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A growing body of studies has investigated the geography of entrepreneurship in developed countries, with entrepreneurship researchers recently extending this topic to the developing country context. However, geography-oriented studies that consider extreme spatial differences in such contexts remain scarce. To address this gap, this paper provides a spatial-econometric analysis of the role of agglomeration economies and knowledge spillovers on start-up rates across cities in Turkey between 2009 and 2018 by considering extreme spatial differences, a common characteristic of many developing countries. By doing so, this paper determines whether the leading stylized facts that are empirically tested in developed countries hold for developing countries and analyses the extent to which extreme spatial differences matter to regional entrepreneurship performance. The spatial-econometric analysis also offers an evaluation of the mimicking effect, which examines how nearby cities influence each other in the new firm formation process. The econometric model reveals that while the entrepreneurial patterns of developed countries have some relevance to Turkey in general, the outcomes vary significantly between leading and lagging regions. This underscores the crucial importance of accounting for entrenched spatial disparities in developing countries when researching entrepreneurship and the need to identify suitable policy combinations for promoting local ecosystems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper contributes to a comprehensive understanding of the research field of Indigenous Entrepreneurship (IE), by analysing previous literature and proposing relevant future research lines. IE has been considered in the literature as key for the development of indigenous communities and a promising emergent area of research, and it is time to make efforts to integrate existing knowledge and approaches in order to advance the field. By analysing 264 papers related to IE published up to December 2020, we found some relevant results. In conclusion, we mention the heterogeneity and fragmentation of the field, the specificity of sociocultural issues and context, the concentration of studies in some geographical areas, the relevance of the individual level of study, and the combination of economic and social objectives. In addition, future integration efforts that contribute to a better generalizability of the empirical results and to theory building are proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This Special Issue of Entrepreneurship and Regional Development honours Distinguished Professor of Entrepreneurship Alistair Anderson's memory. This Special Issue offers a range of papers that engage with Alistair Anderson's work and extend it by taking a social science view to understanding entrepreneurship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent times, practice-based approaches have gained momentum as theoretical tools to understand entrepreneurship. Even if this project is far from finished, in this paper we argue that it needs its own critical assessment by zooming in on one of the major implications which comes with taking the practice turn, namely the question of reflexivity. Drawing on Bourdieu's rich and refined conception of reflexivity, which forms an inherent part of his practice theory, we delineate the importance of incorporating this notion in how we further apply Bourdieu in practice-based entrepreneurship studies, while also opening up for a reflexive outlook of the practice turn in entrepreneurship studies. In particular, we argue that reflexivity is not so much a self-involved scholarly issue but rather a matter of attending to the social and intellectual unconscious embedded in our research and analytical tools, which can bring both epistemic and civic renewal in the ways practice-based approaches are developed in entrepreneurship studies. In the conclusion, we underline that the practice turn, without a reflexive outlook, will rather maintain the status quo of the field of entrepreneurship studies instead of realizing the promise it holds for the study of entrepreneurship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates how the characteristics of the local system in which a firm is situated affect its geography – that is, the location of its business units. Using econometric techniques on a novel dataset of Italian business groups, we find that the geographic dispersion of multi-unit firms is influenced by a number of local factors, such as industry variety, production specialization, spatial density and infrastructure accessibility. In contrast, the geography of manufacturing groups seems to be affected only by production specialization. This paper contributes to the economic geography and entrepreneurship literature by showing that local factors affect the behaviour and organization of firms – in our case, the geographic dispersion of business units. We find that the geographic dispersion of firms decreases when the headquarters are situated in a local system that has a high level of industry variety and spatial density. At the same time, we observe geographic dispersion to be positively related to infrastructure accessibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The practice of bricolage, predominantly regarded as a strategy for innovation and overcoming constraints in resource-scarce environments, has garnered increased scholarly attention in recent years. This paper aims to consolidate the fragmented field by conducting a literature review of bricolage-focused research, offering an integrated perspective based on prior contributions. This serves to conceptualize and advance theory building on the subject, while simultaneously pinpointing gaps in the literature and proposing a roadmap for future research. A systematic literature review of 126 articles was carried out, utilizing the Web of Science as the primary data source. The focus was on clarifying the concept and its subtypes and examining common themes in existing literature to establish a cohesive conceptualization of bricolage. The primary finding is the conceptualization of a multi-level framework encompassing the who-when-how-what dimensions of bricolage, which can serve as a foundation for future research. Furthermore, we consolidate and present bricolage subtypes while questioning their utility in research and practice. Additionally, we analyse research trends over time and summarize the ongoing practical and conceptual discourse aimed at distinguishing bricolage from related, overlapping concepts. Finally, we provide recommendations for future research, facilitating the continued growth of the bricolage field in a harmonious manner. