In the study we examine whether external entrepreneurs show differences compared with inventor entrepreneurs in the way they interact and network with others in the start-up process, and – if so – how these differences become manifested in their venturing efforts. The study uses a case study design of four university spin-offs across different industries and development stages originating from a Swedish technical university. In general, our findings emphasize the critical role of incubators for supporting the commercialization and diffusion of technology as they bridge structural holes between research oriented and commercial networks. However, we also find evidence that the external entrepreneur model contains network elements that on the whole makes it more effective in the venturing process. As such, the external entrepreneur model seems to be a highly potent technology transfer mechanism with potential to orchestrate efforts to commercialize public research for the benefit of industry and broader society.

Alumni engagement plays a crucial role in driving innovation in university-based entrepreneurship ecosystems. We employ an inductive, informant-centric research design to explore the processual dynamics surrounding the early alumni engagement of entrepreneurship graduates and how these translate into enterprising behaviors that foster technology transfer and knowledge-intensive entrepreneurship. Our inductive analysis advances the theoretical understanding of the beginning phases of the alumni engagement process among entrepreneurship graduates, the key drivers that make them gravitate toward different forms of alumni engagement, and the role and impact of their engagement in the surrounding ecosystem. © 2022 The Author(s). Published with license by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to develop a conceptual model that explains how learning processes at the team level connect with individual and organizational levels of learning in technology-based ventures, thereby influencing the evolution of innovation capabilities in the entrepreneurial process.

Design/methodology/approach: The 4I organizational learning framework is used as an overarching theoretical structure to acknowledge entrepreneurial learning as a dynamic process that operate on multiple levels in technology-based ventures. Embedded in this logic, research on team learning is integrated into this theorizing to examine how learning processes at the team level bridge and connect with learning processes operating at individual and organizational levels.

Findings: The conceptual model identifies different sets of team learning processes critical for the routinization and evolution of innovation capabilities in technology-based ventures. In this respect, the conceptual model advances the scholarly understanding of entrepreneurial learning as a dynamic process operating across multiple levels in technology-based ventures.

Originality/value: By conceptualizing how individual streams of experiences over time become institutionalized via interaction, conversation and dialogue, the paper provides novel insights into the critical role of team learning for bridging individual and organizational levels of learning in the entrepreneurial learning process. © 2017, © Emerald Publishing Limited.

We employ bibliometric methods to provide insights and quantitative data about academic publications on sustainable entrepreneurship education in field-specific entrepreneurship journals. We identify 147 publications in journals acknowledged as Entrepreneurship and small business management outlets in the Academic Journal Guide (AJG) 2021. The analysis reveals that field-specific entrepreneurship journals play a significant role in driving conversations on sustainable entrepreneurship education. However, there are selective citation practices that concentrate attention on a few high-impact journals. The analysis also identifies four conceptual themes prevalent in the field, focusing on entrepreneurial intention, small business success factors, social entrepreneurship, and institutional aspects of sustainable entrepreneurship education. Additionally, the analysis highlights influential works and research themes within sustainable entrepreneurship education. Overall, our review and analysis emphasize the need for a multidimensional approach that combines bibliometric analysis with qualitative assessments for a comprehensive evaluation of the field.

This study adopts a configurational approach to discover conditions common to graduates from venture creation programs who take a particular learning pathway to high entrepreneurial passion. Our theoretical framework identifies two primary sources of experiential learning (direct and vicarious experience) and three temporal vantage points (pre-, peri-, and post-education) conducive to such conditions. Employing fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) on a sample of graduates from a Swedish university yields four configurations of present or absent conditions that are sufficient for producing high entrepreneurial passion. A uniting feature across all four configurations is the interplay between direct and vicarious experiences with core conditions closer rather than farther away in time. The identified configurations resulting from fsQCA thus imply intricate interdependencies of time-specific direct and vicarious experiences attributed to high entrepreneurial passion. © 2024 The Author(s)

Purpose: The purpose of the paper is to explore knowledge accumulation in research on pedagogy in entrepreneurship education, with particular attention to how core journal outlets, core topics and core scholarly works have developed over time.

Design/methodology/approach: The authors combine a systematic literature review technique and bibliometric analysis to depict the development of this stream of research in the period 1995–2018.

Findings: Findings from the analyses suggests that research addressing pedagogy in entrepreneurship education has developed into a coherent research theme over the past decade, with a noticeable cognitive structure in core research topics and core works, as well as a number of core journal outlets for debates and dissemination of findings.

Research limitations/implications: The study is anchored in a bibliometric research tradition and influenced by the strengths and weaknesses of this approach.

