This book opens new doors and offers original perspectives in entrepreneurial research which consists of four parts: entrepreneurial mind-set, culture and values; entrepreneurship education; entrepreneurship development; and conclusion. This interesting entrepreneurship book explains and discusses the current issues, developments, conceptual richness and methodological diversity within entrepreneurship. Further, this book has also compiled and selected a number of case studies to demonstrate the practical and unique approach taken in these studies that gained significant results, and made suggestions for future research. This book could benefit academic scholars, researchers, practitioners and policymakers by making them consider current issues that impact society and methodology approaches from a different perspective. In addition, those interested and attached to this field will find the research and case studies in this book innovative, refreshing and worth reading, which will be mainly useful for those looking to reconsider their current practices.
Furthermore, part 1 of the book presents the latest development of topics such as the entrepreneurial mind-set, culture and values, which argue the study of psychosocial characteristics of new entrepreneurs from a cognitive perspective that influence upon their decision to become an entrepreneur. The under-researched area of study looks promising to this field, as it is a new entrepreneurship topic that continues to attract more and more attention among researchers. There are some case studies that have been done and are discussed in the first part of the book such as the role of researchers and the motivation for entrepreneurship, a case study of Spanish university graduates to measure entrepreneurial values; an empirical study of Italian researchers from all disciplines in undertaking the entrepreneurial process; and also entrepreneurial culture and perceptions from a survey of students at the University of Seville, Spain. Moreover, this book introduces the field for methodological renewal by introducing the current state of opportunities for explorative research in entrepreneurship.
Meanwhile, in part 2 of the book, it focuses more on entrepreneurship education. There are four different papers contributed by researchers in entrepreneurship education. The first paper discusses a multidimensional entrepreneurial self-efficacy (ESE) scale, tested in a large-scale survey at three different universities in Denmark and one university in Sweden. This paper examines the multidimensionality of the items on the scale and confirmatory factor analysis implemented to further explore its convergent, discriminatory and nomological validity. The results demonstrate the support of the multidimensional ESE scale with predictive validity regarding entrepreneurial behaviours. Furthermore, this is a unique approach to research as it has not been done in any research before, and the method can be extended in programme evaluations for the control group and other individuals who lack an entrepreneurial experience.
The next paper is on entrepreneurship education and it is about the development of a tool to measure metacognitive awareness. This paper discusses the contribution of the scientific discussion about metacognitive awareness assessment practices by testing the applicability of the instrument on a university entrepreneurship course. The result from this proposed research has a modified instrument to extend the empirical evidence for the development of a measurement tool to assess the students’ metacognitive awareness. To further extend the research in the future, the paper suggests creating an additional instrument to catch the conative and affective aspects of meta awareness.
Additionally, theories by Cantillon (1755), von Mises (1949) and Kirzner (1973), were used for the next research paper on differences of students’ understanding of how opportunity processes matter for their learning. The approach from this study states that in order for opportunity processes to take place, there needs to be search, discovery and action. The combination of these three approaches in this paper is another method that aims for opportunity enhancement to be designed in ways that increase students’ awareness of the various types of opportunities and the processes. According to this research, entrepreneurship education should combine all methods and teaching tools in learning processes in order to enable students to have more exposure and increase their competency in seeking entrepreneurship opportunities. Therefore, this paper has discovered unique theoretical approaches to achieve the aim of this study.
Further, the last paper in this part discusses teachers’ reflections of entrepreneurship education, and focuses on the content that teachers give within the main elements of entrepreneurship education. This is a very crucial issue, according to this paper, and it extends the research of a measurement tool for entrepreneurship education. There is a qualitative data collection from a different level of education in Finland, from 29 teachers, in order to analyse the objectives of entrepreneurship education. However, the results from this method of study revealed some confusion among the teachers, as they have misunderstood the difference between objectives and practices. Therefore, the paper suggests that a future and interested researcher in this study needs to be more systematic in data collection, evaluation and depth discussion on the issues of the teachers’ role in entrepreneurship education.
The research papers in part 2 focus in detail on entrepreneurship education through various case studies, unique methodological approaches and results, and give some future suggestions. Furthermore, they provide academics with some new ideas to adopt in their teaching and research of entrepreneurship study.
In part 3 of this book, it focuses more on entrepreneurship development issues and research. The first paper in this part discusses cultural values and start-up rates in Spanish provinces. There are factors that influence this issue and it closes gaps by investigating specific cultural values. The result from this paper found that the effects of inter-regional cultural differences are important and have a positive influence on entrepreneurial activity for this case study.
The next paper in this part demonstrates the relationship between entrepreneurial orientation, market orientation and firms’ performance, with specific reference to Italian medium-sized firms through a multiple case study approach. This study contributes to the existing literature to close a gap and propose the entrepreneurial orientation effect on the relationship between market orientation and firms’ performance. However, the approach on case studies does not prove a causal relationship of the data analysis, but there is a belief that the effect between them may be strongly established. An interested researcher who wishes to further investigate this field should consider the suggestions in this paper.
Moreover, in the borderless world we live in nowadays, social networks have become important to every aspect, including entrepreneurship. A case study on the social network approach is explained in part 3 of this book as well. The study proposes how qualitative social network approaches can be useful for better understanding the survival-growth phase of innovative new ventures. Furthermore, this paper highlighted the role that social networks have in entrepreneurial success in a comparative analysis of several theories. The methodology approach from this study is crucial to a practitioner because it is relevant for studying the survival-growth phase of innovative new ventures that can be applied by others, especially the new entrepreneurs.
Next, the final issue discussed in part 3 is about corporate venture capital (CVC) choices, settings and investment behaviours. This paper emphasises the factors at corporate, new venture and industry levels that influence the choices of the setting and the investment behaviours of large corporations’ CVC programmes. The research uses Fortune Global 500's list of companies from 2008, to investigate the influential factors on the decision of the CVC programme in investing in their own business sector. This study has proven that the revenue change, the return on assets, industries with significant technology potential, environments with high levels of innovation and new ventures located in emerging economies, contributed to a positive influence. However, a high level of diversification by a parent corporation, and an environment with a high level of entrepreneurial activity has negative influences, which is proven in this case study.
Furthermore, the final part 4 of this book explores the explorative approach of an unexploited opportunity for entrepreneurship research. The approach is still rare in entrepreneurship research, but it is believed that it can offer a valuable methodological alternative to investigate the complexities of entrepreneurial processes. The case study in this part also identifies various characteristics and forms of explorative research, which are later followed by a more detailed analysis into entrepreneurship research. Furthermore, this paper also sets the rules for conducting explorative research, as this approach might open new opportunities for entrepreneurship research and gain more interest amongst scholars in the future.
In conclusion, this book could indeed offer a wide perspective of entrepreneurship research from various aspects that benefit many parties including practitioners, academic scholars, researchers and policymakers. Hence, the suggestion from these entrepreneurship research case studies compiled in this book could encourage those interested in this field to further investigate and extend the existing research discussed. Moreover, the unique methodology approaches proposed in this book are very practical, innovative and consistent with relevant theories in the entrepreneurship field. However, some proposed methodology in this book may be suitable in a certain demographic or focus group. Therefore, further investigation on selected case studies in this book can be extended to other scenarios in order to make the approach more reliable and accepted on a wider scale. Overall, this book is a must read for those in the entrepreneurship field, as it offers uncountable opportunities in entrepreneurship research.
