The Entrepreneurship Dynamic - (Stanford Business Books (Paperback)) by Claudia Bird Schoonhoven & Elaine Romanelli (Paperback)

About the Book

New organizations 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. The Entrepreneurship Dynamic explores the conditions that prompt the founding of large numbers of new organizations or entirely new industries, and the effects on existing industries, economies, and societies.

Book Synopsis

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 organizations will emerge. This volume attempts, from the viewpoint of the interdisciplinary field of organization studies, to answer two major questions about entrepreneurship: First, what are the conditions that prompt the founding of large numbers of new organizations 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 organizations 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 organizations fundamentally and immediately transform their contexts.

The first part of the book explores the mental models that founders of new companies bring with them from previous experiences, the ways in which their ideas come not only from the companies in which they work but from the surrounding organizational communities, and the importance of local and regional dynamics in nurturing innovative communities. Other papers in this section shift perspective from geographic communities to other contexts--the university, the knowledge industry, and the technology cycle.

The second part of the book explores the role of entrepreneurial activity in the transformation of contexts and the evolution of industries, focusing on the processes and tools that entrepreneurs use to legitimate new organizational populations, and the collateral industries and communities that build up around new organizational populations, aiding in the development of new companies.

From the Back Cover

"This outstanding work will be required reading for all entrepreneurship scholars."--Andrew H. Van de Ven, University of Minnesota
"A detailed and fresh look at the conceptual end of the business of making money in developed societies."--Enterprise and Society

Review Quotes

"This outstanding work will be required reading for all entrepreneurship scholars."--Andrew H. Van de Ven, University of Minnesota

"Those who are looking for new approaches and resarch directions will find The Entrepreneurship Dynamic a rich and variegated source of ideas."--Philip Anderson, INSEAD

"A detailed and fresh look at the conceptual end of the business of making money in developed societies."--Enterprise and Society

"Claudia Schoonhoven and Elaine Romanelli have delivered a compelling edited volume to enrich our understanding of entrepreneuship as a contextual process . . . .[The Entrepreneurship Dynamic] is an impressive exploration of the conditions, processes, and outcomes of the entrepreneurial process . . . .[It] is an excelllent volume that deserves a prominent position on the bookshelves of serious students of entrepreneuship and organizations . . .Our bottom line: buy it, read it."--Academy of Management Review

About the Author

Claudia Bird Schoonhoven is Professor of Organization and Strategy in the Graduate School of Management at the University of California, Irvine. She is co-author of The Innovation Marathon: Lessons from High Technology Firms. Elaine Romanelli is Associate Professor of Management at the Georgetown University School of Business.