A Project-Based View of Entrepreneurship : Towards Action-Orientation, Seriality and Collectivity

Although entrepreneurship is generally defined withreference to single individuals engaged in the creation of enterprise startups,researchers should take a project-based view of entrepreneurship.Thisapproach requires researchers to recognize that entrepreneurship may be studiedin terms of people performing entrepreneurial acts (including, but not limitedto, enterprise startups), that entrepreneurial acts take place in seriesthroughout individuals' lives, and that entrepreneurial acts are temporary andinvolve networks of actors. Examples are offered from recent empirical studiesof three creative people who have performed various entrepreneurial acts duringtheir lives. These studies reveal that entrepreneurial behaviors appear in all sectors ofsociety, that the entrepreneur's career comprises a series of temporaryentrepreneurial acts, and that projects are as much the result of individualaction as they are of social interaction.The directions in which theproject-based view is likely to take entrepreneurship theory and researchinvolve the expansion of entrepreneurial identity to include a diversity ofindividuals and ventures, as well as the change in research focus from thesingle individual's actions to recurring social interactions.Theproject-based view promises to increase researchers' understanding of allentrepreneurial activities in society. (SAA)