Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity

Geography and Trade

This paper is an introduction to the special issue from the 3rd Global Entrepreneurship Monitor Research Conference held in Washington, D.C., in 2008. The paper has three objectives. First, to discuss the importance of the three stages of economic development, the factor-driven stage, the efficiency-driven stage and the innovation-driven stage. Second, to examine the empirical evidence on the relationship between stages of economic development and entrepreneurship. Third, to present a summary of the papers in the context of the theory.

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Entrepreneurship, economic development and institutions

National Systems of Entrepreneurship: Measurement issues and policy implications

Social entrepreneurship has recently received greater recognition from the public sector, as well as from scholars. However, the lack of a unifying paradigm in the field has lead to a proliferation of definitions. Moreover, several approaches of the phenomenon, as well as different schools of thought, have emerged in different regions of the world. At first glance, because of different conceptions of capitalism and of the government's role, there seems to be a difference between the American and the European conceptions of social entrepreneurship. The objective of this paper is to clarify the concepts of ‘social entrepreneurship’, ‘social entrepreneur’ and ‘social entrepreneurship organization’ and to examine whether there is a transatlantic divide in the way these are conceived and defined. After having justified the need for a definition, we present the different geographical perspectives. North American and European literatures on social entrepreneurship are critically analysed by means of Gartner's fo...

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The multiple faces of social entrepreneurship: A review of definitional issues based on geographical and thematic criteria

What makes a place desirable is the subject of much debate. We conduct a mixed methods analysis on two mid-sized US cities—Indianapolis and Kansas City. We use a migration analysis to understand the flow of the general population, creative workers, and entrepreneurs, followed by an exploratory qualitative analysis of impactful entrepreneurs. Our migration analysis shows that these cities are gaining population overall as well as creative workers and entrepreneurs, and our exploratory qualitative analysis shows that entrepreneurs broadly value quality of life factors, including social and family reasons. Our analysis suggests that entrepreneurs are less mobile than the general population, and that they start companies where they live. We discuss the implications of our study for the broader debate on what makes cities attractive and for further refinement of multidimensionality in the urban amenities literature. Entrepreneurs and creative workers are less mobile than the general population in two mid-sized American cities. We study migration trends of the general population, creative workers, and entrepreneurs in Indianapolis and Kansas City, supplemented with exploratory interviews of impactful entrepreneurs. We find that entrepreneurs are “sticky” in both contexts, and that the reasons for location can be tied to quality of life overall. Our findings have implications for research, which can further investigate the multidimensionality of attractiveness of place, and for policy, which can consider the needs of entrepreneurs and potential entrepreneurs.

Stickiness of entrepreneurs: an exploratory study of migration in two mid-sized US cities

Economic inequality has been a dominant issue in political arenas across the world, and has taken on a different picture as globalization is gained speed. Welfare states can modify the interplay of social and market forces in order to achieve greater equality in a society. A government can provide private goods such as education and healthcare services, important resource entrepreneurs. These and other services, combined with greater entrepreneurial activity, can help to reduce income inequality. However, the resources necessary for providing these services can be a challenge, particularly in developing countries which tend to face fewer sources of revenue, larger informal economies, and lower tax morale than developed countries.

The Grand Challenges of Social Welfare

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New Directions in Regional Economic Development: An Introduction

Scholars are always searching for better data, new models and novel theories. This special issue presents new empirical approaches for studying local entrepreneurial ecosystems. Our objective is to provide insights into the state of the art of the new methodologies and uncommon data to study the dynamics and functioning of local entrepreneurial ecosystems. ‘Uncommon data’ refers to curated data from digital sources, with bespoke indicators derived from social media and interpretations derived from observation. The papers propose new methods and measures and draw upon a wide variety of empirical evidence, from large sample analyses of archival data to detailed qualitative investigations. The authors outline the need for multidisciplinary approaches and dynamic research designs that incorporate firm-level dynamics as a key dimension of entrepreneurial ecosystems. Taken together, the papers provide important insights into the major issues facing policymakers and researchers of entrepreneurship. 

Uncommon methods and metrics for local entrepreneurial ecosystems

The coming Artificial Intelligence (AI) wave will be accompanied by new questions for research on entrepreneurship. This chapter identifies some core research agendas on (AI) and entrepreneurship, categorized around implications for firms, industries, and other stakeholders. AI can reshape costs for firms, which can lead to changes at the firm level around decision-making processes and capabilities, as well as implications for industry structure. I discuss some of the questions raised by these changes for other stakeholders interested in entrepreneurship, including support organizations, and for policy and governance. Finally, I discuss the risks of bias and the implications of AI related to big data.

Sameeksha Desai

Papers

Stickiness of entrepreneurs: an exploratory study of migration in two mid-sized US cities

The Grand Challenges of Social Welfare

New Directions in Regional Economic Development: An Introduction

Uncommon methods and metrics for local entrepreneurial ecosystems

Artificial intelligence and entrepreneurship: some thoughts for entrepreneurship researchers