“Small Business, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship”
Guest Editors’ Introduction
怎样写保证书by Jean-Michel Sahut and Marta Peris-Ortiz
Abstract.
The purpo of this special issue is to examine small business, innovation and entrepreneurship and show that although the three concepts have their own specific literature and can be dealt with independently, they are cloly related. From Schumpeter to the prent, a stream of literature unites the concept of entrepreneurship with its ability to make new combinations of factors and corresponding innovations in process and products; similarly, in a broad stream of literature the most characteristic dimension of entrepreneurship is cloly linked to small business. Small and large companies have different advantages and drawbacks with innovation, but small business provide the most conducive environment for entrepreneurship and innovation that are not necessarily sustained by the know-how and resources characteristic of large scale production but require commitment and clo cooperation between company members.
In this introduction we show how the three topics converge in four articles dealing with micro start-ups and innovation, institutional determinants of entrepreneurship and determining factors in entrepreneurs’ individual characteristics.
Key words: small business, innovation, entrepreneurship, opportunity recognition. Code JEL: M19
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Introduction
The three main topics that guide this special issue, “small business, innovation and entrepreneurship”, have relevant academic, social and economic dimensions and their own literature in the fields of sociology, psychology, economics and management. In addition to the specific literature on the topics in each field, many works also refer jointly to entrepreneurship and innovation, entrepreneurship and small business, or, like this special issue, they refer to entrepreneurship, innovation and small business. It is also often the ca that when one particular rearch stream or study refers explicitly to only one of the topics, one of the other two or both, underlie or are implicit in the object of study.
Relationships between entrepreneurship, innovation and enterpris are prent right from the start of the entrepreneurial literature in Schumpeter’s (1934, 1950) work.
奇忠义According to Schumpeter (1934: 66-68), as entrepreneurs make new combinations of factors “and the new combinations appear discontinuously”, innovation and economic development can be carried out by “the same people who control the productive or commercial process (in the enterpri)” or by “the new (innovator people)” that generally, in a new venture or start-up small enterpri, achieve new combinations or innovations.1 Shane (2012: 17-18) implicitly includes innovation as an esntial characteristic of entrepreneurship and claims that “[e]ntrepreneurship involves more than the (…) process of discovering opportunities for profit. It also involves coming up with a business idea about how to recombine resources to exploit tho opportunities”.
Furthermore the rearch area of economic entrepreneurship (Shane and Venkataraman, 2000: 218) has been established as “the study of sources of opportunities; the process of discovery, evaluation, and exploitation of opportunities; and the t of individuals who discover, evaluate, and exploit them” (Shane and Venkataraman, 2000: 218). The authors refer to entrepreneurial opportunities as “tho situations in which new goods, rvices, raw materials, and organizing methods can be introduced and sold at greater than their cost of production” (Ibid.: 220); and situations that are formed by “objective forces in influencing the existence, identification, and exploitation of opportunities” (Shane, 2012: 16). The objective forces correspond to the economic environment and institutional environment referred to below.
The cond part of the definition, “the process of discovery, evaluation, and exploitation of opportunities”, involves the individual aspects (personality traits and psychological characteristics) of entrepreneurs that can explain their ability to discover opportunities and exploit them successfully (Baum and Bird, 2010; Baron, 2004; Nga and Shamuganathan, 2010). Aspects corresponding to the corporate entrepreneur, like the exploitation of opportunity must be organized by the corresponding combination of factors (Hayton, 2005, 2006; Zotto and Gustafsson, 2008), with reference to the enterpri. This cond dimension of corporate entrepreneurship, may also invert the relationship opportunity recognition-exploitation of the opportunity. Opportunity, in some relevant cas can be created through the process by which new combinations of factors are created. Thus, the article on volition and career choices in this special issue helps us to understand how some people become entrepreneurs.
