Chapter 4: From Traits to Rates: An Ecological Perspective on Organizational Foundings

Entrepreneurship involves mobilizing resources in pursuit of opportunities, resulting in the founding of a new business. Some researchers have looked at the personal attributes of founders, asking what makes them different from other people. We call this the “traits” approach. Other researchers have taken a different path, focusing on the environmental conditions – social, economic, and political – generating variations in the number of foundings over time. We call this the “rates” approach. The approaches are complementary, as each draws on different research traditions in the social sciences. The traits approach implies a microlevel of analysis, whereas the rates approach involves a macro-evolutionary approach. In this chapter, we concentrate on the rates approach, taking an ecological perspective.