Originality/value: The paper provided contributes to the understanding of knowledge accumulation in research addressing pedagogy in entrepreneurial education. © 2020, Emerald Publishing Limited.

We conduct a systematic literature review of research on entrepreneurship education published in the period 1980-2017 to examine how entrepreneurship education research has developed as a scholarly field since the 1980s. Our search enables us to synthesize and analyse 334 articles published in 62 peer-reviewed academic journals. Two major observations emerge. First, entrepreneurship journals are over time playing a decreasing role as primary outlets for communicating and disseminating entrepreneurship education research. Second, entrepreneurship education research has over the past decades continued to be an interesting and highly relevant topic. However, the migration of entrepreneurship education research from “mainstream” entrepreneurship conferences and journals, combined with its closeness to (educational) practice, seems to have produced a practice-oriented research agenda largely guided by empirical descriptions, thus compromising some of its academic legitimacy.

The growth of entrepreneurship education has played an important role in building up an academic infrastructure for entrepreneurship research. In this chapter we identify exemplary European contributions to entrepreneurship education research and practice. We discuss the evolution of entrepreneurship education as a scholarly field in Europe with particular emphasis on its social infrastructure and cognitive development. Thereafter we use a systematic literature review to identify important contributions made by European-based scholars to entrepreneurship education research published in peer-reviewed academic journals. Based on the review we identify top research journals with the most published articles on entrepreneurship education, the most cited articles, and the most influential scholars. We end the chapter with a description of the European Entrepreneurship Education Award (EEEA) together with summary analyses of the work of the six Award Laureates.

In this study, we contribute to research on the history of entrepreneurship education scholarship in the 1990s and early 2000s by focusing on the Internationalizing Entrepreneurship Education and Training Conference (IntEnt conference). Acknowledging the pioneering initiative of the IntEnt conference in a formative phase of the development of entrepreneurship as a teaching subject, our study delves into the scholarly field’s early collaborative endeavors and knowledge expansion. We collected descriptive data on the conference’s evolution by reaching out to conference hosts and key delegates. Additionally, we identified edited proceedings for content and bibliometric analyses of annual conference papers. The findings illuminate the role of the IntEnt conference in fostering an emerging academic infrastructure for international collaborations and knowledge exchange on entrepreneurship education. In this regard, the study provides a deeper understanding of the field’s evolutionary trajectory. © 2024 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Contemporary entrepreneurial education (EE) has global reach and impact, with a growing number of entrepreneurship courses, specializations, and degrees in all parts of the world. There is no longer a question of the significance and demand for EE in the higher education system. At the same time, the interest in scientific knowledge and proven experience of “what works” has accelerated, resulting in a rapid growth in the number of scholars and research-based publications conversing vividly about the field. This chapter elaborates on the historical evolution of EE as a scholarly field. First, an overview of important milestones and major events that shaped the field is provided. Second, by focusing on the development over the last three decades, the authors present an overview of the advances that have occurred within the field in terms of practice, social, and research-based aspects. The historical review shows how EE began in, but gradually separated from entrepreneurship as a field, which can be observed in the development of research outlets, meeting places, and teaching practice. Consequently, this historical review can serve as a point of departure for showing how the field has emerged and how knowledge has been developed and accumulated over time. The authors believe that this review can be helpful for scholars, particularly new entrants such as PhD students and other scholars entering the EE field, to learn from and contextualize their own research-based historical insight.

The importance of high-growth entrepreneurship is widely acknowledged. Previous studies, however, have shown that only a few rapidly growing firms manage to sustain their growth trajectory over long periods. This paper addresses high-growth entrepreneurship in the Scania region of Sweden. The authors analyse a sample of high-growth firms and find that only a minority exhibit sustained high growth. They also compare sustainable high-growth firms with temporary high-growth firms, using unique data about their innovation and R&D activities. The analysis shows that sustainable high-growth firms are more often involved in activities aimed at developing and improving existing production processes, and are also less committed to international operations in new foreign markets. The results can be used to advise policy makers on how to understand and support high-growth entrepreneurship in regional innovation systems.

The recognition of new venture opportunities has been acknowledged as one of the most important abilities of successful entrepreneurs. Explaining the recognition of new venture opportunities has thus become an important element of the scholarly study of entrepreneurship. Building on this stream of research, we present a study of the influence of prior industry and functional work experience on entrepreneurs’ ability to recognize new venture opportunities. As a theoretical point of departure we acknowledge two alternative lines of reasoning in the literature as explanations of opportunity recognition; the expert thesis and the intersectional thesis. Statistical analysis is made on a sample of 291 Swedish individuals with recent experience of starting up a new venture. In all, the overall results give ample support for the intersectional thesis. The findings suggest that entrepreneurs with experience across different industries and work functions have an enhanced ability to recognize new venture opportunities. On the other hand, we do not find any support for the expert thesis. The findings show no association between deeper experience within a particular industry or work function and generating more new venture opportunities. In addition, a more fine grained analysis of the type of business opportunity recognized reveal supporting evidence that experience across functional areas is positively associated with more innovative business opportunities.

