Scholars and popular writers have written a great deal about
entrepreneurs and the formation of new companies, but they have not
succeeded in predicting when and where large numbers of new
organizations will emerge. This volume attempts, from the viewpoint of
the interdisciplinary field of organization studies, to answer two major
questions about entrepreneurship: First, what are the conditions that
prompt the founding of large numbers of new organizations or entirely
new industries? Second, what are the real and significant effects of
such entrepreneurial activities on existing industries, economies, and
societies? The authors emphasize that new organizations do not emerge
full blown from the idiosyncratic minds of individual entrepreneurs.
Their ideas for new organizations, their ability to acquire capital and
other essential resources, and their likelihood of survival as
entrepreneurs derive from the contexts in which they live and work. At
the same time, new organizations fundamentally and immediately transform
their contexts. The first part of the book explores the mental models
that founders of new companies bring with them from previous
experiences, the ways in which their ideas come not only from the
companies in which they work but from the surrounding organizational
communities, and the importance of local and regional dynamics in
nurturing innovative communities. Other papers in this section shift
perspective from geographic communities to other contexts--the
university, the knowledge industry, and the technology cycle. The second
part of the book explores the role of entrepreneurial activity in the
transformation of contexts and the evolution of industries, focusing on
the processes and tools that entrepreneurs use to legitimate new
organizational populations, and the collateral industries and
communities that build up around new organizational populations, aiding
in the development of new companies.
