Critique of Entrepreneurship


Book Description

The sponsorship of the entrepreneur as an agent of economic growth is now at the centre of a vast promotional industry, involving politicians, government departments and higher education. This book examines the origins of this phenomenon and subjects its mythologies, hero-figures and policies to an empirically based critical examination.




Against Entrepreneurship


Book Description

This book explores whether there is reason to be against entrepreneurship. Just like literature on the darker sides of entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship, the book is an answer to the one-sided, overly positive and uncritical image of entrepreneurship. The “twist” in this book, in comparison with literature on dark sides of entrepreneurship, is to explore being against entrepreneurship. From various perspectives such as lexical semantics, Marxism, philosophy of science and psychology, the contributors contemplate on why there may be reason to be against entrepreneurship discourse as well as entrepreneurship practice. Some chapters are based on first-hand empirical data, others are conceptual. The main overall conclusion is that there are some strong arguments for being against entrepreneurship discourse, as well as for being against certain aspects of entrepreneurship practice. Before it is reasonable to be against entrepreneurship practice in total, a convincing and practicable alternative needs to be developed. This book will be valuable reading for entrepreneurship scholars, as well as academics working in the fields of business ethics, (critical) management, and international business.




Why Startups Fail


Book Description

If you want your startup to succeed, you need to understand why startups fail. “Whether you’re a first-time founder or looking to bring innovation into a corporate environment, Why Startups Fail is essential reading.”—Eric Ries, founder and CEO, LTSE, and New York Times bestselling author of The Lean Startup and The Startup Way Why do startups fail? That question caught Harvard Business School professor Tom Eisenmann by surprise when he realized he couldn’t answer it. So he launched a multiyear research project to find out. In Why Startups Fail, Eisenmann reveals his findings: six distinct patterns that account for the vast majority of startup failures. • Bad Bedfellows. Startup success is thought to rest largely on the founder’s talents and instincts. But the wrong team, investors, or partners can sink a venture just as quickly. • False Starts. In following the oft-cited advice to “fail fast” and to “launch before you’re ready,” founders risk wasting time and capital on the wrong solutions. • False Promises. Success with early adopters can be misleading and give founders unwarranted confidence to expand. • Speed Traps. Despite the pressure to “get big fast,” hypergrowth can spell disaster for even the most promising ventures. • Help Wanted. Rapidly scaling startups need lots of capital and talent, but they can make mistakes that leave them suddenly in short supply of both. • Cascading Miracles. Silicon Valley exhorts entrepreneurs to dream big. But the bigger the vision, the more things that can go wrong. Drawing on fascinating stories of ventures that failed to fulfill their early promise—from a home-furnishings retailer to a concierge dog-walking service, from a dating app to the inventor of a sophisticated social robot, from a fashion brand to a startup deploying a vast network of charging stations for electric vehicles—Eisenmann offers frameworks for detecting when a venture is vulnerable to these patterns, along with a wealth of strategies and tactics for avoiding them. A must-read for founders at any stage of their entrepreneurial journey, Why Startups Fail is not merely a guide to preventing failure but also a roadmap charting the path to startup success.




Social Entrepreneurship


Book Description

Pascal Dey and Chris Steyaert provide a timely critique on the idea of social entrepreneurship and its reputation as a means for positive social change. The book uses different traditions and modes of critique to interrogate, disrupt and reimagine the concept of social entrepreneurship.




Competition and Entrepreneurship


Book Description

Stressing verbal logic rather than mathematics, Israel M. Kirzner provides at once a thorough critique of contemporary price theory, an essay on the theory of entrepreneurship, and an essay on the theory of competition. Competition and Entrepreneurship offers a new appraisal of quality competition, of selling effort, and of the fundamental weaknesses of contemporary welfare economics. Kirzner's book establishes a theory of the market and the price system which differs from orthodox price theory. He sees orthodox price theory as explaining the configuration of prices and quantities that satisfied the conditions for equilibrium. Mr. Kirzner argues that "it is more useful to look to price theory to help understand how the decisions of individual participants in the market interact to generate the market forces which compel changes in prices, outputs, and methods of production and in the allocation of resources." Although Competition and Entrepreneurship is primarily concerned with the operation of the market economy, Kirzner's insights can be applied to crucial aspects of centrally planned economic systems as well. In the analysis of these processes, Kirzner clearly shows that the rediscovery of the entrepreneur must emerge as a step of major importance.




