In this book, one of the most highly recognized entrepreneurship
scholars shares in a personal and readable way his rich experience and
ideas on how entrepreneurship can be researched. Entrepreneurship is a
phenomenon of tremendous societal importance. It is also an elusive
phenomenon, which makes researching it fun, fascinating-and frustrating
at times. In this fully updated edition, numerous real examples
accompany the treatment of problems and solutions concerning design,
sampling, operationalization and analysis.
Researching Entrepreneurship is targeted primarily at research
students and academics who are relatively new to research or to
entrepreneurship research. This said, basic knowledge of research
methods is assumed, and when foundational issues are discussed they are
typically approach from a non-standard angle and/or with an eye to
illuminate entrepreneurship-specific problems and solutions. This makes
large parts of the contents potentially valuable for entrepreneurship
scholars at any level of research proficiency. The book is also of
interest to sophisticated, non-academic users with a professional
interest in collecting and analyzing data from emerging and young
ventures, and to those who make use of published entrepreneurship
research. For example, analysts in marketing research or consultancy
firms, business associations, statistical agencies and other government
offices may find this book to be a valuable tool. Moreover, while the
examples are derived from entrepreneurship research, the book provides a
unique "experienced empirical researcher" (rather than "textbook method
expert") treatment of issues that are of equal relevance across the
social sciences. This goes for topics like the role of theory; research
design; validity assessment; statistical inference, and replication.
Entrepreneurship research has developed rapidly in the decade that has
passed since the first edition. Therefore, all chapters have been
comprehensively updated and many have been extended; sometimes to twice
the original length. Two of the original chapters have been excluded to
make room for entirely new chapters on "the Dependent Variable" and "The
Entrepreneurship Nexus." While retaining a unique, personal tone, the
author uses examples and references that build on contributions from a
large number of top entrepreneurship researchers.