This paper follows a behavioral perspective on boards and governance in exploring the influence of board control on corporate innovation in small technology-based firms. An analysis of 135 Swedish technology-based firms suggests that board involvement in decision control may influence corporate innovation. The results suggest that board involvement in strategic decision control is positively associated with process innovation, while board involvement in financial decision control is positively associated with organizational innovation. No association is found between board involvement in decision control and product innovation.

This paper follows a behavioural perspective on boards and governance in exploring the influence of board control on corporate innovation in small technology-based firms. An analysis of 135 Swedish technology-based firms suggests that board involvement in decision control may influence corporate innovation. The empirical results show that board involvement in strategic decision control is positively associated with process innovation, while board involvement in financial decision control is positively associated with organizational innovation. No association is found between board involvement in decision control and product innovation. Overall, the findings suggest that board involvement in decision control may promote corporate innovation but that different kinds of decision control influence different forms of innovation.

In this article we examine the influence of board control on innovation in small technology-based firms. An analysis of 135 Swedish technology-based firms suggests that board involvement in the control over strategig decisions and outcomes can have a significant influence on innovation. The empirical results suggest that board strategic control involvement is positively associated with process innovation, while board involvement in financial control is positively associated with organizational innovation. No association is found between board control and product innovation. In all, our findings contribute to a better understanding of how bords may contribute to value creation in small technology-based firms and also suggest some areas where further scholarly inquiry is highly warranted.

The influence of entrepreneurs' career motives is examined on two alternative modes of decision-making logic; causation and effectuation. Based on Sarasvathy's (Acad Manage Rev 26(2):243-288, 2001) seminal study, causation is defined as a decision-making process that focuses on what ought to be done given predetermined goals and possible means, and effectuation as a decision-making process emphasizing the question of what can be done given possible means and imagined ends. Analysis suggests that entrepreneurs who identify themselves with linear or expert career motives have a higher preference for causal decision-making logic. Entrepreneurs who identify themselves with spiral or transitory career motives have a higher preference for effectual decision-making logic. In addition, indications that prior start-up experience moderates the relationship between career motives and effectual decision-making logic for spiral-minded entrepreneurs is found. The overall results give ample support for the assumption that entrepreneurs' career motives influence their decision-making.

The relation between entrepreneurial learning and innovation is poorly understood – especially with respect to how entrepreneurs build up their capability to create new ventures. In this chapter we employ arguments from theories of experiential learning to examine the extent to which entrepreneurs’ prior career experience is associated with entrepreneurial knowledge that can be productively used in the new venture creation process. We relate entrepreneurial knowledge to two distinct learning outcomes: the ability to (1) recognize new venture opportunities, and (2) cope with liabilities of newness. Based on analysis of data from 291 Swedish entrepreneurs, we provide novel insights into how and why entrepreneurs differ in their experientially acquired abilities in different phases of the new venture creation process. © 2012, IGI Global.

A growing body of research suggests that a firm’s governance system can significantly impact the long-term value creative potential of an enterprise by disciplining and encouraging organizational efforts to pursue risky entrepreneurial projects. Following this stream of research, we present a study of the impact of ownership and board governance on entrepreneurship in small technology-based firms. Entrepreneurship was measured by the firms’ emphasis to take an entrepreneurial strategic posture (EP), encompassing a risk-taking, innovative and proactive competitive orientation. Statistical analysis on a sample of 135 small technology-based firms shows that the level of executive ownership has no significant effect on the emphasis on EP. However, controlling for the level of ownership held by the founder of the firm reveals a significant and negative influence on firms’ commitment to EP. With respect to board governance, we find support for that a higher board involvement in networking activities by board members encourage EP efforts, while there was no significant effects of higher board monitoring. In all, the findings give ample support for the argument that variations in ownership and board governance have a significant influence on the entrepreneurial strategic posture of small technology-based firms.

Purpose – This paper seeks to develop an integrated framework to examine how entrepreneurs' work experience is associated with the generation of new business ideas. The framework combines human capital theory with theory and research on entrepreneurial learning.

Design/methodology/approach – A statistical analysis on a sample of 291 Swedish entrepreneurs is conducted.

