Structuring the Technology Entrepreneurship publication landscape: Making sense out of chaos
Introduction
Technology Entrepreneurship (TE) TE has become a hotly debated topic between many researchers from diverse theoretical backgrounds. Many researchers harbor contrary near-held beliefs of the importance of entrepreneurial and small firms to our society. Neo-Marshallians, despite the mountain of data to the contrary, tend to negate the value of small and entrepreneurial firms to regional and national based job and wealth creation (Kirchhoff et al., 2013). However, a larger group of scholars has shown that entrepreneurial effort is a cornerstone of regional and national economies throughout the world (Birch, 1987; Phillips & Kirchhoff, 1989; Storey, 1994). The debate over the importance of TE does not stop there. The success that entrepreneurial firms have shown in embodying disruptive technologies into products (Abernathy & Clark, 1985; Abernathy & Utterback, 1978; Christensen, 1997; Walsh & Kirchhoff, 2002; Walsh & Groen, 2013) is hotly debated. Some TE authors argue that small firms that lack the capital, technology, history and the resources of their larger cousins (Christensen, 1997, Kirchhoff, 1994) can be as effective as large firms. Yet, other TE researchers have shown entrepreneurial firms often to be the underpinnings of Schumpeterian change or cycles (Linstone, 2011; Mangematin & Walsh, 2012; Schumpeter, 1912) based on disruptive technologies.
Now, due to TEs' popularity in the academic and public press, TE is under more scrutiny. More TE researchers than ever before are focusing on specific financial, ethical, organizational and other important issues. For example, the debacle that was Enron (McLean & Elkind, 2004) heightened awareness of TE researchers on subfields like sustainability and social entrepreneurship.
We start with a definition of technology entrepreneurship (TE). We state that TE can be defined as recognizing, creating and exploiting opportunities, and assembling resources around a technological solution (Spiegel and Marxt, 2011, Bailetti, 2012), irrespective of the organizational context (Shane & Venkataraman, 2000). We further recognize that TE researchers have shown that technology entrepreneurs derive competitive advantage either by a combination or singularly utilizing three basis approaches. The three distinct competitive advantage pathways are the recognition of technological possibilities (Schumpeter, 1912), the ability to use technology to decrease transaction costs (Williamson & Kaiser, 2005), and the ability to use new technology product paradigm to provide a solution to a market gap (Kirzner, 1973).
The term “entrepreneur” conjures up positive social connotations. This is exemplified by the International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences describing the entrepreneur as a “leading economic figure, even cultural hero, deriving from both the evident nature of the market system and the projected self-image of middle-class business leaders” (Darity, 2008, p. 604). Despite or perhaps because of the ambiguity, glorification and popularity of entrepreneurship, interested in and scope of the larger field has exploded. To demonstrate the increased research interest in the field we found that a Scopus query revealed 4555 entrepreneurship articles with “entrepr*” in their title or key words between 1992 and 2002. In the decade that follows, there were 16,317 articles, that is more than three times the amount of the previous decade. A source title analysis of this query reveals about 160 journals that publish entrepreneurship research.
Today traditional knowledge on TE is being extended by lines of inquiry that tap into the interface with neighboring fields such as innovation management (for example, the concept of customer development (Blank, 2013)), or expand into henceforth unrelated domains such as technology entrepreneurship for senior social entrepreneurship (Leadbetter, 1998). Researchers that are working on these and other emerging lines of inquiry in TE find outlets for their work not only in technology or general entrepreneurship journals, but in general management journals as well. We find that due to the silo approach of many current academic research communities, crosspollination, once the hallmark of TE research, is waning. In fact, many of these “new” concepts have deep roots in academic literature that is rarely acknowledged.
Are TE researchers, with their diverse academic backgrounds, benefiting from, disregarding, or unaware of prior knowledge generated in the field? Do the journals that publish TE research have mission fit (Linton et al., 2009)? Where are the leading journals in TE? The debate of TE importance, as harbinger of Schumpeterian cycles and its own popularity has increased researcher interest and ambiguity over where exceptional research in the field can be found. We provide this analysis of journals publishing TE research through a bibliometric effort.
