Entrepreneurship Trajectories: Entrepreneurial Opportunities, Business Models, and Firm Performance 1st Edition Diego Matricano PDF Download
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Entrepreneurship Trajectories: Entrepreneurial
Opportunities, Business Models, and Firm Performance 1st
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Diego Matricano
Università degli Studi della Campania “L. Vanvitelli”
Capua (CE), Italy
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Notices
Knowledge and best practice in this field are constantly changing. As new research and experience broaden our
understanding, changes in research methods, professional practices, or medical treatment may become
necessary.
Practitioners and researchers must always rely on their own experience and knowledge in evaluating and using
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material herein.
ISBN: 978-0-12-818650-3
To Matteo,
my beloved nephew,
who gave a new and positive
meaning to all my life
This page intentionally left blank
Contents
Acknowledgments ix
4 Entrepreneurial opportunities 83
4.1 The identification of entrepreneurial opportunities 83
4.2 The neoclassical approach 86
4.3 The Austrian approach 90
4.4 The contemporary approach 96
4.5 Reflections on the identification of entrepreneurial opportunities 100
4.6 Concluding remarks 102
References 104
Further reading 108
7 Conclusion 145
Index 147
Acknowledgments
The writing of this volume was possible due to the contribution and support of
many people.
A special thanks goes to Prof. Mario Sorrentino with whom I have had the honor
of collaborating for several years. For me, the daily comparison with him was a rea-
son for scientific growth and human enrichment.
I would like to thank Prof. Francesco Izzo, Director of the Department
of Management (located in Capua) of Università degli Studi della Campania
“L. Vanvitelli.” I would also like to thank all the professors of the department who
gave me the opportunity to improve my studies and myself over the years.
An individual thanks goes to Prof. Piero Formica and to all the scholars I met
during my stay at Jönköping International Business School (Jönköping, Sweden).
With them I shared my first international research experience.
I would like to express my gratitude to Prof. Ian MacMillan, Director of the
Snider Entrepreneurial Research Center of the Wharton School of the University
of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, United States). During my stay in the United States,
I had the opportunity to explore different aspects related to the theme of
entrepreneurship.
I would like to thank Prof. Louis Marino, from Culverhouse College of Business
at the University of Alabama, for his availability and his continuous stimuli about
the study of entrepreneurship.
A special thanks goes to all those—my parents first of all, and also all my family
and my friends—who have always and unconditionally supported me. In particular,
I would like to thank Daria and Simone, who unknowingly taught me to see every-
thing from the right perspective, and Matteo, who gave a new and positive meaning
to my life.
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Framing the entrepreneurship
phenomenon 1
1.1 The state-of-the-art of entrepreneurship studies
Since its origins,1 and despite a huge number of trials, the field of entrepreneurship
has never been defined in a univocal way. Over the years, in fact, many overlapping
and fuzzy terms and concepts have been used in order to point out, support, criti-
cize, modify, or deny the essence of entrepreneurship. Not surprisingly, several
reviews proposed in reference to entrepreneurship (Gartner, 1990; Shane, 2000;
Shane and Venkataraman, 2000; Westhead and Wright, 2000; Audretsch, 2002,
2003; Acs and Audretsch, 2003; Casson, 2003; Sciascia and De Vita, 2004;
Simpeh, 2011; Audretsch et al., 2015; Matricano, 2015; Kuratko and Morris, 2018)
reach the same conclusions:
G
Several research paths can be used to approach the study of entrepreneurship;
G
Several theoretical frameworks can be used to investigate entrepreneurship;
G
Several empirical tests can be used to verify the intensity of entrepreneurship; and
G
Scholars mainly do not agree on any of the achieved results and—thus—still debate about
them.
1
As a practice, origins of entrepreneurship date back to 1911 when Schumpeter defined the characteris-
tics of entrepreneurs. According to the Schumpeterian definition, entrepreneurs are individuals who can
exploit market opportunity through technical and/or organizational innovation. As a matter of fact, ori-
gins of entrepreneurship should date back to 1755 when Cantillon used—for the first time ever—the
word “entrepreneur” to describe an individual that buys some inputs at a fixed price, transforms inputs
into outputs and sells the outputs at a not-fixed price. According to Cantillon’s view, entrepreneurs bear
the risk related to the prices of acquiring inputs and selling outputs. This is the main characteristic that
distinguishes the entrepreneurs (who act like arbitragers) from capitalist (landowners) and wage-
workers (hirelings). In 1803 Say recalls the word “entrepreneur” proposed by Cantillon but his defini-
tion is quite different. According to Say, in fact, entrepreneurs start productive processes by mixing sev-
eral resources (labor, capital, and land). With no apparent reason, the sporadic definitions of
entrepreneurs proposed by Cantillon (1755) and Say (1803) did not get enough interest by entrepreneur-
ship and economics scholars. It was just in 1911, thanks to Schumpeter, that “entrepreneur” and “entre-
preneurship” become very common and largely discussed topics of research.