Findings – The paper finds that a learning mind-set that favors exploration is the strongest predictor of the generation of new business ideas. It also finds that breadth in functional work experience seems to favor the generation of new business ideas while deep industry work experience is negatively related to new business idea generation. In addition, the paper finds indications that a learning mind-set that favors exploration is required to more fully benefit from investments in human capital.

Research limitations/implications – The study's findings add to knowledge of how investments in human capital via work experience, and the employment of a learning mindset that favors exploration, influence performance outcomes in the early stages of the entrepreneurial process.

Practical implications – The study's findings suggest that entrepreneurs should develop and nurture a learning mind-set that favors exploration as this will increase their ability to generate more new business ideas. Moreover, movements across different functional work areas appear to have great potential as sources of ideas for new products and markets.

Originality/value – Prior empirical studies have not taken individual learning preferences among entrepreneurs into account. Nor have they explicitly tested the effect of depth versus breadth in work experience. The paper thus provides novel insights with respect to how these factors interact in the process of generating new business ideas. © Emerald Group Publishing Limited.

This study offers novel insights into how university spin-offs contribute to triple helix dynamics and the evolutionary processes of industrial renewal in regional innovation ecosystems. We analyse three groups of technology intensive start-ups: university spin-offs, corporate spin-offs, and independent technology start-ups. We compare and analyse various characteristics, functions, and processes among the three groups using primary data from a questionnaire survey conducted at 341 young firms operating in two technology intensive sectors in Sweden. Our findings suggest that university spin-offs differ from the other two groups with respect to their contribution to triple helix dynamics in regional innovation ecosystems. University spin-offs cooperate more closely with universities, conduct more in-house R&D, purchase more R&D services, and offer more innovative products/services in the introduction stage of their industry life cycles. © 2019 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.

Entrepreneurial high-growth firms contribute significantly to the economy by scaling up new innovative products, services, and business models as well as creating jobs and fostering economic growth. In this study we examine the incidence of sustainable high growth entrepreneurship in a sample of Swedish firms that have previously been experiencing rapid growth. We acknowledge growth as a multi-dimensional phenomenon by distinguishing between employee growth and sales growth. Overall, the statistical analysis suggests that the different growth trajectories shown by firms can be related to different industry life cycle positions. We also find differences related to the time that has passed since the firm were experiencing rapid growth. In addition, ex-gazelles operating in knowledge intensive sectors or with a higher degree of novelty in their market offer are not more likely to show a subsequent period of growth. Copyright © 2016, Academy of Management

In this study we explore and analyse a virtual network-centred incubator model called the Water Innovation Accelerator (WIN). The incubator model has been designed and implemented in Sweden to enable and orchestrate water-related innovative solutions by connecting different players via organized networks. Framed by theory and research on open innovation, incubation models, and entrepreneurial networks we provide an overview of the overall design, management and organization of WIN. We also analyse and assess the working and performance of WIN with respect to its purpose to aid the development and market uptake of water related innovative solutions via its entrepreneurial network. Our findings offer theoretical and empirical insights to researchers, policy makers and incubation managers that may aid current and future efforts to accelerate water innovation. Copyright © 2016, Academy of Management

There has been a significant rise in the number of patents originating from academic environments. However, current conceptualizations of academic patents provide a largely homogenous approach to define this entrepreneurial form of technology transfer. In this study we develop a novel categorization framework that identifies three subsets of academic patents which are conceptually distinct from each other. By applying the categorization framework on a unique database of Swedish patents we furthermore find support for its usefulness in detecting underlying differences in technology, opportunity, and commercialization characteristics among the three subsets of academic patents.

In the study we develop and test a novel theoretical framework that examine how innovation speed in technology start-ups are influenced by the uncertain character of the technologies and markets that underlie patented inventions. We rely in our framework on previous conceptual and empirical work to distinguish between perceived state, effect and response uncertainty and to hypothesize about their potential differential impact on innovation speed. In addition, our framework also seeks to explain how the ability of the technology entrepreneur to spot and seize new business opportunities influences the uncertainty-speed relationship in start-up settings. We tested our framework and hypotheses on a unique and comprehensive dataset with detailed information about patented inventions commercialized in start-ups by independent technology entrepreneurs in Sweden. Overall, our results show the value and importance of distinguishing between different kinds of perceived uncertainty when theorizing about the process of developing and commercializing patented inventions in new technology start-ups. Moreover, our empirical findings suggest that the ability to spot and seize new business opportunities can be both an asset and a liability in this process.

