This handbook is the first attempt to discuss and advance entrepreneurship field from multi-disciplinary perspectives. The idea for the handbook has arisen out of questions we were interested in pursuing, namely what is going on in a range of other fields, such as neuroscience, technology, education, law, transmedia, philosophy, and theology, and how these fields may inform current, and, equally important, future developments of the entrepreneurship field. Classically, handbooks on entrepreneurship have adopted a traditional approach, namely taking stock of the entrepreneurship field and identifying ways to advance it based on the findings emerged from the review of the extant entrepreneurship literature. In such handbooks, classical questions entrepreneurship scholars pursue are what is going on in the entrepreneurship field, what are the gaps, and what future research directions could be identified.
This handbook is the first to collect original chapters on multiple perspectives employing the novel approach described earlier all aimed at discovering new, fresh inter-, cross-, and multi-disciplinary ideas, concepts, theories, and insights to advance the entrepreneurship field in the years to come. We have invited original contributions from the authors—academics, practitioners, policymakers—who are experts in their own fields, to provide state-of-the -art insights from their own disciplines and explore how these insights might help generate new theories and concepts, new questions for policy debates, as well as new areas for entrepreneurship research.
It is not, however, the purpose of the handbook to consider all possible perspectives that could inform and enhance entrepreneurship research domain. Rather, we consider the collection of original chapters in this handbook as a catalyst for an inter-, cross-, and multi-disciplinary dialogue between myriad of perspectives from humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, medical sciences, and technology and production sciences, and entrepreneurship.
Following the approach discussed earlier, we have structured the handbook in four major sections: Micro, Meso, Macro, and Meta, and received twenty-two original, state-of-the-art contributions from scholars worldwide. In the Micro section, there are four chapters on psychology, cognitive neuroscience, framing, and creativity perspectives on entrepreneurship. In Meso section, there are six chapters on business model, organizational, family, technology development, process, and exit perspectives on entrepreneurship. In Macro section, there are seven chapters on national system, business systems, education, international law, transmedia, migration, and ecosystems perspectives on entrepreneurship. In Meta section, there are five chapters on human systems, sociology of knowledge, ethics, theological and philosophical perspectives on entrepreneurship.
Micro-level
In their chapter ‘Psychology Perspective on Entrepreneurship’, Annemarie Østergaard, Susana C. Santos, and Sílvia Fernandes Costa suggest advancing entrepreneurship research through the lenses of well-being theories by focusing on studying the quality of life of entrepreneurs. These authors maintain that entrepreneurship is increasingly perceived as a lifestyle and underscore the importance of understanding how entrepreneurial activities influence and are influenced by the entrepreneurs’ well-being. Building on the eudaimonic and hedonic dimensions of well-being, Østergaard et al. put forward a general framework to inspire future research and practice in entrepreneurship grounded on the psychological theory of well -being. According to Østergaard et al. integrating theories of well-being from psychology into entrepreneurship research is necessary to understand the impact of entrepreneurship on individuals’ mental health, promote quality of life patterns, understand the motivations underlying entrepreneurial behavior, and further understanding of how entrepreneurs change their environment, discover opportunities, and advance societies in innovative ways.
In ‘Cognitive Neuroscience Perspective on Entrepreneurship’, Jeanne S. Bentzen explores how cognitive neuroscience and cognitive neuropsychology can contribute to the development of the field of entrepreneurship and specifically the understanding of what influences an individual’s propensity to become an entrepreneur. Bentzen builds on research in cognitive neuroscience on autobiographical memories, defined as memories of past events from one’s own life, and their role in decision-making, as an interesting perspective with potential for developing the neuroentrepreneurship approach. She maintains that autobiographical memories are used not only to recall past events but also to imagine, simulate, and predict future events. Bentzen also discusses methodological challenges in studying autobiographical memories, and identifies interesting future research directions in memory-related areas in cognitive neuroscience, for example, in areas such as priming, procedural learning, and making of an entrepreneur.
In their chapter ‘Framing Perspective on Entrepreneurship’, Ade Mabogunje, Poul Kyvsgaard Hansen, and Pekka Berg introduce framing as the ability to capture a problem in a multi-disciplinary frame, enabling the involved people to explore and communicate the current state of a problem. Mabogunje et al. argue that verbal or visual expressions of the perception of a given problem or opportunity give rise to uncertainties that tend to persist. Their chapter is centered around a proposition that views the limitations of framing the problems and opportunities as a significant barrier when it comes to handling or dealing with uncertainties . As entrepreneurial processes imply ambiguity and complexity, they necessitate multiple framing processes both to explore and to communicate findings and dilemmas in a multi-disciplinary frame that does combine both linguistic and nonlinguistic elements. Mabogunje et al. suggest a number of enablers such as framing and reframing, improvisation and intuition, metaphors, and mixed medias aimed at enhancing the ability to express the deeper meaning behind specific words, symbols, or physical models.