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present guest editorial offers a review of the different conceptualizations of families in business used in research to date, shedding light on the unique characteristics of each type. Understanding the family through the lens of social systems theory offers a means for researchers to study contextually embedded family systems, offering a foundation for studying differences among families. We demonstrate that the family business system (ownership, business, family) is incomplete without a fourth component, that of the family in business. We then present the papers included in this special issue and highlight the collective contribution to research in the fields of family business and family entrepreneurship and provide directions for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between entrepreneurship and regional economic growth has always been a hot topic for scholars. However, the conclusions of existing studies mostly believe that the spatial variable relationship between the two is a fixed positive relationship and does not change with the change of spatial position, which is obviously contrary to the law of heterogeneity or non-stationarity in the spatial relationship of the real geographic world. This paper proposes a new spatial variable coefficient model, called Mixed Geographically Weighted Panel Regression with Spatial Autoregression (MGWPR-SAR), to study the spatial heterogeneity of the impact of entrepreneurship on the economic growth of 31 provinces and cities in China. Unlike the conclusions of mainstream research, the results of this paper show that the role of entrepreneurship in China's regional economic growth is not necessarily positive, and it has significant spatial heterogeneity. Entrepreneurship has a positive role in promoting economic growth in the relatively developed regions of the eastern coastal and central regions, while it has a negative effect on economic growth in the relatively backward regions of the west. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews the literature on community enterprises (CEs), i.e. organizations that engage in commercial activity and operate for the development of a local community by bringing economic, social, and environmental benefits. In the face of widespread recognition of the positive role they play in impoverished territories, there is no general agreement on their very nature and the type of underlying entrepreneurship. Through a systematic review of CE literature, referred to the period 1990–2020, our paper aims to provide an extensive background of issues related to CEs, their specificities, the kind of entrepreneurship they rely on, their role in local development. In addition, we try to outline their liabilities and the main challenges they face, intending to delineate implications for future research on the issue. Beyond descriptive analytics, results highlight the main research topics of CEs, as well as multiple challenges that connect researchers and practitioners interested in the topic. Given the role of CEs in the regeneration of places and communities, our study also highlights the need for research to incorporate broader analytical perspectives that simultaneously examine both the barriers faced by CEs in these contexts and the factors that may sustain them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores how local communities in formerly industrialized places make sense of industrial decline and how the historical experience of industrialism has influenced the subsequent development of local entrepreneurship cultures. Based on a study with entrepreneurs and policymakers in Doncaster, a post-industrial English town in South Yorkshire, the paper demonstrates how legacies of the past persist through local informal institutions and permeate local perceptions of place and opportunity, stymieing the development of an entrepreneurship culture in the locality. Drawing on Cresswell's three-dimensional framework of place, the paper shows how place meanings can lag significantly behind material transformation and slow the adoption of new practices. The study reflects on these challenges and discusses the policy implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper critically explores a key challenge facing future entrepreneurship educators, that of content, i.e., deciding what to teach. Understanding the factors that influence the content decision could enhance the quality and effectiveness of future entrepreneurship education programmes. The paper argues that as a result of entrepreneurship education's increased popularity, its expanding scholarship base, its growth in non-business disciplines, and increased attention from policy makers and employers, entrepreneurship educators are in danger of trying to do too much to please too many. The paper asks: What are the categories of influence that impact on the content decision? And, how should future entrepreneurship educators deal with the content challenge? The paper contributes to entrepreneurship education theory and practice by enhancing understanding of the myriad elements entrepreneurship education comprises, highlighting the dangers of trying to do too much, and theorizing towards a reconceptualization of the role of the future entrepreneurship educator as a 'unique aggregator of content.' [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a Systematic Literature Review ('SLR') of the emerging 'entrepreneurship-as-practice' (EaP) research field. It advances EaP as a 'platform of expression' that enriches entrepreneurship research. Following the 'practice turn' in social sciences, entrepreneurship is also interested in this new approach. The goal of this article is to map and critically review the literature within the EaP field. The Systematic Literature Review returned 76 articles contributing closely to EaP. Beyond descriptive analytics, results highlight the main research topics of EaP stream as well as multiple methodologies that connect researchers and participants through various research practices. The paper identifies a spectrum of seven theoretical frameworks underlying EaP studies and puts forward examples of research and empirical contexts to provoke the entrepreneurship research community to study actual practices in their diversity. Lastly, the authors detail in five propositions the promising avenues for future research opened by EaP. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we introduce the special issue on entrepreneurship and embeddedness. We do so by providing a brief overview of existing research on the topic focused on three important conversations related to process, context and theoretical foundations. The overview highlights essential contributions from extant research and suggests that expansion and advancement in the research conversation can be accomplished by focusing on dynamic and multilayered conceptualizations of embeddedness and by broadening the theoretical foundations of our research. We also present and position the papers in the special issue within the conversations on process, context and theoretical foundations in entrepreneurship research on embeddedness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a phenomenological approach, we analyse the voices of entrepreneurs living in the peripheral ecosystems of Newcastle Upon Tyne (UK), Palermo (Italy) and Perth (Australia). These ecosystems are defined by the considerable physical distance between their geographical location and the location of a larger, more established 'core' ecosystem in their nation. The purpose of our paper is to examine how distance from the core is perceived to both enable and constrain entrepreneurship in peripheral contexts. We introduce 'distance from the core' as a significant hitherto unexplored theme to consider when exploring the lived experiences of entrepreneurs in peripheral contexts. Empirically, we present data that affirms and expands extant findings revealing how entrepreneurs rooted in peripheral contexts react to the structural conditions around them. Methodologically, we demonstrate the value of phenomenological research in revealing the subjective ways entrepreneurial agency, structure and distance intersect. We highlight that policymakers must take the voices of entrepreneurs in a peripheral ecosystem into account when designing and implementing enterprise policies that aim to develop entrepreneurship in peripheral contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we explore the micro-interactions through which a regenerative enterprise engages with proximate natural ecosystems in its attempt to repair and protect them. Through an ethnographic study of a regenerative farming enterprise in rural Southern Patagonia - Fundo Panguilemu - we discover a reciprocal relationship between the enterprise and animals, central to their regenerative efforts. This relationship is formed and actively maintained by the founders through three practices – joint rewilding, ambivalent relationality, and task interdependence. We leverage nature relatedness to conceptualize the relationship between these practices as human-animal mutualism in regenerative work. We advance regenerative entrepreneurship research by revealing novel human-nature interactions formed and fostered by a rural enterprise in the pursuit of local regeneration and expand our understanding of micro-level phenomena in rural entrepreneurship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the influence of overconfidence and misjudgement of merit on the decision to enter a winner-take-all market. Through a lab-in-the-field experiment conducted in Panama's dynamic and diverse entrepreneurial ecosystem, the study addresses a research gap by exploring the interplay between overconfidence, institutional factors, and entrepreneurial activities. The findings confirm the role of overconfidence as a determinant of market entry and reveal that overconfidence primarily empowers individuals already embedded in entrepreneurial net- works, regardless of their destructiveness. These results suggest that in the presence of weak institutions, overconfidence does not promote entrepreneurship but rather motivates those with pre-existing entrepreneurial networks to open new ventures. However, this situation has the potential to exacerbate inequalities, especially if these ventures make only marginal contributions to overall social output. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper investigates the resilience of micro-businesses (MBs) to natural disasters by exploring the impact of two levels of resilience, namely organizational resilience and entrepreneur psychological resilience, on perceived post-disaster business performance (PPDBP). As MBs tend to be entrepreneur-centric, entrepreneur psychological resilience (EPR) can play an important role, interconnected with that of organizational resilience (OR). However, in the extant literature the debate is still open on how OR and EPR relate. We verified a structural model with the aid of Upper Echelons and Imprinting theories, applying a covariance-based technique on data collected through a survey administered to a sample of 213 MBs hit by the 2012 Earthquake in Emilia (Italy). Results revealed that perceived post-disaster business performance is driven by entrepreneur psychological resilience with a mediating role for organizational resilience, in three main areas: robustness, agility and integrity. The study contributes to the literature on resilience and MBs by providing empirical evidence and practical implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is emergent literature that converges from neuroscience and entrepreneurship research, but the definitions and interlinkages are still inconsistent. We conduct a systematic literature review of 167 papers on the interface between neuroscience and entrepreneurship to address this. We observe the literature trends examining the interlinkages between neuroscience and entrepreneurial intention through six antecedents, namely - molecular neuroscience, systems neuroscience, behavioral neuroscience, cognitive neuroscience, social neuroscience, and computational neuroscience. Our findings suggest that entrepreneurial intention impacts entrepreneurial activity through five factors, including (1) opportunity recognition, (2) evaluation and risk-taking, (3) entrepreneurial cognition, (4) entrepreneurial behavior, and (5) entrepreneurial decision-making. From our discussions, the links among the neural factors affecting entrepreneurship are identified, and a research agenda highlighting a pathway for future studies is proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This qualitative, longitudinal study of 12 innovative young New Zealand ventures investigates how individual entrepreneurs develop their venture opportunity amidst emerging rivalry. Two phases are identified: the pursuit of the initial opportunity, and developing it under rivalry. Adopting a sensemaking perspective and a social understanding of rivalry, we explain how entrepreneurs' backgrounds impact opportunity confidence and the construction of rivalry, and reveal three main pathways whereby entrepreneurs develop their venture. First, entrepreneurs with neither start-up experience nor industry knowledge construct rivalry as threatening and narrow their network as opportunity confidence declines. Second, entrepreneurs with industry knowledge construct emerging rivalry as a challenge and strengthen within-industry ties to meet it. Third, entrepreneurs with serial start-up experience remain unfazed by rivalry and may abandon existing networks in favour for new networks. Comparing pathways, the paper makes two main contributions. First, it illustrates a link between entrepreneurs' backgrounds and the construction of rivalry. This construction impacts opportunity confidence. Second, the paper suggests that such changes in opportunity confidence guide decisions about how to embed the venture into social context. Overall, the paper contributes to our understanding of the mechanisms whereby entrepreneurial backgrounds influence developing venture opportunities in competitive settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reviews the literature on entrepreneurship and crises, capturing where we have been and where we are now, and begins to discuss where we might go next. It centres around how we have come to understand the relationship between entrepreneurship and crises through the application of certain crisis