Methodological Approaches to Entrepreneurship: Past research and Suggestions for the Future

This journal aims at developing and sharing some ideas on methodological development in entrepreneurship research, based on the author?s experience from two decades of empirical work in this area. As there is no shortage of ideas in the literature as regards what "entrepreneurship" is, and what entrepreneurship research should study, it may be useful to first set the stage on these issues. In order to facilitate cumulative knowledge building and enhance the legitimacy of entrepreneurship as a scholarly domain it is important that the phenomenon called "entrepreneurship" be defined as unambiguously as possible. The particular view embraced by the author regards entrepreneurship as "the creation of new [to the market] economic activity". This includes launching new products or services, new business models, radically changed price/value relationships, or entering the market as new competitor with essentially imitative products or services. Continues...