The Halo Effect


Book Description

Why do some companies prosper while others fail? Despite great amounts of research, many of the studies that claim to pin down the secret of success are based in pseudoscience. THE HALO EFFECT is the outcome of that pseudoscience, a myth that Philip Rosenzweig masterfully debunks in THE HALO EFFECT. THE HALO EFFECT highlights the tendency of experts to point to the high financial performance of a successful company and then spread its golden glow to all of the company's attributes - clear strategy, strong values, and brilliant leadership. But in fact, as Rosenzweig clearly illustrates, the experts are not just wrong, but deluded. Rosenzweig suggests a more accurate way to think about leading a company, a robust and clearheaded approach that can save any business from ultimate failure.




Empirical Analysis of Entrepreneurship and Economic Growth


Book Description

The importance of entrepreneurship for achieving economic growth in contemporary economies is widely recognized, both by policy makers and economists. It is deeply embedded in the current European policy approach that the creativity and independence of entrepreneurs contribute to higher levels of economic activity. Indeed, according to the European Commission (2003, p. 9), "The challenge for the European Union is to identify the key factors for building a climate in which entrepreneurial initiative and business activities can thrive. Policy measures should seek to boost the Union's levels of entrepreneurship, adopting the most appropriate approach for producing more entrepreneurs and for getting more firms to grow. " Audretsch (2003, p. 5) states that "Entrepreneurship has become the engine of economic and social development throughout the world. " The relation between entrepreneurship and economic growth is embedded in several strands of the economic literature. A first strand of literature involves the general understanding of the role of entrepreneurship in the modern economy. Seminal contributions were made by Schumpeter (1934), Knight (1921) and Kirzner (1973). These economists stress different aspects of the role of the entrepreneur. While Schumpeter stresses the innovating aspect, Knight stresses the risk assuming aspect. Kirzner, finally, stresses the role of the entrepreneur in leading markets to equilibrium. Acs (1992) discusses the contribution of small firms in modern economies.




Profits and Sustainability


Book Description

This book explores the history of green entrepreneurship since the nineteenth century, and its spread globally in industries including renewable energy, organic food, natural beauty, ecotourism, recycling, architecture, and finance.




Entrepreneurship, Growth and Economic Development


Book Description

This timely book presents contemporary research on the key role of entrepreneurship in firm growth and development strategies. The contributors reveal that a high level of entrepreneurial activity contributes to economic growth, innovative activities, competition, job creation and local development. The contents of the book, although varied in terms of the topics covered and research methods used, demonstrate the role of entrepreneurship in relation to growth and economic development in a variety of different contexts. Drawing together leading-edge European research, the expert contributors analyse a number of different issues, such as whether firm growth and performance are different concepts in entrepreneurship studies, growth strategies of IT firms, the start-up funding process, cross-border co-operation between enterprises and SME competitiveness. Entrepreneurship, Growth and Economic Development will appeal to researchers and students of entrepreneurship and small business. Policy-makers will also find this book a source of inspiration.




Cultural Entrepreneurship


Book Description

This Element provides an overview of cultural entrepreneurship scholarship and seeks to lay the foundation for a broader and more integrative research agenda at the interface of organization theory and entrepreneurship. Its scholarly agenda includes a range of phenomena from the legitimation of new ventures, to the construction of novel or alternative organizational or collective identities, and, at even more macro levels, to the emergence of new entrepreneurial possibilities and market categories. Michael Lounsbury and Mary Ann Glynn develop novel theoretical arguments and discuss the implications for mainstream entrepreneurship research, focusing on the study of entrepreneurial processes and possibilities.