The authors of this comprehensive study address why it is that some small firms perform well and others don't, and whether high-performing firms share characteristics that distinguish them from low-performing firms. By exploring bundles of resources and their interaction with other factors, the authors explain important small business outcomes such as growth, performance, entrepreneurial activity, and the chance of receiving debt or equity capital. The authors find that while resources may be valuable, it is essential that small businesses have the processes to facilitate the manipulation of resources into value-creating strategies. Rather than reaching the conclusion that more is always better, the authors tease out the conditions under which certain resources are particularly valuable, as well as the conditions under which these and other resources are less valuable. The resource factors examined range from aspects of the human capital of the small business manager, such as length of education or prior experience with business start-ups, to social capital variables and firm-level resources, such as access to financial capital and competence. Representing leading-edge research across several levels of analysis, this volume will be a useful resource for scholars and students of entrepreneurship and small business, as well as for entrepreneurs and small business owners. Policymakers will find the volume helpful in understanding the effect policies may have on small businesses and the subsequent impact on the economic performance of a region.

In this volume, Dean Shepherd focuses on the varying topics of entrepreneurship unified through conjoint analysis. Although the topic of entrepreneurial decision making is broad, in doing so, he reveals the mechanisms that come into play during the entrepreneurial decision-making process. Scholars of entrepreneurship and organizational behavior will find this collection an essential resource for understanding how decision making is achieved in entrepreneurial settings.

Within an entrepreneurial context, what a person thinks and feels and how they behave are hugely consequential. Entrepreneurs often work in scenarios of considerable time pressure, task complexity, uncertainty and high performance variance. This fascinating volume explores the unique psychological qualities of individuals directly involved in the entrepreneurial process. The book explores major themes in entrepreneurial psychology, including acting entrepreneurially, identifying opportunity, making decisions, choosing and managing an entrepreneurial career, adapting and persisting, and recovering from entrepreneurial failure. The selected essays highlight Dean A. Shepherd's unique perspective on important issues in entrepreneurship, and offer insightful recommendations for future study. Scholars and students of entrepreneurship and business and management, particularly those with an interest in entrepreneurial thought and decision-making, will find this book an invaluable resource. 29 articles, dating from 1999 to 2013

This authoritative collection presents the most important and influential contributions to the study of entrepreneurial opportunity. The first section investigates the nature of entrepreneurial opportunity. The second presents the best work of the last ten years on the dynamics and nature of opportunity emergence. The careful selection of articles, alongside an original introduction by the editors, concludes by highlighting the varying contexts in which entrepreneurial opportunity can occur and strategies for researching it.

Entrepreneurs act in environments of great risk and high uncertainty, and as a result, failure is a common occurrence. For this volume, Professor Shepherd has made a judicious selection of published articles, which explore the antecedents to and potential outcomes of entrepreneurial failure. By understanding these causes and consequences, entrepreneurs may become better able to manage failure, to reduce its costs and to capitalize on its benefits. With an insightful original introduction by the editor, the book provides an authoritative guide to current scholarly debate in this topical area and lays a foundation for future study.

Learning from Entrepreneurial Failure provides an important counterweight to the multitude of books that focus on entrepreneurial success. Failure is by far the most common scenario for new ventures and a critical part of the entrepreneurial process is learning from failure and having the motivation to try again. This book examines the various obstacles to learning from failure and explores how they can be overcome. A range of topics are discussed that include: why some people have a more negative emotional reaction to failure than others and how these negative emotions can be managed; why some people delay the decision to terminate a poorly performing entrepreneurial venture; anti-failure biases and stigmatism in organizations and society; and the role that the emotional content of narratives plays in the sense-making process. This thought-provoking book will appeal to academic researchers, graduate students and professionals in the fields of entrepreneurship and industrial psychology.

Learning from Entrepreneurial Failure provides an important counterweight to the multitude of books that focus on entrepreneurial success. Failure is by far the most common scenario for new ventures and a critical part of the entrepreneurial process is learning from failure and having the motivation to try again. This book examines the various obstacles to learning from failure and explores how they can be overcome. A range of topics are discussed that include: why some people have a more negative emotional reaction to failure than others and how these negative emotions can be managed; why some people delay the decision to terminate a poorly performing entrepreneurial venture; anti-failure biases and stigmatism in organizations and society; and the role that the emotional content of narratives plays in the sense-making process. This thought-provoking book will appeal to academic researchers, graduate students and professionals in the fields of entrepreneurship and industrial psychology.