1 Paréntesis nuestros.
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Finally, the third part of the definition emphasis the importance of the individual as the engine of entrepreneurial action: “the core idea that entrepreneurship is a process that depends on both opportunities and individuals” (Shane, 2012: 18). This aspect, which is implicit in the first part of the definition, clearly distinguishes the field of entrepreneurship from that of strategic management, altho
ugh the contributions of classical authors on strategic management like Andrews (1971) are uful for both fields.
西太公鱼There is, however, an institutional dimension to the issue of the opportunities that entrepreneurs must discover and make u of, which must be included. It is not only the economic environment that conditions the opportunities as Shane (2012) emphasizes. In addition to the economic environment the existence of informal and formal institutional conditions (culture and legal framework) (North, 1990, 2005) constitute a background which largely explains different economic agents’ interpretation of the future, their objectives and conduct.
In this, necessarily complementary approach to entrepreneurship, one of its pillars is perfectly explicit and regulatory, that is, the Law and the rules of the game (North, 1990; Scott, 2007). The cond pillar refers to values and the rules consistent with tho values, which are rooted in social, organizational or individual needs and customs (Bruton, Ahlstrom and Li, 2010; March and Oln, 1989; Scott, 2007). And the third pillar, moving away from explicit knowledge (the cognitive pillar), corresponds to deeper beliefs and values which guide the conduct of any agent or entrepreneur without them being completely aware of their influence (Bandura, 1986; Bruton et al., 2010; Carroll, 1964; Scott, 2007). Thus the institutional dimension of entrepreneurship, addresd by two articles i
n this special issue, enables understanding of the conditions from which opportunity is discovered or created.
As regards the relationship between the approaches to entrepreneurship and innovation, although certain rearch proposals may need to parate the concepts into different fields, that paration limits the ufulness of both approaches for multiple aspects of management and the economy (Baum et al., 2001; Lasn, Gertn and Riis, 2006). The link between entrepreneurship and innovation dominates the literature; to quote Shane (2012: 15), the concept of entrepreneurship incorporates “the Schumpeterian (…) notion that entrepreneurs also exploit tho potentially profitable opportunities by creatively recombining resources”, that is, by innovating; although
innovation can be incremental or radical (Lasn et al., 2006; Robson, Haugh and Obeng, 2009), and is carried out in a complex context that includes “innovation, venturing and strategic renewal” (Zotto and Gustafsson, 2008: 97).
As regards the entrepreneur who organizes the combination of factors and the process of productive transformation (corporate entrepreneurship), Covin and Slevin (1986, 1991) point out that the characteristics of this form of entrepreneurship are innovativeness, proactiveness and risk-taking, wh
ich, in a broad n, involves orientation towards the development of new products and rvices, technologies, administrative techniques, new forms of organizational design and incentives and new strategies (Chell, 2008; Covin and Slevin, 1986, 1991; Lumpkin and Dess, 1996; Miller, 1983; Schafer,1990; Zotto and Gustafsson, 2008).
Thus not only does innovation appear as an inherent characteristic of entrepreneurship; innovation and entrepreneurship must go hand in hand so that the multiple dimensions of the company’s relationship with its environment (institutional development, resource allocation and commercialization) enable innovation to develop (Woolley and Rottner, 2008). The very concept of entrepreneurship, and the need for the entrepreneur to protect innovation in the company’s general framework, make entrepreneurship and innovation necessarily converge in the world of economics and management. This need, in economic and social terms, is reflected in many business school programs (Mustar, 2009; Smith and Woodworth, 1012) and in some economic policies and models (Landau and Jorgenson, 1986; Woolley and Rottner, 2008).
Finally, as regards the relationships between small business and entrepreneurship and innovation, new combinations of factors (already an innovation in itlf) often occur with the start-ups of new business thereby creating a strong association between small business (or small enterpris) a
nd entrepreneurship, constituting one of the broadest fields of entrepreneurial activity (Blackburn and Kovalainen, 2009). Of cour, that does not prevent entrepreneurial orientation from extending to activities that exceed the field of small business (Shane, 2012).