In this study, we examine individual patent holders and the fate of their inventions. A unique database consisting of over 800 private individuals who have obtained decision rights over a new technology in Sweden is used to analyse how opportunity and individual level characteristics are related to the likelihood that patented inventions are commercialised in a new or existing small firm. Our findings show that the likelihood that patent holders commercialise inventions through such an entrepreneurial mode is influenced by opportunity novelty and the perceived entrepreneurial ability of the individual. © 2013 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.

The past decade has seen a plethora of policy initiatives that seek to bridge the chasm between investments in public R&D and its effective diffusion in society. This article uses a case study approach to explore and contrast the effectiveness of different entrepreneur models in financing and developing university spin-offs (USOs). The distinction between different entrepreneur models is based on whether the USOs are championed by university employees that seek to commercialize their own inventions or by external entrepreneurs who are not the original inventors but with acquired rights to develop and commercialize technology originating from university research. Our analysis show that external entrepreneurs have a different mind-set that makes them better equipped to deal with opportunities and obstacles related to financing and developing USOs. However, the development paths of USOs are embedded in a more complex web of path-dependent interactions, where the championship of the USO becomes interwoven with existing and emerging social relationships and opportunities, and challenges related to the technology that is commercialized. © 2012 Copyright Taylor and Francis Group, LLC.

The current state of the water and sanitation sector has put water-related innovations high on the global policy agenda. However, the systemic complexity that typically surrounds such contexts call for actionable knowledge of how to enable and orchestrate innovative solutions by connecting different players via organized networks. In this study we explore and analyse the Water Innovation Accelerator, which is a virtual network-centred incubator model designed and implemented in Sweden. Framed by theory and research on open innovation, incubation models, and entrepreneurial networks we provide an analysis of the design, working and performance of the Water Innovation Accelerator. In sum, our findings provide empirical support for virtual accelerators as an effective means to aid the development and market uptake of water related innovative solutions. Its overall effectiveness builds on its ability to bring private and public actors with different assets and competencies together via its entrepreneurial network, where the incubator team play a critical role for identifying and encouraging network-embedded innovation opportunities. However, the perceived effectiveness of the acceleration process for SMEs seems to be contingent on whether they are positioned in later stages of the innovation process, as well as their proximity to the incubator network. In these respects, the study provides valuable insights that may aid researchers, incubation managers and policy makers in current and future efforts to accelerate water innovation.

In this study, we test the knowledge corridor theory as an explanation of university professors' involvement in the early stages of research commercialisation. A statistical analysis was made of a sample of full professors from the engineering, natural sciences and medical faculties at a large public university in Sweden. The analysis shows that not only entrepreneurial experience but also private sector work experience significantly influence the ability to identify and develop business ideas based on research. Moreover, the analysis shows that research–based business idea generation increases faster for professors with private sector work experience who as well have more time for research in their positions.

There has been an increasing interest in the determinants and outcomes of successful technology transfer and commercialization of research results. In this study we test the validity of the “knowledge corridor” thesis for explaining the involvement of university professors’ in the early stages of research commercialization. Statistical analysis on a sample of 86 respondents from engineering, natural science and medical faculties in a large Swedish university shows that both entrepreneurial and private industry experience significantly influence their ability to spot and generate business ideas in their research. Moreover, we find that research based business idea generation increase at a faster rate for professors with private sector work experience who have more time for research in their positions. The article ends with a discussion of our empirical findings together with its implications for support activities related to technology transfer and commercialization of research results.

Recent calls to close the rigour-relevance gap in business school education have suggested incorporating principles and ideas from action learning in small business management education. In this paper we discuss how business simulation exercises can be used as a platform to trigger students' learning by providing them with a platform where they can merge theory with practice. We provide theoretical arguments accompanied by illustrations to show how such initiatives can create a more student-centred teaching structure than what is usually practised in contemporary business school education. This may in turn work as a potential bridge between the safe harbour of traditional classroom teaching and the more chaotic and complex world of managerial practice.

There is limited understanding of how education initiatives geared toward faculty and support staff can foster a capacity for long-term and integrated societal engagement and collaboration within higher education institutions. Using the experiences from a cross-disciplinary pilot course in Sweden, the current study aims to identify features that explicate how skills and academic rigor for engaging in societal collaboration can be developed toward a “reflexive scholarship of societal collaboration.” Based on a case study of the course, we identify the need for (i) theoretical orientation, (ii) collective reflections among diverse participants, and (iii) application of gained knowledge in real-world contexts. Building on the experiences from the pilot course, we explore and discuss the participants’ reflections on how their partaking in the course may support a reflexive scholarship of societal collaboration. Our study is relevant to managers and policymakers interested in nurturing long-term and integrated collaborations between academia and various societal actors. © The Author(s) 2024.