definitions, concepts, typologies, the crisis event sequence, methodologies and empirical settings. It also examines how crises affect entrepreneurship and how entrepreneurship affects crises. The article then introduces in some detail the five manuscripts selected for the special issue and the contributions they make towards developing our understanding of the relationship between entrepreneurship and crises. It notes the advances, gaps and opportunities that emerge from the literature review and special issue papers, and concludes with a way forward for developing further our understanding in this area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I argue that through a process of embeddedness in context, a female entrepreneurship network is able to challenge gender structures. I investigate how a female entrepreneurship network is constructed and how they reinforce and possibly challenge existing gender structures. From an ethnographic study, three processes in the female entrepreneurship network were identified: making proper entrepreneurs, building relationships and engaging in change. In the different processes the women involved in the network reinforced gender structures through compliance with a masculine discourse of entrepreneurship, but also challenged gender structures through questioning this discourse. Through becoming embedded in their local community, the women entrepreneurs were able to take charge of the development of the network and challenge gender structures as a result of questioning the masculine discourse of entrepreneurship. This implies an interplay between embeddedness and gender as two separate but dependent processes. Linking together gender and embeddedness elicits a new take on the way female entrepreneurship networks are constructed and how they could advance gender equality within entrepreneurship. Consequently, this paper emphasises a need for further examination of embeddedness within gender and entrepreneurship research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although entrepreneurial practices and processes are evolving and changing globally, models of entrepreneurship remain masculinized, embedded in advanced economies and associated with notions of individual agency, heroism and control. Rarely is defiance considered. In this paper, we explore the defiance practices of displaced women operating in the Jordanian patriarchal economy and society and consider how this enabled their nurturing of entrepreneurship. Indeed, we argue that socially excluded women actually defy their contextual embeddedness through their entrepreneurial activities. In so doing, we respond to calls for research that explores the contextual embeddedness of women's entrepreneurship, and contribute to shifting the focus towards the more silent feminine end of the entrepreneurial process. We consider the defiance of invisible displaced women entrepreneurs operating in the under-researched context of Jordan. Longitudinal, ethnographic investigation revealed the creation of a secret production network led by, and for, displaced women. This paper focuses on the five founders of this network, which they established to mobilize and manage the production of traditional crafts and, by so doing, to defy the stifling limitations imposed by their restrictive contractors, community and family members. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a distinct type of early-stage entrepreneurial support organization, start-up accelerators are theoretically well positioned as a new and burgeoning phenomenon for fostering the process of new venture creation. The rapid expansion and notoriety of these intermediaries combined with a growing list of well-known high growth companies emerging from their programs hints at their potential impact. Yet, the question of whether accelerators work (or not) and to what effect is still at a formative stage. The objective of this paper is to conduct a structured review of what accelerators 'do' and how scholars have chosen to measure performance across various research designs, change variables and multiple levels of analysis. Drawing from program evaluation theory, an integrated entrepreneurial logic model is used to capture and sort variables associated with measuring start up accelerator performance between 2011 and 2021. We make several contributions through our analysis of research designs, linked change variables and thematic areas to provide insight into the advances, gaps, limitations and tensions arising from extant scholarly attempts at SA performance measurement. The developmental impact of SA programs is discussed with methodological, theoretical, and practical implications for documenting progress and future research pathways charted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper engages with the concepts of 'populism' and 'activism' in entrepreneurial storytelling in order to explain how entrepreneurship may be both an individual and a collective endeavour. Through a case study of a moose park, we show how entrepreneurs move back and forth between individualism and collectivism with what seems to be little forethought. Our findings suggest that populism and activism function as a duality that essentially serves two purposes: populism reinforces the entrepreneur stereotype, highlighting the individual entrepreneur's business venture; whilst activism challenges stereotypes, initiating new meaning, and social and ecological value change. Embeddedness appears a necessary condition for both these processes – the social connections in context affect the possibilities to initiate change, whether individualist or collectivist. Thus, we contribute to entrepreneurship as practice by showing how storytelling both strengthens and changes social context; and how storytelling alters depending on the social context, and the different forms of embeddedness in it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The habitat concept is been demonstrated as a crucial environment surrounding startups. The aim of this paper is to examine the differences between startups born in the university and startups born in science parks. Using a multilevel analysis, we compile a unique dataset of 242 Spanish-based technology startups and distinguish between university startups (122) and non-university startups (120). Likewise, demographic profiles and business characteristics are used in the analysis. Consistent with other research, our results indicate that university startups have more opportunities to obtain financial resources and to develop innovations. By contrast, non-university startups involve entrepreneurs with more experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper sets out to better understand the role of ethnic boundary dynamics in immigrant entrepreneurship, in particular in terms of intersections at the boundaries between 'ethnic' and 'mainstream' economies, internal differentiation within ethnic community boundaries, and the socially constructed nature of ethnic boundaries more broadly. To better account for these dynamics, we develop a Barthian perspective on immigrant