The union of entrepreneurship, new combinations of factors (innovation) and small business, is therefore, important; but cannot always be interpreted as a superiority of the small enterpri for innovation. Schumpeter (1934) and Rogers (2004) consider that the small business has greater restrictions than a large company for innovation becau it has more limited access to resources. Similarly, Chandler and Hikino (1997: 25)
出口座位emphasize that large industrial enterpris “[have] not been simply scale-intensive (…). By committing to the intensive long-term investment in human and organizational resources as well as physical asts, the large enterpris can exploit the complementarity between large-scale investment in physical capital and the sustained capital formation in such intangible asts as human resources and technological knowledge”, which enables the companies to “exploit the dramatic technological innovation (…) [of] what might be considered a Third Industrial Revolution”. Finally, Lasn et al., (2006: 364), refer to small entrepreneurs who in large R & D departments ek and foster innovation.
However, the conditions in small enterpris for innovations that do not require size but need clo cooperation and involvement from their members may be unique and not reproducible in large companies. Williamson (1985) emphasis this issue pointing out that it may be more suitable for a large enterpri to assume the transaction costs in its relationship with a small innovative company than proceed to take it over; as the atmosphere, cultural conditions and shape of the organization would change with the takeover, probably destroying the effective capacity to innovate. And similarly, the innovation teams propod by Nonaka and Takeuchi (1995) for large innovative enterpris are not always greater than the innovation dynamics that can be generated in a small firm who members share the necessary knowledge and probably greater motivation and commitment.
Thus small business entrepreneurship and innovation, considered together, have a significant position in the world of business and conquently the management literature has tried to analyze their complex relationships, and many issues remain to be solved. For example, the article comparing innovative and non innovative micro start-ups demonstrates that innovation does not necessarily ensure a greater likelihood of survival.
Below we list and briefly comment on the articles prented in this special issue. The articles
The articles for this issue of the Small Business Economics Journal were lected from papers delivered at a conference on Innovation, Financing & Entrepreneurship held at HEG (Geneva, Switzerland), in collaboration with IPAG Paris, in February 2012. The conference focud on the three tightly coupled concepts of innovation, finance and
没有图片entrepreneurship, and is the context in which this special issue on small business, innovation and entrepreneurship has been produced.
In the first article “Born to be alive? The survival of innovative and non-innovative French micro start-ups”, entrepreneurial action is related to certain individual and social characteristics of the entrepreneur (age, x, specific human capital, belonging to a minority group, professional experience, financial resources), with a positive effect of support networks on the start-up pha. The study reports that non innovative companies are more successful or survive longer than innovative ones. Although this finding may appear counterfactual, it is explained by the significant prence in the sample of younger individuals, women, and people from minority groups, who all face a significantly higher default risk than other entrepreneurs.
The sample for the empirical study compris 12 771 start-ups with fewer than 10 employees. Within
the more general streams of entrepreneurship literature, this article forms part of the tradition that unites entrepreneurial action with opportunity discovery (Shane and Venkataraman, 2000; Shane, 2012) and opportunity creation (Hayton, 2005, 2006; Helfat, 2000; Zotto and Gustafsson 2008).
The cond article, “National culture, entrepreneurship and economic development: different patterns across the European Union”, considers that culture has a significant influence on entrepreneurship and economic development. Thus countries with similar income levels exhibit persistent differences in their degrees of entrepreneurial activity (Pinillos and Reyes 2011; Van Stel et al. 2005). From this perspective, the article examines the specific role of national culture as a variable that helps explain levels of economic development and modifies the effect of entrepreneurship on income levels in the European Union.
The empirical analysis is carried out on a sample of 29 developing and 27 developed countries. Entrepreneurial and cultural variables are all significant in explaining over 60% of the variance in GDP per capita. Secondly, focusing on the European Union, some common elements are found to conform a sort of “European culture”: Autonomy and Egalitarianism clearly predominate over Embeddedness and Hierarchy, while Harmony tends to prevail over Mastery. Cluster analysis identifies four well-defined groups of countries within the European Union. Central and Northern Eur
四年级日积月累opean countries are clor to this European stereotypical culture, while English-speaking
