasts the theoretical and practical elements of business concepts and models that are acclimated to the dynamic changes of our modern era. Furthermore, it describes and analyzes the current cooperative interactions among firms, and evaluates the contribution of knowledge dynamics in coopetition.