David B. Audretsch

Indiana University Bloomington | IUB · Institute for Development Strategies

Purpose Motivated by the constant daily emerging social challenges worldwide, this special issue analyzes how entrepreneurship becomes a mechanism for social change under different institutional settings. A brief reference to the content of each of the articles included in this special issue is presented. Design/methodology/approach Institutional...

Governments around the world are under pressure to do more with less. Dispelling the conventional wisdom that government is the enemy of innovation, this book argues that the promise of innovation addressing the most compelling societal problems will only come to fruition if governments become full partners and participants in innovation. The autho...

Innovations do not occur in isolation. There is a system or framework in which different actors are connected to and affect each other. This chapter discusses three interrelated concepts: market failure, government failure, and the National Innovation System (NIS) and the government’s role in innovation. After defining and providing examples of mar...

This chapter analyzes the influences of the disparate impact of public sector innovation. It is one thing for a public sector organization to innovate but quite another for that innovation to have an unequivocally positive impact. If we consider innovation as an ecosystem, there are inputs, actors, and processes, and there should also be outputs an...

Are there differences between public and private organizations? If so, what are they, and why do these differences matter for innovation? This chapter provides answers to these questions. It discusses the similarities and differences between public and private organizations, along with what makes public organizations “public.” Scholars have been di...

This chapter explains and discusses the definition of public sector innovation. Public sector innovation includes two concepts or terms: (1) public sector and (2) innovation. The first concept, “the public sector,” refers to the general government organizations owned and funded by the government and may include or exclude state-owned enterprises. T...

This chapter explains and discusses different innovation typologies. “Typology” refers to not only types of innovation but also other aspects. This chapter explains and discusses innovation types, including product or service (e.g., using online system by public organizations), process (e.g., one-stop-shops), mission (e.g., get to the Moon), policy...

This chapter aims to dig deeper into the source of knowledge driving innovation. What are the sources of innovation and how different sources impact innovations are other vital questions for academics, practitioners, and students. After providing historical developments, this chapter discusses sources of innovation by analyzing a typology of top-do...

This chapter discusses the rationale or “why” of public sector innovation. Understanding the “why” question is vital because, without a purpose, innovations may not be successful or not worth trying. Innovations benefit nations, organizations, and employees differently, so understanding rationales for innovation is vital. This chapter provides info...

One vital contribution of public sector innovation scholarship is its attention to context, which could be national, social, economic, technological, organizational, or demographic. Context is a multidimensional phenomenon, spanning multiple organizational, spatial, temporal, cultural, demographic, and institutional aspects. The context is broader...

This chapter focuses on how governments, public organizations, and public sector employees and managers can be more innovative. In other words, the motivating question is: What are the drivers and conditions for innovations in the public sector? Conditions for innovation are also essential because public sector employees, employees’ work groups, pu...

Barriers to innovation (e.g., obstacles causing not to innovate) are another critical concept that may affect the implementation of innovation. Innovation in the public sector has traditionally been viewed as something of an oxymoron. Burdened by a slow and stubborn bureaucracy, this traditional view concluded that innovation was essentially anathe...

Although we have discussed the outcomes of innovation in the last chapter, we have not had any discussion so far about how innovative activities in the public sector are associated with ethics. Ethics is perhaps more related to outcomes, for example an innovation may have unethical outcomes. Ethics can also play a role during an innovation process,...

Purpose The paper follows Jason Cope's (2011) vision of a holistic perspective on the failure-based learning process. By analyzing the research since Cope's first attempt, which is often fragmentary in nature, and providing novel empirical insights, the paper aims to draw a new comprehensive picture of all five phases of entrepreneurial learning an...

Entrepreneurial ecosystems (EEs) that support entrepreneurship are seen as tightly spatially bound, top-down systems. They are exogenous to entrepreneurs but endogenous to the jurisdic-tion's policymakers and other powerful stakeholders. Taking a knowledge spillover theory approach, this paper offers a new perspective on these systems that better f...

Extant research has established that firms engage in R&D collaboration and access knowledge spillovers to enhance their innovativeness. We aim to take this conversation in a new direction by seeking to answer the question, ‘How does engagement in R&D collaboration with suppliers, customers, and competitors, both domestically and internationally, as...

Academic freedom is a critical norm of science. Despite the widely postulated importance of academic freedom, the literature attests to a dearth of research on the topic. Specifically, we know little about how academic freedom relates to indicators of societal progress, such as innovation. We address this research gap by empirically assessing the i...

Even though many universities have been working toward building a university-wide innovation and entrepreneurial ecosystem (UIEE), these UIEEs tend to remain stand-alone ecosystems that do not integrate very well with the wider regional entrepreneurial ecosystem (REE) existing outside the university’s boundaries. Even if they do, it is believed tha...