Collaboration between academia and society has become a key priority for many higher education institutions (HEIs). In Sweden, this is partly driven by political calls to secure the long-term provision of knowledge, innovation and competitiveness. At the system and institutional level, responses to this are reflected in governance structures and strategic documents. However, those strategic responses often fall short and attempts to organise for collaboration are often met with scepticism, and, in practice, micro-level changes are slow. This paper asks why that is the case by reflecting on the experiences gained from initiating and anchoring a course on societal collaboration at a Swedish HEI. We analyse the experiences from this bottom-up initiative by building on the notion of reflexivity. Our study contributes to research on managing and organising collaboration at HEIs by highlighting and illustrating the need to adopt a scientific approach – to use scientific knowledge – and engage (more) in reflexivity when organising to ensure societal collaboration. Efforts to produce collaboration cannot be expected to be solved by ‘someother’, but require strategy to be aligned with practice. We conclude our reflexive inquiry with implications for research and practice. Copyright (c) 2023 Anna Jonsson, Eugenia Perez-Vico, Diamanto Politis

Purpose: In this study, the authors develop knowledge and insights on how the perception of interestingness influences the structure and focus of conversations in entrepreneurial education (EE) research. In particular, the authors elaborate on what is perceived as interesting among different subgroups of EE researchers, and not least, how EE researchers can identify and engage in scholarly conversation within the field. Design/methodology/approach: The study is based on a unique database with web-based responses from 465 EE researchers from around the world. The authors conduct analyses of both open-ended and closed questions. The open-ended questions are analyzed by inductive categorization. The closed questions are subject to factor and cluster analyses. Findings: The findings suggest that EE research is a topic-oriented field, characterized by a strong focus on novel and challenging research issues. In addition, the field is individualistic and fragmented, and the perception of interestingness differs between five subgroups of EE researchers, whose members have a somewhat different perception of interestingness. Accordingly, the authors also find different core conversations going on within the field. Obviously, these conversations tend to be triggered by the field's obsession with novelty and challenging research, but several conversations are related to practically relevant research, as well as methodological and theoretical discussions. Originality/value: This is the first study to elaborate on the perception of interestingness among EE researchers and the conversations going on within the field. In the study the authors have explored the characteristics of EE research based on the perception of interestingness among the researchers within the field. In this respect, this study contributes insights on how current and aspiring EE researchers can find and build scholarly conversations embedded in passionate interest, while concurrently disseminating and accumulating knowledge on EE together with like-minded peers. © 2022, Hans Landström, Jonas Gabrielsson, Diamanto Politis and Roger Sørheim.

Entrepreneurial education as a scientific field can be regarded as an emerging and growing area of research. In this study we pay particular attention to the community of scholars involved in entrepreneurial education. The aim of the paper is to explore how scholars within the field have integrated into larger scholarly communities. Based on a unique database and web-based responses from 313 entrepreneurial education scholars, we demonstrate that scholars within the field exhibit great variety in their scientific outlooks and appreciation of communication systems. However, we find that the field consists of four scholarly communities characterized by a specific combination of scholarly inspirations, favorite meeting places, and publication channels, of which three clusters are anchored in the field of entrepreneurship, and only one cluster shows a strong entrepreneurial education research identity. Finally, the results indicate a low consolidation across the scholarly communities, which highlights the need for reflections on how the field can achieve increased integration and cohesion in the future.

Purpose: Despite a growing interest in both women and university academic entrepreneurship, there are very few studies addressing women’s academic entrepreneurship. The authors address this gap by focusing on university incubators for women’s academic entrepreneurship. The purpose of this paper is to examine and analyze the significance of university incubators for the promotion and development of women’s academic business start-ups.

Design/methodology/approach: The authors use a unique Swedish database for multivariate statistical tests on the performance of groups of women- and men-led ventures, as well as on groups of women incubatees. The database includes data for over 1,400 ventures, out of which 210 ventures are by women entrepreneurs.

Findings: About 15 percent of the ventures in the incubators are started and managed by women entrepreneurs. Several significant differences were found between the groups, but the overall conclusion is that the Swedish incubators in this study do not show any evidence of being able to decrease the gender gap in the commercialization of university science.

Originality/value: The study makes three important contributions. First, it applies a multilevel design that takes into consideration the relationship between individual firms and the incubator environment. Second, the authors conducted their analysis on women academic entrepreneurs who start their ventures in incubators, which means that the authors are concerned with a specific knowledge-intensive context, where men and women entrepreneurs possess fairly similar levels of human capital. Third, the unique database allows statistical analysis on a large data set, which provides research-based knowledge about the conditions for entrepreneurial career development among women in academic environments. © Emerald Group Publishing Limited.