entrepreneurship, building on and integrating Fredrik Barth's work on entrepreneurship, ethnic boundaries, and spheres of value. A Barthian perspective shifts the analytic focus from the ethnic group to entrepreneurial activities and, by implication, to the ethnic boundary dynamics that these activities generate. We draw on ethnographic research conducted among immigrant Mennonite entrepreneurs in Belize, and identify three boundary dynamics among the Mennonites: bridging the boundary between Mennonite ethnicity and the wider Belizean society, stretching the boundaries of individual Mennonite communities, and allying across the boundaries between Mennonite communities. In developing a Barthian perspective, the contribution of our paper lies in developing a comprehensive framework for understanding the role of ethnic boundary dynamics in immigrant entrepreneurship, thereby also responding to calls for more micro-processual approaches to understanding the 'mixed embeddedness' of immigrant entrepreneurs in their ethnic community and the wider society contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to extend the theoretical foundations of entrepreneurship education by integrating several of the most relevant lessons from Anderson's contribution into current conceptualizations. We identify three main dimensions of Anderson's work useful for our purpose: conceptualization of entrepreneurship; network and social capital as mechanisms to explain entrepreneurship as a socially embedded phenomenon; and epistemological and methodological reflection. These dimensions enrich the debate on the strategic dimensions targeting, connecting and reflecting suggested to advance the field of entrepreneurship education. We highlight important implications that help us reflect on the value of entrepreneurship education by emphasizing the role of the social dimension in teaching entrepreneurship, the importance of understanding entrepreneurship as a complex phenomenon to identify goals and more specifically tailor pedagogy, and the need to question methods of inquiry as the field evolves and expands its area of investigation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article, in an act of transmutation or world-making, replaces a workshop that was envisioned between one of the authors and Alistair Anderson. It takes the form of a dialog with one of his main co-authors to retrospectively and analytically explore the collective work of Alistair on 'embeddedness'. We find that Alistair initiated a scholarly community of practice on a socialized view of entrepreneurship ('entrepreneuring'), the essence of which can be captured through the notion of embeddedness. We describe the emergence of this community, its key production phases, and highlight the main features and insights of its approach, which was never theorized as such. The article also presents possible theoretical extensions of this research by opening several research doors for future work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how changes to the institutional environment in a crisis-hit economy impact on entrepreneurial activity. Through a case study of Greece, the paper demonstrates how the institutional environment has changed in light of the crisis and the resultant response of entrepreneurs to these changes. Drawing on in-depth interviews with entrepreneurs, the findings suggest that changes to institutions have served to limit entrepreneurial activity rather than enhance it, and that this has worsened in the midst of the crisis. We argue that this will detrimentally impact Greece's ability to navigate out of the crisis and regain competitiveness in the longer term. The paper concludes by offering a number of theoretical and policy implications which are focused on improving institutional environments so that entrepreneurship can play an appropriate role in recovering from economic crises. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The paper examines the influence of the Triple Helix system of university-industry-government collaboration on regional entrepreneurship in China. Utilizing proprietary survey data collected from industrial firms, academic institutions, and government agencies in five representative Chinese regions, the paper finds that interactions within the three spheres of the Triple Helix system in terms of trilateral collaboration, network relationship, and complementary synergies all have positive influences on regional entrepreneurship in China by shaping local entrepreneurial environment and fostering entrepreneurship activities. The paper also reveals significant regional differences in the functioning of the Triple Helix system. Specifically, the roles of trilateral collaboration and network relationship are more salient in developing regions, while complementary synergies are more effective in developed regions. This study contributes to the burgeoning literature on national and regional innovation systems by emphasizing the multifaceted effect of university-industry-government collaboration on promoting regional entrepreneurship. It also highlights the role of regional institutional context in affecting innovation and entrepreneurship processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we conceptualize markets for underserved communities as being constituted by local institutions that reflect the modalities of these individual's lives. Using data on the activities that four social ventures across India, Bangladesh and Cambodia have undertaken to craft new markets for their clean energy solutions, we highlight how these actors incorporate their technologies within native material understandings, develop transaction systems consistent with resident consumption practices and entrench their organizations into the existing infrastructure. We term these processes indigenizing, microprovisioning and codeveloping, respectively. In meshing local context as part of their market crafting efforts, these ventures seed micro-entrepreneurship activity, generate employment for locals as well as improve standards of living within the community through the provision of productivity enhancing products and services. Our findings highlight the significance of engaging with local institutions as part of market crafting efforts in these scenarios. This paper offers insights that contribute to the sociology of markets, and poverty reduction via entrepreneurship literatures as well as have important practical and policy implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Low-income entrepreneurs operating in resource-scarce settings are typically referred to as subsistence entrepreneurs – informal, operating on a small scale, and selling products developed and produced by others. This study establishes the notion of a unique category of low-income entrepreneurs who have developed, commercialised, and scaled innovations and are self-employed by choice. Further, the paper investigates the scaling process of these innovative grassroots entrepreneurs. The sample consists of four grassroots entrepreneurs from India who founded an enterprise to sell