Attracting Equity Investors is designed to help entrepreneurs successfully obtain equity capital. This book discusses how to evaluate a business concept from an investor's perspective and then moves to practical issues such as how to strategically position, prepare, and present the business plan. It recognizes that there is very real competition for the funds that are available. To obtain funding, the entrepreneur must stand out among the competitors. He or she must tell a compelling story in a very convincing manner and be able to answer confidently all questions posed by the potential investor. But more than simply obtaining the funding, the entrepreneur's objective should be to obtain the funding on the best terms possible. Therefore, this book is about organizing your business, writing and presenting a winning business plan, and showing that the management team is the right group of people to be taking that business opportunity forward toward fruition. Attracting Equity Investors is the definitive "getting equity capital" book. Attracting Equity Investors is appropriate for college-level courses in entrepreneurship, business plan writing, new venture funding, strategic management, organizational studies, marketing, economics, and technology management. It will also serve as an excellent resource for entrepreneurs who are actively seeking funding and need to know how to go about it, effectively and economically.

If an opportunity exists, is it best to ensure that your product is first to the market or is performance enhanced through waiting and following? What factors should an entrepreneur consider in deciding when to take the lead in being the first to introduce a new product or service? What can be done to improve new venture performance? New Venture Strategy examines the process of introducing a new product or service and offers readers a framework for thinking through the issues involved in new venture performance. Examples include entry timing, market conditions facing the entrant, focus or breadth of entry scope, product or process mimicry, creation and development of entry barriers, and differences between independent and corporate ventures. New Venture Strategy will be useful as a core text in courses on entrepreneurship, corporate entrepreneurship, new product development, small business, and strategic planning. It will also be of interest to those developing business plans and others involved in new venture funding, marketing, and business development.

This open access book focuses on explaining differences amongst organizations regarding various attributes, forms, and outcomes. By focusing on the "how" of new venture creation and management to produce well-established organizations, the authors aim to increase our understanding of the antecedents of most management research assumptions. New ventures are the source of most newly created jobs generated in an economy, new industries and markets, innovative products and services, and new solutions to economic, social, and environmental problems. However, most management research assumes a well-established organization as the starting point of their theorizing. Building on the notion of guided attention, it details how entrepreneurs can allocate their transient attention to identify potential opportunities from environmental change and how entrepreneurs allocate their sustained attention to form beliefs about radical and incremental opportunities requiring entrepreneurial action. The authors explain how entrepreneurs build such communities and engage community members over time to co-construct potential opportunities for new venture progress. Using the lean startup framework, they connect the dots between the theorizing on identifying and co-constructing potential opportunities and the startup of new ventures. This leads to a new overarching framework based on are (1) co-creating a startup, (2) organizing a startup, and (3) performing a startup to bring together the many disparate threads of research on new ventures. The authors then theorize on the importance of knowledge in organizational scaling. Based on cutting-edge research from the leading entrepreneurship journals, this book expands knowledge on the cognitive aspect of the new venture creation process.

This open access book investigates the inter-relationship between the mind and a potential opportunity to explore the psychology of entrepreneurship. Building on recent research, this book offers a broad scope investigation of the different aspects of what goes on in the mind of the (potential) entrepreneur as he or she considers the pursuit of a potential opportunity, the creation of a new organization, and/or the selection of an entrepreneurial career. This book focuses on individuals as the level of analysis and explores the impact of the organization and the environment only inasmuch as they impact the individual's cognitions. Readers will learn why some individuals and managers are able to able to identify and successfully act upon opportunities in uncertain environments while others are not. This book applies a cognitive lens to understand individuals' knowledge, motivation, attention, identity, and emotions in the entrepreneurial process.

This open access book investigates the inter-relationship between the mind and a potential opportunity to explore the psychology of entrepreneurship. Building on recent research, this book offers a broad scope investigation of the different aspects of what goes on in the mind of the (potential) entrepreneur as he or she considers the pursuit of a potential opportunity, the creation of a new organization, and/or the selection of an entrepreneurial career. This book focuses on individuals as the level of analysis and explores the impact of the organization and the environment only inasmuch as they impact the individual's cognitions. Readers will learn why some individuals and managers are able to able to identify and successfully act upon opportunities in uncertain environments while others are not. This book applies a cognitive lens to understand individuals' knowledge, motivation, attention, identity, and emotions in the entrepreneurial process.