The purpose of the paper is to advance the scholarly understanding of how different combinations of proximities in collaborative R&D projects drive radical innovation. We use fuzzy set Qualitative Comparative Analysis to explore how configurations of geographical, cognitive, social and institutional proximity lead to radical innovations in collaborative R&D projects. The analysis generates three solutions. Each solution includes either cognitive, organizational or geographical distance, and all include social proximity. Thus, our results indicate that social proximity is central but not sufficient for radical innovation in R&D projects as it must be combined with a distance in another dimension. This shows that even though distance is a necessity to achieve radical innovation it seems difficult to cope with distance in more than one dimension at a time. The results contribute to novel insights in an area where previous research has generated contradictory and ambiguous results.

Business angels have been highlighted as important stakeholders for potential high-growth ventures. Extant empirical research provides evidence that they not only contribute with money but also bring added value to the ventures in which they have invested. However, despite the reported benefits of the value added provided by these investors there are very few studies that try to conceptualize this important issue. The present study seeks to meet this shortcoming by presenting a review of literature and research on business angels and value added. The overall objective is to recognize the range of value added activities that business angels have been reported to perform, aggregate the findings into a set of distinct but complementary value adding roles, and then link these roles to theoretical perspectives that explain why they have the potential to contribute to added value. Four different value added roles performed by informal investors are presented together with an explanation of how they can be seen as complementary to each other. The following discussion is then used to guide future studies of business angels and value added towards areas where our knowledge is still limited.

This paper presents a study of the process through which entrepreneurs transform experience into knowledge. By bringing theories of experiential learning into the field of entrepreneurship, a model of determinants of exploration and exploitation in the process of entrepreneurial learning is constructed and tested on a sample of 291 Swedish entrepreneurs. The findings suggest that entrepreneurs with a higher preference for an effectual reasoning and with a transitory career orientation show a significantly higher emphasis on an explorative mode of transforming career experience into knowledge. Similarly, entrepreneurs with a higher preference for a causational reasoning and with an expert career orientation show a significantly higher emphasis on an exploitative mode of transformation. The overall results give ample support for the overall argument that entrepreneurial learning can be conceived as an experiential process where entrepreneurs develop knowledge both by exploiting previous skills and knowledge as well as exploring new possibilities in the ventures they are involved in.

This paper aims to present a study of the role of prior start-up experience as a source of learning in the entrepreneurial process. Three learning outcomes are examined with respect to a comparison between habitual and novice entrepreneurs: skills for coping with liabilities of newness, preference for effectual reasoning, and attitudes towards failure. This is an empirical study based on statistical analysis conducted on a sample of 231 Swedish entrepreneurs that have started a new independent firm in 2004. The findings suggest that habitual and novice entrepreneurs differ significantly with regard to several interesting aspects of the hypothesized dimensions. The findings provide a better understanding of start-up experience as a source of learning and its effects on the skills, preferences and attitudes of habitual entrepreneurs. Previous research has suggested that prior start-up experience is an important source of entrepreneurial learning, but has not put much effort into explaining how this particular type of experience influences various learning outcomes on an individual level. The present study advances these suggestions by showing how prior start-up experience influences entrepreneurs' skills for coping with liabilities of newness, effectual reasoning and attitudes towards failures. Moreover, the study contributes to existing literature and research on entrepreneurial learning by developing explorative measures of individual learning outcomes that have been highlighted as influenced by prior experience in recent entrepreneurship research.

Why are some individuals more successful in recognizing and exploiting new venture opportunities than others? The common view is that successful entrepreneurs have acquired and developed specific types of knowledge through their previous career experiences, which in turn facilitate their involvement in the entrepreneurial process from opportunity recognition to opportunity exploitation. If this is true, how can we understand the learning mechanisms that underlie this experiential learning process? The overall purpose of this dissertation is to develop concepts that enhances our understanding of entrepreneurship as an experiential learning process, and based on this development to empirically test a conceptual framework that explains how individuals develop entrepreneurial knowledge through experiences acquired in their careers. To meet the overall purpose five individual studies have been conducted. The empirical data consists of both personal interviews as well as a large-scale mail questionnaire on Swedish entrepreneurs. The overall findings imply that entrepreneurship should be conceived as a lifelong learning process that proceeds both before and after the initial start-up of a new venture. This means that the sequences of events whereby individuals enter an entrepreneurial career and learn how to recognize and exploit new ventures opportunities needs to be understood in the light of individuals? career experiences as a whole. Entrepreneurial learning is consequently not something that only occurs in typical entrepreneurial settings but also in the everyday working life of individuals well before they even think of being involved in new venture creation. Moreover, the overall findings suggest the need to reconsider the predominant view on entrepreneurial learning which presumes a direct link between a particular experience and the knowledge gained from this experience. The empirical results show that different types of career experiences lead to different types of entrepreneurial knowledge, and that the knowledge developed also depends on the entrepreneurs? preferred mode of transforming experience to knowledge, i.e. whether they prefer putting their emphasis on exploring new possibilities or exploiting their pre-existent knowledge. Consequently, there is a need to distinguish between the two concepts "experience" and "knowledge" if we are to understand entrepreneurship as an experiential learning process.