We provide a novel method of ranking TE journals. We start by defining the locus of publication of TE by searching relevant pairs of keywords. We analyze articles and journals by addressing bibliometric indicators. We subsequently rank the journals using composite indicators that weigh the quantity and the quality of TE articles. We provide a ranked list of the top twenty journals that best serve the TE research community. We map the journal landscape and in doing so reflect a fractured field with the top 20 TE journals derived from Management of Technology and General Entrepreneurship journals. Finally, we find that those journals with exceptional mission fit can be more effective outlets for exceptional TE research. Hence, our contribution enhances the field by providing a clearer picture of exceptional TE journals for both readers and intending authors.
Section snippets
Growth and fragmentation of the TE field
From an academic point of view, the works of Schumpeter are the oldest cornerstone of TE research. Schumpeter placed the entrepreneur as the central driver of economic growth, as the actor most able to take advantage and drive technological change (Schumpeter, 1912, Schumpeter, 1942). The primary role that TE plays on developing creative advantage based on emerging technologies (Walsh & Groen, 2013) has deep roots in the works of Schumpeter (Schumpeter, 1912, Schumpeter, 1942), Birch (Birch,
Method
Given the myriad of different journals that attempt to cover multiple themes of TE both novice and experienced researchers sometimes have difficulties when trying to identify the best journals to read. Traditionally academics have turned to opinion based survey methods to provide this navigation. Shortcomings with traditional approaches are the use of experts (Fried, 2003), temporal relevance (Thongpapanl, 2012), limitation to one dimension, and that their overuse suppresses interdisciplinary
Descriptive results
Table 2 serves as repository for the raw data of our TE-specific and general journal data. Table 2 is ordered along the lines of “number of TE articles published”, in descending order. Already at first glimpse, the skewed distribution of two of the TE-specific indicators emerges. In terms of number of TE articles, the top ten journals publish more than two thirds of the articles. A similar pattern emerges for the number of citations of TE articles. For this indicator, the five top journals
Conclusions
TE is growing in breadth and popularity. The multidisciplinary of the field creates a difficulty when trying to delineate the forums where researchers read and publish their work. We provide an up-to-date journal ranking that is specific to TE that takes a reader-specific and an author-specific perspective.
These results highlight that TE researchers should not be guided by rankings that were created for other related disciplines. For example, results from a well-published entrepreneurship
Tiago Ratinho is Assistant Professor for Innovation Management and Entrepreneurship at the Merrick School of Business, University of Baltimore. He received his M.S. in Engineering Policy and Management of Technology at the Technical University Lisbon and his PhD in Business Administration at the University Twente with a dissertation on startup incubation. His research focuses on startups, new venture creation and entrepreneurship.
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Tiago Ratinho is Assistant Professor for Innovation Management and Entrepreneurship at the Merrick School of Business, University of Baltimore. He received his M.S. in Engineering Policy and Management of Technology at the Technical University Lisbon and his PhD in Business Administration at the University Twente with a dissertation on startup incubation. His research focuses on startups, new venture creation and entrepreneurship.
Rainer Harms is Associate Professor for Entrepreneurship at NIKOS, University of Twente. He is head of the research direction of International Entrepreneurship. He is Associated Editor of Creativity and Innovation Management and Zeitschrift für KMU und Entrepreneurship. He was visiting professor at the Vienna University of Economics and Business (Wirtschaftsuniversität Wien), and at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, and held positions at University Klagenfurt (Habilitation) and WWU Münster (Doctorate). His research interests are (technology) entrepreneurship, firm growth, and innovation management.
Steven J. Walsh is the Regents' professor and director of the Technology Entrepreneurship Program at the University of New Mexico Anderson Schools of Management. He received his BE, MBA and a Doctorate of Philosophy in Management of Technology, Strategy and Entrepreneurship at RPI. He is the founding President for the Micro and Nano Commercialization Education Foundation (MANCEF). He is an area editor for two journals and has provided special issue editor service seven times. He was named as one of 25 technology commercialization all-stars by the state of New Mexico in 2005, and in 2006 he won the lifetime achievement award for commercialization of Micro and Nano firms by the Micro and Nano Commercialization Education Foundation. His research focus is on the commercialization of advanced technologies.