their self-developed innovations. The study follows the grounded theory approach, which is suitable for the exploration of complex questions in unusual settings. The theoretical lens used in this study is entrepreneurial bricolage since the interest of the study lies in understanding action and the usage of existing resources. The contribution of the paper is twofold. First, it contributes to the literature on low-income entrepreneurship by bolstering the theoretical archetype of grassroots entrepreneurs and developing a process model for their scaling process. Second, the study contributes to the literature on bricolage by introducing the notion of grassroots bricolage as a behaviour to utilise and combine both locally available contacts and a broader network as resources in novel ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contemporary research has demonstrated that entrepreneurship is a fundamentally contextualized phenomenon and unfolds differently in different contexts. Despite the extensive coverage of the importance of embeddedness for entrepreneurial activities, the research predominantly relies on somewhat static, single layered, and binary notions of embeddedness. We argue that there is a strong need for studies that problematize embeddedness and the relationship between entrepreneur and context. This call for papers, thus invites contributions that explore embeddedness as dynamic, processual and multi-layered, as well as elaborate on the paradoxes of embeddedness? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

SMEs make a major contribution to the economy of cities and places. The relationship between firms and place is increasingly explained through the application of city-based externality models. Such explanations have limited validity in a number of contexts. One of these is in the economies of small- and medium-sized towns and communities (SMST). Whilst convention has sought to apply core-periphery explanations to the functioning of firms within SMSTs, the economies of SMSTs and entrepreneurial processes of SME embedding, adaptation and survival in such places are more complex. This paper explores these entrepreneurial processes in the context of manufacturing firms in five SMSTs in the West Midlands, UK. The paper uses interview data to understand the relationships between SMEs and place through the development of successive and evolving linked enterprise structures. Through these linked enterprise structures, SMEs engage in a process of adaptive embeddedness, resulting in new resource configurations through fluid iterations of structural, emotional, and circumstantial embeddedness. This paper is the first to identify and explore these different forms of embeddedness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In academia as well as in policy circles, entrepreneurial activities are placed at the focal point for regional development. However, geographical factors such as urbanization and peripherality are often neglected in this strand of research despite the increasing need for place-specific policies. The aim of this paper is therefore to analyse how start-up rates vary across municipalities in Sweden 2002–2012 by focussing on spatial differences of human capital, social capital, entrepreneurial culture and industrial specialization. Our multilevel models show how the degree of rurality and peripherality, respectively, moderates the role of different regional resources. The paper concludes by suggesting the formulation of separate policies considering urban, rural and more peripheral regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores how institutional contexts and digital technologies influence women's digital entrepreneurship and emancipation potential in the conflict-laden, Arab country-specific context of Palestine. Drawing on insights from Institutional Theory and emancipation literature, we capitalize on in-depth, semi-structured online interviews with Palestinian women entrepreneurs. Accordingly, we present empirical evidence demonstrating that while digital technologies enabled Palestinian women to launch their enterprises, the unsupportive institutional contexts confined them to home-based, feminine enterprises and subjected them to a toll of additional challenges, health issues and hostility. Our findings challenge the claim that digital entrepreneurship emancipates women by showcasing the context-specific nature of emancipation. This paper advances entrepreneurship research by demonstrating how Arab women's digital entrepreneurship unfolds at the intersection between emancipatory enablers and unique, conflict-laden regulatory, normative, and cultural-cognitive institutional pillars. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aesthetics is quintessential for entrepreneurial practice and theory. Specifically, we argue that aesthetics provides a more sophisticated understanding of the embeddedness of cultural and artistic entrepreneurship (CAE). This paper is based on an aesthetic ethnography of entrepreneurial organizations in the music sector in Brazil. Our findings generate a conceptualization of aesthetic embeddedness, explaining how CAE is embedded in culture through three practices (crossing, syncretic and valuing). Crossing practices are aesthetic contagions that generate exchange. Syncretic practices are harmonizations between different elements that create coexistences during aesthetic product creation. Valuing practices are aesthetic negotiations that occur between entrepreneurs and stakeholders. As an outcome of the three practices, we discuss how aesthetic knowledge deriving from aesthetic embeddedness can be mobilized as aesthetic capital, value and innovation in entrepreneurial practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Promoting high growth firms (HGFs) has become a strong fixation within enterprise policy. This is a debate article seeking to examine and challenge the mythology perpetuated by policy makers and embedded within high growth entrepreneurship policy frameworks. Within the article we argue that a number of distinctive ‘myths’ have become deeply embedded within these policy frameworks. Such myths have been built on misconceived preconceptions of HGFs, which has resulted in policy-makers taking a myopic view of these firms. A key aim of the paper is to highlight how false perceptions of HGFs translate into inappropriate policy interventions. The paper challenges some of the most commonly held myths about these firms (that they are predominantly young, small, high-tech, VC-backed, university spin-outs, who grow in an orderly organic fashion, operating similarly irrespective of location) and identifies a clear mismatch between how policy makers perceive HGFs and what they actually look like in reality. Suggestions for the design of future policy approaches are forwarded. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Responding to calls for research that stresses the importance of embeddedness in entrepreneurship research, this paper examines the relationship between the spatial context and the social embeddedness in shaping and influencing women's entrepreneurial behaviour. A particular focus is placed on gender norms, through exploring how embeddedness is gendered and that the gender norms of the context in which women entrepreneurs are and were located can constrain and/or enable their entrepreneurial actions. Furthermore, knowledge about different spatial contexts means that women can orient themselves to different gender norms and entrepreneurial behaviours. This study draws on 27 in-depth, semi-structured interviews with Saudi women entrepreneurs operating businesses within or beyond conservative, patriarchal contexts which feature different gender norms (enforced or relaxed). The findings show that when remaining within or moving between contexts, individuals have the potential to embed themselves to very different extents – through processes of over-embedding, reduce-embedding and re-mbedding – reflecting the options available for entrepreneurial action-taking and access to resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Forced displacement drastically changes the nature of refugees' connection to their home countries and requires them to build new ties to their host countries. While refugees undergo the dynamic transformation of their embeddedness after arriving in host countries, previous studies on refugee entrepreneurship have not sufficiently examined the dynamic and procedural nature of refugees' embeddedness and its influence on their entrepreneurial activities. This study seeks to understand how the process of embedding influences refugees' resource mobilization in their entrepreneurial activities. Based on 20 interviews with refugee entrepreneurs in Germany, this study revealed that forced detachment from home-country contexts led to a loss of certain resources while simultaneously creating opportunities for refugees to develop resources by building new connections. This study challenges the conventional structural deterministic approach of mixed embeddedness and theorizes disembedding and re-embedding processes of refugee entrepreneurs. The findings suggest that these processes require a cognitive process on the part of entrepreneurial agents to become aware of a loss of resources and to reinterpret the value of their resources. Furthermore, this paper discusses how these processes constrain and enable refugees' access to resources. The findings offer implications for policymakers of refugee-hosting countries and refugee support organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors call for the submission of papers relating to issues and challenges posed by enterprise and entrepreneurship in the Caribbean region.

This paper looks at the relation between the R&D knowledge base of city-agglomerations and knowledge sourcing in product innovative small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The small open Belgian economy is used as a test case. The characteristics of the city-agglomeration's R&D knowledge are posited to be instrumental for SMEs' reliance on particular sources of information for innovation. The R&D knowledge base is studied as a multidimensional concept consisting of R&D capacity, R&D specialization and R&D diversification. A representative sample of product innovative SMEs drawn from two waves of the Community Innovation Survey between 2008 and 2012 reveals that a strong R&D capacity at city-agglomeration level favours private external information sources for innovation, but has no influence on the likelihood to rely on public sources for innovation. Accordance between specialization of the private R&D knowledge base and the SME's activities positively influences the use of clients as information sources for innovation, whereas under these circumstances supplier responsiveness turns out to be less frequently solicited for. A more diversified private R&D environment reduces the reliance on universities and public research organizations as information sources for innovation. A public R&D knowledge base specialized in natural sciences or engineering favours information sources from universities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the family may serve as a resource for entrepreneurs, it has been studied separately in different disciplines. In this paper, we combine the arguments on familial relationships (family firm literature) and skill variety (regional learning literature) to analyse how different forms of entrepreneurial family relationships (co-occurrences) facilitate firm performance, and how familial relationships moderate the effects of skill variety on firm performance. Using longitudinal data (2002–2012) on a sample of privately owned firms with up to 50 employees with matched information on all employees, our results show that entrepreneur–children relationship is the dominant dyad familial relationship in family firms. The fixed effects estimates demonstrate that entrepreneurial family relationships do affect firm performance but that this is dependent on the type of familial relationship. Children and spouses show a positive relationship with firm performance while siblings of the entrepreneur show no significant relationship with performance. The estimates further indicate that familial relationships involving spouses abate the negative effects of having too similar or too different types of skills. The paper thus contributes to new knowledge regarding not only whether family relationships matter for performance, but also in what way they matter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the conditions under which urban entrepreneurship can develop through art-based interventions. Drawing on two contrasting case studies (Civic City in France, Fieris Fééries in Belgium) and taking actor-network theory (ANT) as a starting analytical point, we outline the tensions involved in the implementation process of such interventions. We focus on the capacity of urban entrepreneurs to engage different relevant stakeholders (artists, local government and citizens), establish connections between disconnected worlds that are likely to challenge existing institutional structures and eventually create novelty. We identify these actors as 'translators'. The paper shows that when urban entrepreneurs play an active translation role consistently over time, art-based interventions can have a substantial impact on urban regeneration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the influence of entrepreneurs' characteristics on innovation in regions with different levels of development. By doing so, this work seeks to contribute to a better understanding of the role of entrepreneurs in the functioning and performance of regional innovation systems. The influence of entrepreneurs' personal characteristics and their perceptions of the business environment on firm innovation are investigated via a survey of companies carried out in six Spanish regions. The results allow the identifying of significant differences in the main determinants of innovation in the high-income regions and low-income regions studied. Entrepreneurs' generalized trust stimulates innovation only in high-income regions, where necessity motivation has also a negative effect on innovation. Growth ambition seems to play a highly positive role only in the case of low-income regions. Human capital and infrastructure are perceived by the entrepreneurs as the main bottlenecks for innovation in low-income regions, whereas in the case of high-income regions the legal, fiscal and financial systems are considered the key institutional barriers. These differences in the entrepreneurial factor should be taken into account in order to design and implement policies to stimulate and foster innovation in different regional contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Entrepreneurship as a pseudo-discipline has matured to the point where it has begun to question the myths which have developed around it.  