The concept of an ‘entrepreneurial ecosystem’ has become a major means for both theorizing and making policy decisions concerning entrepreneurship, innovation, and economic development. The notion of an entrepreneurial ecosystem captures the way in which entrepreneurship is increasingly performed and undertaken via the innate interdependencies exis...

Recent research on innovation management and knowledge transfer has demonstrated that industry knowledge collaboration and knowledge spillovers matter for innovation, but so does a firm's Research and Development (R&D). Conditional to a firm's R&D investment, this study makes a theoretical investigation into the role of two knowledge transfer strat...

While firm scaling has been overlooked in previous management literature, this study provides an in-depth examination of the micro-and macro-level factors that enhance firm scaling. Viewing firm size, age, and scaling in prior period as micro factors of scaling, such as foreign employees as potentially rich international knowledge sources as well a...

The purpose of this special issue is to advance the ongoing dialogue on gender diversity in family businesses and, more generally, encourage further research on individual distinctions to foster an inclusive milieu leading to greater equity, innovation, and organizational resilience. The studies in this special issue exemplify various aspects of ge...

Plain English Summary A combination of work experience and social orientation is at the heart of the decision to engage in nonprofit entrepreneurship, not just social orientation. Understanding the antecedent of engagement in nonprofit entrepreneurship is important since nonprofit organizations combine two competing organizational objectives – crea...

Research and policy on sustainable development (SD) and entrepreneurial ecosystems (EE), the most prevalent policy to enhance entrepreneurship, has increased dramatically in the last 20 years; in particular. Yet, as this paper shows, their relationship is unknown to date. We aim to answer if and how entrepreneurial ecosystems foster sustainable dev...

The entrepreneurial ecosystem literature increasingly includes the concept of sustainability. In this chapter, we explore the mechanism by which the pursuit of sustainable opportunities within entrepreneurial ecosystems is becoming increasingly internationally connected. Specifically, we argue that structural factors that connect local ecosystems t...

Transitioning from a linear economy to a circular economy (CE) supports the realisation of societal values towards more sustainable development. This article identifies mechanisms by which circularity can be embedded in entrepreneurial ecosystems (EEs) through the flow of relevant knowledge and values. It presents a dynamic model that illustrates h...

Research on enablers of knowledge spillover entrepreneurship in an entrepreneurial ecosystem has seen significant growth in the last seven years (since 2016). However, the literature linking knowledge spillover entrepreneurship to the entrepreneurial ecosystem suffers from disparities and little consensus regarding what enablers exist and how they...

In this paper, we develop a concept of “site entrepreneurship.” Distinct from other forms of entrepreneurship, site entrepreneurship is the transformation of remote desolate sites with low commercial value into profitable destinations. The primary theory used to explain how entrepreneurs draw customers to remote locations is the regulatory engageme...

While most firms do not grow, a small number of firms grow and enhance their equity and debt capital intensity. Researchers, managers and policymakers question the role that digital technologies play in propelling firm growth and resource mobilization. Using a longitudinal dataset from emerging industries in the United Kingdom during 2010–2019, we...

Organizational ambidexterity refers to an organization's ability to perform two tasks equally proficiently. These tasks include efficiency vs. flexibility, adaptability vs. alignment, integration vs. responsiveness, or exploration vs. exploitation. The versatility of the ambidexterity concept allows it to be used to answer multiple research questio...

A robust literature has provided compelling evidence showing how digital transformation impacts entrepreneurship activity. However, only a paucity of research has linked adoption of new technologies to innovation, value creation, knowledge transfer and performance across different stages of the entrepreneurial growth continuum. This special issue f...

Cette pratique pédagogique innovante apporte une preuve de l’intérêt de l’apport pour les entrepreneurs de séances d’accompagnement axées sur les émotions et les pensées, afin d’améliorer leurs performances entrepreneuriales. Cette étude évalue l’efficacité d’un véritable programme d’accompagnement transformationnel qui dote les entrepreneurs de co...

This study investigates how the Psychological Capital (PsyCap) of small and medium enterprises (SME) leaders has influenced their strategic responses, ultimately impacting the performance of their companies, during the COVID-19 pandemic. Embedded within research on behavioral micro-foundations in strategy, and based on the resource-based theory (RB...

***This is the introductory chapter of a forthcoming book being published by Springer, titled, "The Strategic Management of Places at Work: Why, What, How and Where". This is the full citation for the work: Audretsch, D.B., Lehmann, E.E., Otto, J.M., Weiße, L., & Wirsching, K., (2023). The Strategic Management of Places: Applying a Framework to An...

