Entrepreneurs typically live with the ever present threat of business failure arising from limited financial resources and aggressive competition in the marketplace. Under these circumstances, conflicting priorities arise and the entrepreneur is thus faced with certain dilemmas. In seeking to...

For obvious reasons, researchers and policy-makers alike have an interest in assessing the performance of small firms as well as in understanding the factors that contribute to it. Attaining such knowledge is not a trivial undertaking. Researchers have pointed out that the performance of small...

The key ideas behind the empirical study of 'nascent entrepreneurs'—or 'firms in gestation'—are the following: First, the research aims to identify a statistically representative sample of on-going venture start-up efforts. Second, these start-up efforts are subsequently followed over time...

The purpose of this paper is to integrate and expand on some key insights from recent conceptual and empirical work on the entrepreneurial process. After first defining the key term “entrepreneurship,‿ the paper moves on to deepen the conceptualization of the entrepreneurial process and its...

There is progress in entrepreneurship research. Important works in entrepreneurship increasingly appear in highly respected, mainstream journals (see Busenitz et al., forthcoming; Davidsson, Low, & Wright, 2001). There is conceptual development that attracts attention (e.g. Shane & Venkataraman,...

This paper makes two types of contributions to research on new venture teams. First, we examine previously neglected aspects of team composition, such as homogeneity and heterogeneity in terms of resource provision and prior start-up experience. Second, we attempt to reconcile conflicting...

Business ventures are started by individuals and teams with very different backgrounds and motivations, pursuing business ideas of very variable inherent quality in environments that also show tremendous variability. As a result it is difficult to arrive at broadly valid generalizations, and...

As one of the participants of the first RENT conference in 1987, and one of those who have stayed in this field of research, I was invited to deliver a keynote address at the 20th anniversary in December, 2006. This short chapter is largely based on that keynote address. What will follow are...

The aim of this paper is to provide a better understanding of the evolution of small firm performance. We do so by studying performance changes on a two dimensional "growth– profitability performance space". It is well established that both growth and profitability are important dimensions of...

Principal topic: Effectuation theory suggests that entrepreneurs develop their new ventures in an iterative way by selecting possibilities through flexibility and interactions with the market; a focus on affordability of loss rather than maximal return on the capital invested, and the...