This book is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license.In this book, the authors present a challenge for future research to build a stronger, more complete understanding of entrepreneurial phenomena. They argue that this more complete picture of entrepreneurial phenomena will likely come from scholars who undertake at least some trailblazing projects; from scholars who broaden the range of research questions, the potential outcomes of entrepreneurial action, and the selection and combination of research methods; and from researchers who avoid the endless debates about the margins of the field and its sub-fields or about whether one theoretical or philosophical lens is superior to another. This book offers suggestions for future research through a variety of topics including prosocial action, innovation, family business, sustainability and development, and the financial, social, and psychological costs of failure. It promises to make an important contribution to the development of the field and help academics, organizations, and society make useful contributions to the generation of entrepreneurial research.

This book is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license.In this book, the authors present a challenge for future research to build a stronger, more complete understanding of entrepreneurial phenomena. They argue that this more complete picture of entrepreneurial phenomena will likely come from scholars who undertake at least some trailblazing projects; from scholars who broaden the range of research questions, the potential outcomes of entrepreneurial action, and the selection and combination of research methods; and from researchers who avoid the endless debates about the margins of the field and its sub-fields or about whether one theoretical or philosophical lens is superior to another. This book offers suggestions for future research through a variety of topics including prosocial action, innovation, family business, sustainability and development, and the financial, social, and psychological costs of failure. It promises to make an important contribution to the development of the field and help academics, organizations, and society make useful contributions to the generation of entrepreneurial research.

This book offers helpful insight and advice on how doctoral students and junior faculty can succeed as an entrepreneurship scholar. It invites them to think entrepreneurially to identify research opportunities, manage the publication process, achieve excellence in the classroom, secure a faculty position, and build a research record worthy of promotion and tenure. Drawing from his experience as a research scholar, editor, review board member, mentor, and reviewer of many promotion and tenure cases, author Dean Shepherd offers strategies and other pieces of advice for navigating the obstacles that can prevent a successful scholarly career. This book provides an overview and roadmap to help entrepreneurship scholars achieve success, and stimulates thought and discussion for doctoral students and junior and senior faculty to consider as they look to develop the next generation in academia.

Identifying a new approach to disaster response: spontaneous, compassionate, and impromptu actions to alleviate suffering. In Spontaneous Venturing, Dean Shepherd and Trenton Williams identify and describe a new approach for responding to disaster and suffering: the local organizing of spontaneous, compassionate, and impromptu actions-the rapid emergence of a compassionate venture. This approach, termed by the authors "spontaneous venturing," can be more effective than the traditional "command-and-control" methods of large disaster relief organizations. It can customize and target resources and deliver them quickly, helping victims almost immediately. For example, during the catastrophic 2009 bushfires in Victoria, Australia-the focal disaster for the book-residents organized an impromptu relief center that collected and distributed urgently needed goods without red tape. Special bonds and friendships formed among the volunteers and victims; some were both volunteer and victim. Many victims were able to mobilize resources despite considerable personal losses. Shepherd and Williams describe the lasting impact of disaster and tell the stories of Victoria residents who organized in the aftermath of the bushfires. They consider the limitations of traditional disaster relief efforts and explain that when victims take action to help others, they develop behavioral, emotional, and assumptive resilience; venturing leads to social interaction, community connections, and other positive outcomes. Finally, they explore spontaneous venturing in a less-developed country, investigating the activities of Haitians after the devastating 2010 earthquake. The lesson for communities hit by disaster: find opportunities for compassionate action.

This book investigates an entrepreneurial approach to building new theories. It provides a rich understanding of how specific tools facilitate aspects of the theorizing process and offers a clearer big picture of the process of building important new entrepreneurship theories. The authors show that anthropomorphizing has been a critically important tool for developing influential entrepreneurship theories. They reveal how scholars build on their rich and highly accessible understanding of humans (i.e., the self and others) to make guesses and sense of entrepreneurial anomalies, articulate theoretical mechanisms to build more robust entrepreneurship theories, and create plausible stories that facilitate sensegiving. Further, they offer a framework that guides entrepreneurship scholars in finding a balance to maximize their contributions and guides reviewers and editors in managing the revise-and-resubmit process to advance the entrepreneurship field. Finally, they present lean scholarship as an approach to developing a portfolio of high-quality, high-impact papers. Lean scholarship starts with an entrepreneurial mindset and involves creating a minimum viable paper, exploring its validity, adding a plausible paper to one's portfolio, and managing the portfolio by periodically deciding whether to persevere, pivot, or terminate each paper. This seminal work will appeal to entrepreneurship researchers, both those new to the field as well as seasoned veterans, who want to learn more about the tools that can be used to generate new knowledge about new ventures and other entrepreneurship topics. This is an open access book.

