Trailblazing in Entrepreneurship

Recently, the co-authors of this book met in Blairgowrie, Australia. Dean Shepherd showed Holger Patzelt the Back Beach where he had spent much of his youth. Dean recalled his childhood taking the trek from his house along the path through the coastal reserve to the rock pool and surf:

Most research opportunities are characterized by uncertainty, and scholars generally have numerous options when thinking about how to contribute to and energize a field of study. In this chapter, we argue that future contributions to the field of entrepreneurship will stem from considering the entrepreneurial process as a series of steps to generate and refine opportunities through developing, engaging, and transforming communities of inquiry. In addition, this process involves a dynamic and recursive pattern of activities immersed in entrepreneurial practice that goes beyond financial goals and engages the heart as much as the mind. We believe viewing the entrepreneurial process in this way will help researchers gain a deeper understanding of how entrepreneurial action can meet some of the most challenging issues of our time, thereby enabling important contributions to the field of entrepreneurship.

Although innovation is a critical component of entrepreneurship (e.g., innovation is a dimension of firms’ entrepreneurial orientation [Covin & Slevin, 1989]), it seems that the fields of innovation and entrepreneurship run in parallel, with little interaction occurring between the two. While it is unfortunate there has not been more interaction, cross-fertilization, and the co-production of knowledge, the current situation represents a research opportunity—a research opportunity that we begin to explore in this chapter. Innovation refers to the creation of a new product, process, or service that an organization has created for the market; it represents the commercialization of an invention, where invention is an “act of insight” (Li & Atuahene-Gima, 2001, p. 1124). Innovation has been found to lead to enhanced performance in new ventures (Capon, Farley, & Hoenig, 1990; Li & Atuahene-Gima, 2001), superior firm performance (Hull & Rothenberg, 2008; Thornhill, 2006), and dynamic firm capabilities (Eisenhardt & Martin, 2000; Teece, Pisano, & Shuen, 1997). Not surprisingly, innovation scholars have been interested in understanding what makes some firms more innovative than others. Indeed, the innovation literature has produced a long list of antecedents (for a meta-analysis, see Damanpour, 1991) including inter-firm cooperation (Shan, Walker, & Kogut, 1994), network position (Tsai, 2001), market orientation (Atuahene-Gima, 1996), and industry structure (Teece, 1996). The corporate entrepreneurship literature has also found that innovation outcomes are associated with growth (Burgelman, 1984), higher profitability (Zahra & Covin, 1995), and competitive advantage (Covin & Miles, 1999). (We note this latter point to reinforce our earlier point that while innovation and corporate entrepreneurship cover much of the same ground, one makes little reference to the other and vice versa [for an exception, see Morris, Kuratko, & Covin, 2010].)

Sustainable development is arguably the most significant issue of today. Each day, we hear accounts of ozone depletion, climate change, and the destruction of biodiversity as well as details about the detrimental and potentially lethal consequences these issues have for living species (e.g., IPCC, 2007; United Nations, 2004). Scholars have argued, however, that entrepreneurial action can help this dire situation by preserving ecosystems, neutralizing climate change, decreasing environmental degradation and deforestation, improving farming practices, providing more access to fresh water, and maintaining biodiversity (e.g., Cohen & Winn, 2007; Dean & McMullen, 2007). Furthermore, in developing countries in particular, such entrepreneurial actions can positively contribute to education, productivity, socioeconomic status, physical health, and self-reliance at both the individual and societal levels (e.g., Wheeler et al., 2005). Finally, while research has shown that entrepreneurial action creates economic gains for investors, entrepreneurs, and economies (e.g., Easterly, 2006), we need more sustainable entrepreneurship research investigating how entrepreneurial action can serve as a mechanism for preserving nature and ecosystems while also providing economic and non-economic gains for investors, entrepreneurs, and societies at large.

The family business and entrepreneurship literatures have had some exchange in the past; however, this exchange has been largely limited in scope (e.g., the addition of a variable from one field into the other), borrowing in nature (e.g., the transferred variable maintains its initial meaning, form, and measurement), and uni-directional (i.e., contributing minimally back to the source literature). Nevertheless, studies combining these two literatures have made important contributions to both fields. For example, researchers have contributed to our understanding of family firms’ performance by exploring firms’ entrepreneurial orientation (e.g., Casillas, Moreno, & Barbero, 2009; Cruz & Nordqvist, 2012; Lumpkin, Brigham, & Moss, 2010; Naldi, Nordqvist, Sjöberg, & Wiklund, 2007; Short, Payne, Brigham, Lumpkin, & Broberg, 2009). Even with these important contributions, however, research could go further, investigating the possibility of a different level and form of exchange, one that has a broad scope and involves blending (Oswick, Fleming, & Hanlon, 2011) and bricolage (Boxenbaum & Rouleau, 2011). Importantly, this new exchange should provide the opportunity to contribute to both the family business and entrepreneurship literatures.

Health is inarguably a significant topic in people’s everyday lives, and unsurprisingly, scholars have taken great interest in exploring this issue. For example, marketing scholars have explored the health implications of “supersizing” food purchases (Haws & Winterich, 2013), the impact of health claims on product preference (Aschemann-Witzel & Hamm, 2010), and price sensitivity to healthy versus unhealthy food (Talukdar & Lindsey, 2013); operations scholars have explored capacity expansion in outpatient clinics (LaGanga, 2011), quality management practices and processes in hospitals (Goldstein & Iossifova, 2012), and the performance of health information technology (Queenan, Angst, & Devaraj, 2011); management scholars have explored the relationship between employee stress and health (Bono et al., 2012), the effects of sleep deprivation on workplace deviance (Christian & Ellis, 2011), and learning by surgical teams (Vashdi, Bamberger, & Erez, 2012); and strategy scholars have explored multi-national firms’ responses to disasters (Oh & Oetzel, 2011), the effects of diversification in the medical-device industry (Wu, 2013), and the effect of board characteristics on firms’ strategic change in the healthcare industry (Goodstein, Gautam, & Boeker, 1994).

Entrepreneurship scholars have dedicated substantial time to exploring how and why entrepreneurs think differently from both non-entrepreneurs (e.g., Busenitz & Barney, 1997; Mitchell, 1994; Mitchell et al., 2002) and other entrepreneurs (e.g., Baron, 2004, 2006; Mitchell et al., 2007). Studies have also emphasized that the entrepreneurial context is characterized by high uncertainty, ambiguity, time pressure, emotional intensity, and high risk, which can have substantial impact on how entrepreneurs evaluate specific situations and make decisions (e.g., Baron, 2008; Busenitz & Barney, 1997; Mullins & Forlani, 2005). This literature on entrepreneurial decision making is important because the strategic decisions firm leaders make have a major impact on the firm’s future direction and performance (Carpenter, Geletkanycz, & Sanders, 2004; Hambrick & Mason, 1984).