Entrepreneurship Trajectories. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-818650-3.00001-5
© 2020 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
2 Entrepreneurship Trajectories
most critical aspect that can be ascribed to entrepreneurship seems to relate to the
fact that some topics of research are wrongly included in the field of entrepreneur-
ship research. Consequently, the pertinence of a topic to a research area needs to be
evaluated in a very accurate way. Even if entrepreneurship scholars largely agree
on the above assumption and embrace it, this error is not easy to fix. In other words,
assuring that a topic of research falls within the body of entrepreneurship research
is not an effortless task.2
Beyond evidence that shows if a topic is related to entrepreneurship studies,
there is another critical aspect that might emerge. This aspect deals with the
number of research topics that—over time—have been proposed and affirmed in
the entrepreneurship field. In reference to this point, it is not possible to forget
Shane and Venkataraman’s (2000, p. 217) statement, according to which “entre-
preneurship has become a broad label under which a hodgepodge of research is
housed.”
Scholars clearly underline that entrepreneurship encompasses several areas of
research that might confuse—rather than support—any scholars who approach
entrepreneurship studies. The fact that several areas of research coexist in the entre-
preneurship field and that—on the other hand—the field itself is highly fragmented
might cause some difficulties in properly framing entrepreneurship. In fact, if sev-
eral lenses can be used to investigate the same phenomenon in practice, then it may
be possible that none of them are correctly used, as each might miss some relevant
aspects. Thus this point cannot be underestimated when carrying out entrepreneurial
studies.
Due to the abovementioned controversial aspects of the discipline and its related
uncertain results, it seems appropriate to recall some dedicated contributions at this
point in order to try to capture the essence of entrepreneurship.
3
Schumpeter (1911) clearly expresses this concept when he talks about “creative destruction.”
4
Kirzner writes: “pure entrepreneur whose entire role arises out of his alertness to hitherto unnoticed
opportunities” (1973, p. 39).
4 Entrepreneurship Trajectories
contexts (Covin and Slevin, 1989; Covin and Covin, 1990; Miles et al., 1993;
Zahra, 1993; Ucbasaran et al., 2001; Welter, 2011).
The last approach adopted by entrepreneurship scholars is known as the rela-
tional approach. In this case, scholars—beginning with Granovetter’s contribution
(1985)—pay attention to entrepreneurial networks (Birley, 1985; Aldrich and
Zimmer, 1986; Johannisson, 1986, 1988; Starr and MacMillan, 1990). In particular,
attention is focused toward subjects involved in these networks (Scott, 1991; Greve,
1995; Johannisson, 1998) and toward the ties between them (Birley, 1985; Burt,
1992, 2000; Podolny and Baron, 1997; Ahuja, 2000). The main topics of research
interest for each of the four approaches are summarized in Table 1.1.
These four approaches5 (that stand for a macro level of analysis) and the vari-
ables considered in each (micro level of analysis) can give an overview of all the
research paths addressed by entrepreneurship scholars, however, at the same time,
they do not assist with the understanding of what can and cannot be included in the
entrepreneurship research field.6 For this reason, a different criterion on the basis of
the review needs to be evoked.
In particular, a classification of the main research themes proposed in reference
to entrepreneurship studies (that can stand for a meso level of analysis) seems more
useful than a classification of the approaches themselves (teleological, psychologi-
cal, contextual, and relational) and of the variables to be considered (a macro and a
micro level of analysis, respectively).
Through a web-based survey, Landström and Harirchi (2018) investigated the
dimensions of research that entrepreneurship scholars perceive as interesting.
According to the descriptive statistics reported in their contribution, most of the
entrepreneurship scholars (74% out of 915 respondents) perceive some topics and
subjects—related mainly to entrepreneurial intentions, effectuation, or entrepreneur-
ial finance—as interesting. Few scholars, however, perceive aspects related to
methodology (12.7%), to relevance—that is, practical studies (11.8%)—and to the
context (10.3%) as interesting. This confirms that a focus on the main themes of
research is necessary.
In this vein, Audretsch et al. (2015, p. 704) declare that “the word entrepreneur-
ship implies many different things: innovation, ideas, creativity, new venture devel-
opment, discovery, and economic growth.” According to the scholars, all these
topics of research have been used to reconcile the theoretical aspects with the prac-
tical ones that emerge when studying entrepreneurship.
Similarly, Welter et al. (2017) list a set of dichotomies that can be useful for
describing entrepreneurship, which they define as “a messy phenomenon” (p. 314).
These dichotomies range from opportunity versus necessity entrepreneurship to for-
mal versus informal entrepreneurship, from male versus female entrepreneurs to
5
For a more in-depth review of the four approaches and of the topics of research included in each of
them see Matricano (2015).
6
The main limitation of the above review is related to the level of analysis that moves from macro
(when talking about the four approaches) to micro (when listing the specific considered variables).
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