The present article seeks to advance the theoretical knowledge of entrepreneurial learning by reviewing and synthesizing available research into a conceptual framework that explains the process of entrepreneurial learning as an experiential process. The framework identifies three main components in the process of entrepreneurial learning: entrepreneurs' career experience, the transformation process, and entrepreneurial knowledge in terms of effectiveness in recognizing and acting on entrepreneurial opportunities and coping with the liabilities of newness. Based on the arguments in the article, five major propositions were developed to refine our understanding of entrepreneurial learning. Finally, theoretical and practical implications were discussed.

Extant research suggests that entrepreneurs who have been involved in starting up a new venture also seem to be more successful and effective in starting up and managing their second and third organization (see e.g. Lamont 1972; Vesper 1980; Ronstadt 1988; Starr and Bygrave 1992; Wright et al. 1998). If this is true, what expertise and special knowledge do these entrepreneurs gain from doing their first start-up, and how do entrepreneurs develop their personal experiences into such expertise and special knowledge? Considering that entrepreneurship is a field of research that has not been particularly well studied in relation to the process of learning (Agnedal 1999; Rae and Carswell 2001; Ravasi et al. 2004), it is not surprising that these and similar questions have remained largely unanswered within this field.

In this paper we employ theories of experiential learning to examine why some entrepreneurs have developed a more positive attitude towards failures compared to others. The empirical findings support our guiding proposition that more favourable attitudes towards failing can be learned through entrepreneurs' life and work. Our results suggest that previous start up experience is strongly associated with a more positive attitude towards failure. Moreover, we also find that experience from closing down a business is associated with a more positive attitude towards failure. In sum, our findings add to our knowledge of why some entrepreneurs have a more positive attitude towards failures compared to others. It also provides some general implications for our understanding of entrepreneurial learning as an experiential process.

Purpose

– This paper employs theories of experiential learning to examine why some entrepreneurs have developed a more positive attitude towards failures compared to others.Design/methodology/approach – The paper conducts statistical analysis on a sample of 231 Swedish entrepreneurs that have started new independent firms in 2004.

Findings

– The empirical findings support the guiding proposition that more favourable attitudes towards failure could be learned through entrepreneurs' life and work. The results suggest that previous start up experience is strongly associated with a more positive attitude towards failure. The paper also finds that experience from closing down a business is associated with a more positive attitude towards failure. In addition, a more fine‐grained analysis suggests that experience from closing down a business due to reasons of poor performance is a highly valuable source of learning while closure due to more personal reasons does not lead to the same result.

Research limitations/implications

– In sum, the findings add to the knowledge of why some entrepreneurs have a more positive attitude towards failure compared to others. It also provides some general implications for the understanding of entrepreneurial learning as an experiential process.

Practical implications

– A positive attitude toward failure might be a significant asset for entrepreneurs as it might help them to deal with and learn from their mistakes and to move forward. The results indicate that the attitudes toward failure are not homogeneous among entrepreneurs. Rather, this attitude can, at least to some degree, be influenced due to new experiences and new information.

Originality/value

– The paper provides novel insights with regard to the role that critical career experiences can play for the development of entrepreneurs' attitudes towards failure. © Emerald Group Publishing Limited.

Researchers have recently showed an increasing interest in understanding entrepreneurship as an experiential learning process. In this article, we investigate the role of prior career experience for the development of entrepreneurial knowledge, i.e., knowledge that facilitates for individuals to recognize and act on opportunities as well as to organize and manage new ventures. Based on an analysis of 291 Swedish entrepreneurs we find links between various career experiences and the development of entrepreneurial knowledge. In addition we also find evidence that the entrepreneurs’ preference for exploring new possibilities vs. exploiting pre-existing knowledge are important to consider to explain this process. The study ends with a discussion of the findings, together with suggestions for future research.