As a panacea for the development ills of capitalism, studies have spanned various ideological and methodological viewpoints.  Spatially, entrepreneurship studies have grown to include countries of the Global South and emerging economies, particularly those of Eastern Europe.  This special issue extends this reach to the small developing states of the Caribbean and particularly those with a British colonial legacy rooted in the remnants of the plantation economy.  The commencement of political independence in the 1960s has not resulted in any significant economic independence for the region as it remains dependent on foreign investment, whilst its key sectors remain subject to the volatility of the economies of the global north.  The papers in this special issue identify domestic and enterprise level constraints to the development of entrepreneurship in the region.  This Introduction places these, mostly micro-level studies, in a wider context, concluding that policy-makers need to better understand the concept of entrepreneurship and its role in achieving developmental goals. Our challenging recommendation is that those formulating and delivering these policies and practices should do so with an entrepreneurial mind-set. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent studies on the determinants of entrepreneurship have shown that later-born children are more likely to become entrepreneurs. However, research has not addressed the questions of how birth order influences entrepreneurship. Based on the Chinese context, we propose two competing hypotheses to explore the potential mechanisms (risk taking vs. educational attainment) that explain the effect of birth order on entrepreneurship. We further argue that the effect of birth order on entrepreneurship is moderated by birth spacing and family financial status. Using data from the 2008 and 2013 Chinese Household Income Project, we find that in the case of China the impacts of birth order on two types of entrepreneurship (i.e. solo entrepreneurship and employer entrepreneurship) are overall positive, which implies that the risk-taking mechanism is more dominant than the educational attainment mechanism. Birth order shows a more pronounced impact for solo entrepreneurship but a weak impact for employer entrepreneurship. We also find that the positive birth-order effect on entrepreneurship is more evident in families with low financial status. Overall, this paper casts light on how birth order shapes the propensity for entrepreneurship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How we understand entrepreneurship is a function of the stories we tell. This article uses insights from process theory to explore the ways in which an entrepreneur can employ a story to mobilize others to shed conflicting viewpoints to converge with the abstract. In this story, regulation as a reification of past procedures did not fully account for organizational realities of mailroom inspections conducted by the military post office, so an appeal to foundational values was adopted to alter the shared vision of future potentiality and overcome bureaucratic barriers through the creation of adhocracies. As a result of overcoming interorganizational boundaries, a technocrat became an entrepreneur by changing the view of stakeholders from a fixed audience to active co-authors during the spawning of adhocracies. The creation of adhocracies in this story is explored through an autoethnographic layered account, which is a storytelling approach that mirrors the co-construction of the narratives found within this paper’s vignettes. The understanding of entrepreneurship provided in this paper challenges commonly held assumptions of entrepreneurship, in addition to corporate, organizational and public service entrepreneurship, as well as the methods and writing styles to explore these concepts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As entrepreneurship researchers compete to have their work published and universities strive to attract the best entrepreneurship scholars, it is appropriate to examine what makes entrepreneurship research interesting. Interesting studies are usually defined as well-crafted and well-written studies that challenge established knowledge, and produce new theories and findings. This paper examines entrepreneurship scholars’ views on the characteristics of interesting entrepreneurship research by means of a qualitative approach. Eight focus group interviews comprising junior and senior entrepreneurship scholars were conducted. A core finding is that interesting studies must be relevant to practice. However, the institutionalization of entrepreneurship as an academic field has favoured rigour at the cost of relevance, leading to scholars’ frustration with the rigour–relevance gap. In this paper, we analyse various dimensions of interestingness and reflect on strategies for overcoming the rigour–relevance gap, with particular focus on the creation of applicative knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The primary objective of this paper is to demonstrate how regional innovation system theory may be translated into manageable micro-level methods with the potential for strengthening the productive dynamics of a regional innovation system. The paper meets this objective by presenting network-based innovation brokering (NBIB), a practical method designed using insights from regional innovation system theory and trust theory. Five cases from two Norwegian regional innovation networks show that in addition to knowledge development and diffusion, NBIB strengthened collaborative attitude and trust between members of the regional innovation system. Moreover, it served as an arena for entrepreneurial experimentation, resulting in projects combining two modes of innovation; the Science, Technology and Innovation mode and the Doing, Using and Interaction mode. The method, thus, may be viewed as a useful addition to the inventory of methods used to stimulate innovation in regional innovation systems (RISs). On a more general level, the paper represents a call to the community of innovation researchers and practitioners to give a higher priority to the question of how to better realize the pragmatic potential of RIS-theory. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]