The Entrepreneurship Dynamic: Origins of Entrepreneurship and the Evolution of Industries

Scholars and popular writers have written a great deal about entrepreneurs and the formation of new companies, but they have not succeeded in predicting when and where large numbers of new organisations will emerge. This volume attempts, from the viewpoint of the interdisciplinary field of organisation studies, to answer two major questions about entrepreneurship: First, what are the conditions that prompt the founding of large numbers of new organisations or entirely new industries? Second, what are the real and significant effects of such entrepreneurial activities on existing industries, economies, and societies?

The authors emphasize that new organisations do not emerge full blown from the idiosyncratic minds of individual entrepreneurs. Their ideas for new organizations, their ability to acquire capital and other essential resources, and their likelihood of survival as entrepreneurs derive from the contexts in which they live and work. At the same time, new organisations fundamentally and immediately transform their contexts.