Entrepreneurship and economic growth in the American economy: Volume 12

In this chapter, Charney and Libecap report on their analysis of the 15-year old entrepreneurship program at the University of Arizona. 2,484 business school graduates, including 460 of the entrepreneurship program, were surveyed in a study indicating that entrepreneurship education has been highly advantageous for not only its graduates but also the companies they lead or work for. Among several key findings: compared to other graduates, alumni of the Berger Entrepreneurship Program make more money and their firms grow more rapidly; they are more likely to work for high-tech companies and to be instrumental in new product development. Compared to other alumni, entrepreneurship graduates are three times more likely to start new businesses; have annual incomes that are 27% higher and own 62% more assets. This study represents the first, in-depth analysis of entrepreneurship education and its results indicate that the investment is a valuable one.

The chapter proposes a three step framework to assist in the study of technological change in historical terms, using one class of technology, computational devices and computers, to illustrate the approach. Step one explores the economic dynamics of computing to demonstrate the value of studying a specified technology to gain insights about other forms of technologies. Second step attempts an understanding of users and historians respond to the issue of change. Finally, a framework for studying the role of change in technology is presented. Many examples are drawn from different periods in the modern history of information processing.

This chapter examines the commercialization of the Internet, which has initiated a global debate over privatizing and internationalizing the responsibility for managing the Internet domain name system. A new international regime is being organized around the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). The chapter analyzes the emergence of this new regime, drawing upon empirical literature on the economics of property rights and related concepts of international regime change. Property rights conflicts that emerged with the growth of the Internet domain names are analyzed. An efficient property rights regime in domain names is presented and contrasted with the new property regime. The comparison shows that the path of institutional change is strongly affected by conflicts over the distributional issues inherent in the definition of property rights.

This chapter examines the factors that promote entrepreneurial projects in established companies. A set of forty triggers is proposed and ways in which triggers can be classified are suggested. A conceptual model links types of triggers to specific types of entrepreneurial projects and to outcomes. To test the model, surveys were conducted with companies in South Africa and the United States. The results for the two samples are similar, and indicate that triggers tend to be more internal and planned, that the type of trigger is related to how innovative the projects tend to be, and that planned entrepreneurship is associated with greater success.

At the heart of the new venture growth that fuels the economic expansion is the question of how organizations make transitions from one stage of their development to the next (Churchill & Lewis, 1983; Covin & Slevin, 1997). To study this phenomenon, a three-stage model of self-organization was formulated and then tested in four growth-based new ventures that were each undergoing a major developmental transition. Although the outcomes of the transitions were all different, the process of the transitions was virtually the same, each time validating the three-stage model. Implications for research and practice of new venture growth are provided.

Success in today's increasingly competitive environment requires entrepreneurial companies to be highly sophisticated in the use of modern marketing techniques. State-of-the-art marketing ideas such as ‘customer-driven,’ ‘competitive advantage,’ ‘strategic positioning,’ and ‘integrated marketing communications’ have become more than simply a part of the lexicon of the modern market-driven firm — they are being employed to sustain the lifeblood of the successful entrepreneurial firm. A splendid reputation for products and services alone is no longer sufficient in today's marketplace. This chapter presents the rationale and tools to develop a positioning strategy, as well as suggests how the strategy might be communicated to each key constituency.

The retailing industry has provided significant entrepreneurial opportunities that are growing even greater with the development of electronic retailing. Sales by electronic retail entrepreneurs have substantial growth potential. However, the growth of electronic retailing depends on whether or not electronic retailers provide superior benefits over existing retail formats. Some critical resources needed to successfully sell merchandise and services electronically are: (1) strong brand name and image, (2) customer information, (3) complementary merchandise and services, (4) unique merchandise, (5) presentation of information on web pages, and (6) distribution system to efficiently ship merchandise to homes and receive return. The long-term prospective for electronic retail entrepreneurs rests on their ability to exploit their advantages in designing web sites and collecting information about their visitors and the degree to which they can develop critical resources in brand name recognition and distribution systems.