The chapter ‘Creativity Perspective on Entrepreneurship’ by Chaoying Tang, Christian Byrge, and Jizhong Zhou discusses the role of creativity training for entrepreneurship education and matters of concern in integrating creativity training in entrepreneurship education. It defines creativity in terms of the ability and belief to produce and elaborate diversified and original ideas and identifies a number of creativity training perspectives to help entrepreneurship education gain a stronger focus on creative thinking skills and the development hereof. Tang et al. view creativity as a key competency of entrepreneurship being closely related to the abilities to recognize commercial opportunities, generate new business models, and build the skills to act upon them. They suggest exploring the relation between creativity and entrepreneurship from the perspectives of goal and process, characteristics, competency, and entrepreneurial intention. To successfully integrate creativity into entrepreneurship education, program designers should pay attention to a number of issues and concerns, such as the advancement of domain-relevant skills, creativity-relevant skills , task motivation, domain-specific or domain general creativity training, and teaching and evaluation methods.
Meso-level
In their chapter ‘Business Model Perspective on Entrepreneurship’, Morten Lund and Christian Nielsen discuss the qualities of business model thinking and how this mind-set assists the entrepreneur in the process of creating a new venture across its various phases. Based on their empirical work with entrepreneurial processes, linking the process of configuring business models with business opportunities, Lund and Nielsen identified twelve business modeling variables and linked them to a start-up process to illustrate their relation to entrepreneurial processes. Lund and Nielsen present and discuss these variables, describing how they could be executed, as well as identify tools and processes that could be employed to execute these variables. These authors further propose a conceptual process model for the creation of original and useful business models through the basic concept of an entrepreneurial process. This process model consists of eight phases, depicting the necessary business modeling skills for each phase; it is a continuous circular process in which not all business modeling mechanisms are equally relevant at all stages of a start-up process.
In Organizational Perspective on Entrepreneurship, Pamela Nowell and Bram Timmermans set to investigate to what extent existing definitions of team-based entrepreneurship fit emergent, uncertain context of entrepreneurship and relate to the perception of actual entrepreneurial teams. These authors argue that relational characteristics such as rich and frequent interaction, interdependence, commitment, and shared social identity are crucial when conceptualizing, defining, and operationalizing ‘the team’ in the emergent, uncertain context of new venture creation. What ‘the team’ is, its conceptualization, boundaries, and definitional understanding, as well as whom we categorize as team members are examples of the questions that Nowell and Timmermans address in their chapter. Emergent findings demonstrate that members who are not necessarily part of the core of founders and owners are often classified as team members, and in addition to entry and exit, team member mobility includes movement within the organization in terms of core, operational, and supportive tiers. The authors call for a more inclusive, dynamic, and relational understanding of the team within the context of entrepreneurship.
In their chapter ‘Family Perspective on Entrepreneurship’, Allan Discua Cruz and Rodrigo Basco delve into the family perspective on entrepreneurship, which gravitates around three different yet interconnected research fields: family, entrepreneurship, and family business. Cruz and Basco provide from a holistic perspective a nuanced understanding of the effect of the family on the entrepreneurial dynamics that lead to the creation of new firms and the development of existing firms. The authors highlight three schools of thought: entrepreneurship by families, embedded family entrepreneurship, and entrepreneurship across generations, which bring forward the complex interaction among family, entrepreneurship, and established family businesses. Cruz and Basco employ these schools of thought to explore and map current knowledge on the effect of family on entrepreneurship through three different levels: individual, group, and firm levels. By considering the inextricable connection of family and family business literature with entrepreneurship, the authors highlight previous and novel studies, interpret existing findings, and suggest a future research roadmap.
The chapter ‘Technology Development Perspective on Entrepreneurship’ by Poul Kyvsgaard Hansen and Ole Madsen sets to understand the nature of technology development in an entrepreneurial project perspective as well as how technology development activities affect other essential activities in entrepreneurial projects. Arguing that the fundamental competency of entrepreneurs is their ability to understand, synthesize, and apply principles that govern the creation of new technologies that ultimately result in new products, Hansen and Madsen introduce technology development as an essential element in an entrepreneurial project perspective. The maturity and the state of performance of some technologies might provide a bottleneck in achieving an overall performance that can justify a realizable solution. However, as these authors maintain, technology in its purest sense is more often not the key to understand a breakthrough of a given entrepreneurial innovation: it is the breakthrough that also involves the meaning of the context wherein the technology plays a central role . This meaning is more likely to be identified and communicated when the technology is seen in the perspective of a value chain. Hansen and Madsen suggest that by seeing technology development in a value -chain perspective it is possible to monitor progress and to evaluate the effectiveness of undertaken entrepreneurial activities.
In their chapter ‘Process Perspective on Entrepreneurship’, Frank Gertsen, Astrid H. Lassen, Louise Møller Haase, and Suna L. Nielsen elaborate on renewing of businesses by means of entrepreneurial processes seen through the lenses of three discipline-areas: entrepreneurship, design, and innovation management. Gertsen et al. start with the proposition that the essential properties of development processes within the three areas of innovation, design, and entrepreneurship have converged during recent decades. Based on a review of the three areas, Gertsen et al. conclude that indeed the development of processes within the three areas has led to a se...