***This is the introductory chapter of a forthcoming book being published by Springer, titled, "The Strategic Management of Places at Work: Why, What, How and Where". This is the full citation for the work: Audretsch, D.B., Lehmann, E.E., Otto, J.M., Weiße, L., & Wirsching, K., (2023). The Strategic Management of Places: Applying a Framework to An...

Global economic forces underpin political and social issues and have real impacts on the quality of life in local communities, cities, states and regions. In the face of potential volatility, leaders in every ‘place’ concern themselves with how they can ensure local economic resiliency for present and future generations. This book argues for the st...

The purpose of this introduction to the special issue is to motivate why entrepreneurial ecosystems have emerged as a crucial concept in both entrepreneurship research and policy, to explain what is known and not known in the extant literature of entrepreneurial ecosystems and to demonstrate how future studies can provide compelling solutions by ma...

Plain English Summary Entrepreneurship research questions the core assumptions of other academic fields and legitimizes them both practically and academically. Since the 1980s, entrepreneurship research has seen tremendous growth and development, establishing itself as an academic field. Entrepreneurship is also taught extensively in leading busine...

Plain English Summary Entrepreneurs with high education and experience get more value-added benefits from accelerators. The accelerator programs can help create a 'community of organizations, institutions, and individuals that impact the enterprise and the enterprise's customers and suppliers; entrepreneurs’ resources help create an environment tha...

This paper provides an analysis of how thinking about the links between institutions and entrepreneurship has evolved over time. In its incipient phase, research largely viewed entrepreneurship as being independent of institutions and shaped solely by the personality attributes and characteristics of the entrepreneur. However, a reaction to the ent...

SMEs’ internationalization and innovation activities represent fundamental economic activities that are conducive to SMEs’ individual success, but likewise contribute to the economic well-being of their home region and country. Therefore, understanding how some SMEs are innovative and internationally active has attracted significant scholarly atten...

While research on entrepreneurship and innovation ecosystems (EIEs) has emerged over the last decade, one question remains unanswered: are entrepreneurs able to efficiently adopt and manage a sustainable orientation to increase the quality and visibility of EIEs? This study argues that institutional quality and the sustainable orientation managemen...

Plain English Summary Is there a link between democracy and entrepreneurship? This study provides the first systematic empirical evidence that the link actually exists. By using longitudinal data from 23 countries over the 1972–2010 period, we document that democracy is conducive to entrepreneurship. Not only transitions to democracy, but also chan...

The characterization of how entrepreneurial a region or country is, has generally been shaped by a narrow view of what actually constitutes entrepreneurship. In the case of Germany, this has led to a characterization of Germany as not being particularly entrepreneurial. Such a view is at odds with the remarkable, high-performing family business, wi...

CALL FOR PAPERS Journal of Family Business Strategy, 2021 Impact Factor: 6.114 Special Issue: Inbound and Outbound Theorizing on Family Business in Shaping Industries and Innovation

Purpose The Brittelstand are innovative, family-owned firms that offer national and international opportunities in the United Kingdom (UK). These fast-growing businesses are customer-oriented and proud of family ownership and embeddedness of the businesses within communities. While Brittelstand firms are as likely to deploy open innovation models a...

Entrepreneurship research has benefited from embracing three economic sociology lenses—networks, cognition, and institutions—but has treated power mainly implicitly. This paper pioneers how the concept of power can advance research into entrepreneurship. We illustrate how state actors, legacy firms, and entrepreneurs variously exert coercive, persu...

This study advances our understanding of knowledge spillover of innovation, putting a firm’s own R&D investment and knowledge spillovers to a competitive test. We use three matched databases of 15,430 firms in the United Kingdom (UK) during the period 2002–2014 in order to demonstrate that knowledge spillovers emanating from R&D investment within a...

Entrepreneurship and democracy are often considered complementary, but recent evidence points to a paradox that entrepreneurial activities have increased in undemocratic contexts. Exploring economic and political freedoms, this paper investigates the development of entrepreneurship in Vietnam, an economy characterised by low economic and very low p...

This study theorises and offers new insights into how organizational capabilities and resources are used intertemporally by spin-offs to provide a resilient response in a forced-digital context. By using unique multi-level and longitudinal datasets in a forced-digital context period (May 2020, August 2020, November 2020, and February 2021) of 722 U...

This paper assesses the relationship between stakeholder influence, university scholarly and educational output, and regional economic growth. Specifically, we theorize that stakeholder intervention with respect to university teaching and learning, scholarly research, and entrepreneurship enhances the contribution of universities to regional econom...

