7. Intending to Frame Entrepreneurship Research: Thirty Years After Bird (1988)

Barbara Bird, in her seminal 1988 article “Implementing Entrepreneurial Ideas: The Case for Intention,” broke from existing research in strategic management and entrepreneurship. She did so by setting forth a behavioral framework for entrepreneurship that connects ideas with outcomes through the agency of intentionality. This retrospective explores the impact of Bird’s work on the field of entrepreneurship research through bibliometric analysis and a review of her seminal ideas that have become central to the field. In 1988 and today, Bird challenges entrepreneurship scholars to move beyond traditional and accepted methods by embracing novel new theoretical speculations. Bird’s groundbreaking focus on the psychological basis for venture creation embodied entrepreneurial thinking and has emboldened a generation of researchers to become academic entrepreneurs.