INTRODUCTION TO ENTREPRENEURSHIP AND INNOVATION

The material provides supplementary information on the topic of entrepreneurship, innovation, academic entrepreneurship and research commercialization. It is intended as an introductory material for the course on entrepreneurship for doctoral students and to be combined with reading materials on technology entrepreneurship and research papers on each topic + discussion questions on each subtopic for the seminars.

 Entrepreneurship is a multidimensional concept studied by a wide range of academic fields. There is no single, accepted definition of entrepreneurship, but a broad range of different definitions (Sternberg, 2009).

Entrepreneurship as a scholarly field focuses on “the examination of how, by whom, and with what effects opportunities to create future goods and services are discovered, evaluated, and exploited” (Venkataraman, 1997, lk 120; Shane & Venkataraman, 2000, lk 218). Thus, it addresses the sources of entrepreneurial opportunities, how the process of the discovery, evaluation and utilization of those opportunities takes place, and who are the individuals who carry out those activities (Shane & Venkataraman, 2000).

In colloquial use, entrepreneurship is used in terms of “owning and managing a business on one’s account and risk” or in terms of “entrepreneurial behavior in the sense of seizing an economic opportunity” (Sternberg & Wennekers, 2005, lk 193). Entrepreneurship as behavior can be defined as the “manifest ability and willingness of individuals, on their own, in teams on their own, within and outside existing organizations” to “perceive and create new economic opportunities” for new products, new production methods, new organizational schemes or new product-market combinations, and to “introduce their ideas in the market, in the face of uncertainty and other obstacles, by making decisions on location, form and the use of resources and institutions“ (Wennekers & Thurik, 1999, lk 46-47). Thus, entrepreneurship can be viewed as a behavioral characteristic that depends on the individuals’ entrepreneurial skills and qualities and as well as ability to participate in the competitive process in the markets (Wennekers & Thurik, 1999).

Enterprises are the vehicles for entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurial action refers to creation of novel products, processes, new entries into new markets, which may occur through creation of new enterprises or within existing enterprises (Hisrich, Peters, & Shepherd, 2017).  Entrepreneurship in existing organizations can take place in form of corporate entrepreneurship or intrapreneurship. Corporate entrepreneurship is usually associated with a top-down process in which new ideas and initiatives are fostered, while intrapreneurship could be defined as bottom-up initiatives of employees exploring new ideas (Bosma, Stam, & Schutjens, 2011).