Gazelles (high-growth), unicorns (ventures valued at $1 billion), and decacorns (ventures valued at $10 billion) appear to be dominating the landscape of entrepreneurship. In 2021, there were more than 700 ventures that have been valued at $1 billion or more by venture capitalists, and there seems to be a continued trend in more arising. However, t...

This paper explains the constituents of the Global University , what differentiates it from its predecessor, the reasons for its emergence and why it is likely that global universities will acquire competitive advantages in the future. The global university represents a sharp departure from the conventional Humboldt university model in that the sou...

A common fallacy is that small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are the translation for Mittelstand companies. Until today, no common, widely accepted, and consistently applied understanding of what constitutes the Mittelstand exists, and related international research is consequently less coherent as well as a strong evidence-base for policy ma...

Despite the emerging body of literature on entrepreneurial ecosystems (EEs), theoretical development is still in its infancy. In this article, we explicitly draw upon the analogy of forest ecosystems (FEs) with an EE to extrapolate the regional entrepreneurial ecosystem (REE) as an alternate conceptual framework. The REE considers a region’s socioe...

Government size, corruption, and tax policy can influence allocation towards necessity or opportunity-driven entrepreneurship. Using a comparative multi-source sample across 52 countries during 2005–2015, we apply a mixed-process estimation of the simultaneously unrelated system of equations and unpack these heterogeneous and complex effects. Inter...

Collaborations between actors from different sectors (governments, firms, nonprofit organizations, universities, and other societal groups) have been promoted or mandated with increasing frequency to spur more innovative activities. This article argues that there is an essential gap in evaluating the issues of these collaborative arrangements on in...

Social innovations (SIs) contribute to solving or at least mitigating many of the most pressing grand challenges. Similar to profit-oriented innovations, which are mainly developed by existing organizations and profit-oriented entrepreneurs, SIs are mainly developed and implemented by existing organizations and individual actors - social innovators...

To what extent does the gender of Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) matter in the relationship between home country corruption and firm exports? Drawing on post-structural feminist and institutional theories, we employ self-reported micro-level and cross-country data from 4714 firms in 75 countries during 2008-2015 to examine how differences in insti...

Following the call for an assessment of recent developments and an understanding of the state-of-the-art of entrepreneurial ecosystems, this paper investigates the historical evolution of entrepreneurial ecosystems, regional clusters, and industrial districts to untangle their necessary and specific dimensions and policy implications. It aims at re...

Plain English Summary States increasingly engage in entrepreneurial activities. This paper explains how the policies and activities of such entrepreneurial states may inadvertently create barriers to a more inclusive entrepreneurial society where entrepreneurship is embraced by diverse citizens. Drawing on the case of Singapore, this paper shows th...

The aim of this paper is to introduce the special issue of Small Business Economics on “Radical Innovation, Entrepreneurship, and (Regional) Growth” and present a roadmap for future research in the area. This article argues that the link between the literature on radical innovation, entrepreneurship, and (regional) growth is still an underresearche...

Entrepreneurship has been linked to economic development at the regional and national levels, yet the microeconomic nuances of entrepreneurial diversity and the challenges that different entrepreneurs face in producing social benefits remain unexplored. Numerous studies have recognised that a gender gap exists not only in entrepreneurship but also...

For rapidly urbanizing countries in Asia, entrepreneurial activity is a critical source of employment and economic development. This paper uses a panel dataset of 20 countries in Asia to examine the role of urbanization in moderating the process of knowledge spillovers leading to firm creation. It is one of the pioneering studies to examine whether...

While numerous models examine the linkages between improvisation and innovation, the factors that moderate this relationship at the team level are unknown. Consequently, this study builds on principles and insights from the jazz jam session framework used by jazz musicians and regression analysis to examine the nature of the improvisation process a...

All entrepreneurs must overcome the liabilities of newness and smallness as they attempt to launch and grow a new venture. However, those in poverty face an even greater challenge due to a concept we introduce, known as the liability of poorness, which centers on literacy gaps, a scarcity mindset, intense non-business pressures, and the lack of a s...

Scholars have examined various aspects of the entrepreneurial mindset, which have provided insights into its attributes, qualities, and operations. However, the different perspectives have led to a diverse array of definitions. With the array of differing definitions, there arises the need to better understand the concept of an entrepreneurial mind...

Plain English Summary Some years, like some poets and politicians, are singled out for fame far beyond the common lot and 1971 was clearly such a year. One of the events of 1971 was the inventions of the microprocessor, a computer on a chip. This invention led to the creation of the personal computer, the internet, the smart phone, and cloud comput...

Since the seminal work of Feldman and Francis (2002) on the Entrepreneurial Spark-Individual Agents and the Formation of Innovative Clusters", our understanding of processes of creating new firms, regional and industrial transformation, organizational and regional resilience has changed.