This open acess book extends recent work on entrepreneurship in response to adverse events to explore entrepreneurial responses by people who face chronic adversity more deeply. Instead of focusing on the sort of responses intended to destroy the institutions that create and sustain chronic adversity, the authors are interested in how individuals use entrepreneurial action to find a way within these adverse constraints to improve their lives. They explore the positive outcomes arising from these entrepreneurial actions for the entrepreneurial actor and their family members as well as the negative consequences of these entrepreneurial responses to chronic adversity-outcomes that diminish others' well-being. The book relies on the lived experiences of those facing chronic adversity to provide insights into the bright-and dark-sides of entrepreneurship and the complexity of these relationships. It will serve as a valuable resource to scholars seeking to understand how entrepreneurial action is conceived and implemented by those facing challenging resource-poor environments.

This open acess book extends recent work on entrepreneurship in response to adverse events to explore entrepreneurial responses by people who face chronic adversity more deeply. Instead of focusing on the sort of responses intended to destroy the institutions that create and sustain chronic adversity, the authors are interested in how individuals use entrepreneurial action to find a way within these adverse constraints to improve their lives. They explore the positive outcomes arising from these entrepreneurial actions for the entrepreneurial actor and their family members as well as the negative consequences of these entrepreneurial responses to chronic adversity-outcomes that diminish others' well-being. The book relies on the lived experiences of those facing chronic adversity to provide insights into the bright-and dark-sides of entrepreneurship and the complexity of these relationships. It will serve as a valuable resource to scholars seeking to understand how entrepreneurial action is conceived and implemented by those facing challenging resource-poor environments.

This book investigates an entrepreneurial approach to building new theories. It provides a rich understanding of how specific tools facilitate aspects of the theorizing process and offers a clearer big picture of the process of building important new entrepreneurship theories. The authors show that anthropomorphizing has been a critically important tool for developing influential entrepreneurship theories. They reveal how scholars build on their rich and highly accessible understanding of humans (i.e., the self and others) to make guesses and sense of entrepreneurial anomalies, articulate theoretical mechanisms to build more robust entrepreneurship theories, and create plausible stories that facilitate sensegiving. Further, they offer a framework that guides entrepreneurship scholars in finding a balance to maximize their contributions and guides reviewers and editors in managing the revise-and-resubmit process to advance the entrepreneurship field. Finally, they present lean scholarship as an approach to developing a portfolio of high-quality, high-impact papers. Lean scholarship starts with an entrepreneurial mindset and involves creating a minimum viable paper, exploring its validity, adding a plausible paper to one's portfolio, and managing the portfolio by periodically deciding whether to persevere, pivot, or terminate each paper. This seminal work will appeal to entrepreneurship researchers, both those new to the field as well as seasoned veterans, who want to learn more about the tools that can be used to generate new knowledge about new ventures and other entrepreneurship topics. This is an open access book.

This eighth volume in the series Advances in Entrepreneurship, Firm Emergence and Growth focuses on international entrepreneurship. We are fortunate to draw on scholars both new to the field as well as some of those who founded this unique speciality. Topics include: international social capital, technology sharing and foreign market learning in internationalizing entrepreneurial firms; export performance of new ventures in the Finnish and Indian Software industries; institutional and economic influences on Internet adoption and accelerated firm internationalization; the role of strategic adaptation and networking capabilities in explaining new venture growth in international markets; illustration of the ???small world??? phenomenon to discuss network analysis tools that can be applied to international entrepreneurship research; an institutional perspective and cross-national comparison of incubated firms; a discussion of the means to achieving excellence in international entrepreneurship education; the export intensity of venture capital backed companies; and capability development, learning and growth in international entrepreneurial firms within China.

These papers provide an ongoing exploration of the major current theoretical and methodological efforts in the fields of entrepreneurship, small and family business growth and firm emergence and growth.