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Tucked in the back of Venkataraman’s 1997 work on the distinctive domain of entrepreneurship (DDE) lies a pointer to a question each individual must face when choosing to start a new venture; “is entrepreneurship worth it?” Inventorying costs associated with risk, uncertainty, and illiquidity against surpluses from financial and psychological factors unique to entrepreneurship, Venkataraman tempts readers to tally entrepreneurial returns. The authors summarize and integrate an academic study of these various cost and return components over the past 20 years using Venkataraman’s original framework. The authors find the answer to the question of “is entrepreneurship worth it?” varies with time. Researcher’s answer to the question has shifted from an early view that entrepreneurs sacrifice financial gain in exchange for soft psychological benefits to a more positive view that entrepreneurs are rewarded both financially and psychologically for the unique costs borne in the DDE. But the rewards are not immediate. In entrepreneur time, break-even emerges by gradually overcoming an initial deficit. As surpluses accrue, returns to entrepreneurs likely eventually exceed those of their wage-earning peers.

This chapter explores the impact of postgraduate entrepreneurship and enterprise (E&E) education in UK Universities on the entrepreneurial actions of foreign students by reference to students from the second largest transition economy, Russia. The research identifies the most popular courses selected by foreign students for UK study and to identify and qualify the related student experience in order to identify correlations with how graduates exploit entrepreneurial opportunities upon return to home country. British universities have placed increasing dependency on foreign students which has increased pressure to enhance curricula to ‘embrace a wider global context’. Universities have been pressured also to play a new role in society by pursuing a ‘third mission’ of economic development to support the traditional roles of research and teaching. The increase in supply of HE providers has increased competition for students so curricula have to be innovative in order to attract them. An interpretivist philosophy and qualitative methods was employed across three phases, to study university managers, selected according to university and contact with foreign students; Russian non-government officials, selected to comment on the nexus of issues around Russian business and college education; and graduates (‘past’ and ‘recent’), selected according to country of origin, focus of studies and choice of university. This study confirmed that ‘the UK has a long tradition of the university third mission role’ where ‘HEIs are independent, self-governing bodies’, ‘most or part-funded by government’ and since 1992, seen an increase in the overall number; universities have been especially aggressive in pursuing foreign students so have led in designing attractive programmes and curricula. Findings show that modern UK University E&E teaching is effective in changing foreign students’ entrepreneurship perception and behaviour. The university/course selection and teaching/learning experience combine to produce measurable post-study entrepreneurial actions, whether in starting new or joining existing businesses with new found knowledge, social capital and ways of viewing the world.

This paper considers efficient venture capital investment duration for different types of entrepreneurial firms so that on exit information asymmetries between the venture capitalist (as seller) and the new owners of the investment are minimized, and capital gains maximized. We hypothesize that a number of factors are likely to affect investment duration, and our empirical tests confirm the statistical significance of some of these variables (stage of firm at first investment, capital available to the venture capital industry, whether the exit was preplanned, and whether the exit was made in response to an unsolicited offer). However, the fit between our theoretical model and the data is stronger in the United States than in Canada, offering evidence in support of the view that institutional factors have distorted investment duration in Canada.

“Economics is a Serious Subject.” Edwin Cannan.

In recent years, the topic of entrepreneurship has attracted increasing attention from academics and policy makers. Although much of the debate has taken place in business schools, its protagonists are sociologists, psychologists, organization theorists, and, of course, economists. The purpose of this paper is to take stock of this debate and of what we have learned so far about entrepreneurship. Using Kirzner’s theory as the starting point and unifying theme, the paper reviews works about entrepreneurs and what they do, the socio-economic factors influencing entrepreneurial decisions, the relationship between entrepreneurship and organizations, and the possible links between entrepreneurial activity and economic growth.

As proposed by Brandenburger and Nalebuff (1996), the concept of coopetition which highlights the coexistence of both collaborative and competitive forces in interorganizational settings aims to provide a new way of thinking for accelerating the innovation process and generating greater value. However, despite such recognitions, our understanding about how coopetition can help facilitate the innovation process in small and medium enterprises is rather limited. This should warrant a separate stream of research on this issue. Drawing on the concept of effectuation, we will explore the coopetitive innovation process in entrepreneurial firms. Sarasvathy (2001) proposed five principles embedded in the effectuation decision-making process of entrepreneurship. This process starts with a given set of means and controllable goals, followed by interactions with other stakeholders until they are all committed. The final stage leads to the creation of new products and services. The first two stages, means and goals, are the preparation stage in which an entrepreneurial firm distinguishes itself from large established corporations and establishes a base to leverage its contingency according to existing means and acceptable losses. After that, the effectuation process enters into the interaction and commitment stage during which the firm seeks relationships with stakeholders. We argue that the coopetitive forces can appear in the interaction and commitment stages to enlarge and capture value for the entrepreneurial firm involved.

Insights into the origins of entrepreneurial activity are gained through a study of alternative mechanisms implicated in the tendency for children of the self-employed to be substantially more likely than other children to enter into self-employment themselves. I use unique life history data to examine the impact of parental self-employment on the transition to self-employment in Denmark and assess the different mechanisms identified in the literature. The results suggest that parental role modeling is an important source of the transmission of self-employment. However, there is little evidence to suggest that children of the self-employed enter self-employment because they have privileged access to their parent's financial or social capital, or because their parents’ self-employment allows them to develop superior entrepreneurial abilities.

In recent years, we have witnessed a surge in academic interest towards migrants and their entrepreneurial endeavours. This has resulted in valuable insights about immigrant, transnational, ethnic and diaspora entrepreneurship. By reviewing 158 articles published in the fields of migrant entrepreneurship, transnational entrepreneurship, ethnic and diaspora entrepreneurship over the last decade, the author maps the migrant entrepreneurship field according to the level of analysis and suggests potential avenues for the development of the field. Blurred boundaries between different streams of literature can potentially lead to duplication of efforts and harm cumulativity of knowledge. Therefore, the author summarises the key findings at each level of analysis, identifies the gaps and most pressing research questions. The author concluded that the field would benefit from (1) more specific definitions and assessment of whether observed findings stem from immigrant-, transnational-, ethnic- or diaspora-related factors; (2) appreciating the multilevel nature of the phenomenon; and (3) clarifying the boundary conditions. This review contributes to the accumulation of knowledge in two ways. First, it synthesises the findings in the fields of transnational, immigrant, ethnic and diaspora entrepreneurship under the framework of migrant entrepreneurship. Second, it suggests potential research directions across three levels of analysis and in-between those levels.