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Purpose – Although there is extensive work on labor mobility, research on entrepreneurial mobility is fragmented and many aspects are largely neglected. We develop a framework for analysis that integrates different perspectives on entrepreneurial mobility to provide a broad agenda for future research.

Design/methodology – We build upon the strategic entrepreneurship, entrepreneurial behaviour theory, resource-based theory and other literatures, to distinguish four quadrants involving high and low geographical mobility and high and low organizational mobility.

Findings – Within each quadrant we identify different types of entrepreneurial mobility, specifically habitual entrepreneurs, management buyouts, university spin-offs, returnee entrepreneurs and transnational entrepreneurs. Issues concerning the development of research programs and methods, with particular emphasis on datasets, are discussed.

Originality/value – It is hoped that this chapter will spur entrepreneurship and strategy scholars to recognize that the scope of the entrepreneurial mobility concept is considerably greater than hitherto appreciated, providing interesting new avenues for theoretical and methodological development in this area.

Purpose – Emerging work on returnee entrepreneurs has done little to examine how these individuals coordinate the resources they need to exploit their opportunities. Existing research has recognized the role of context, but this has been quite limited. The chapter provides a novel analytical framework that integrates a resource orchestration perspective with recognition of the heterogeneity of context.

Design/Methodology – The authors build upon returnee entrepreneurship, strategic entrepreneurship theory, and theories relating to context and spillovers to distinguish the implications of temporal, institutional, social, and spatial dimensions of context for resource selection and coordination.

Findings – The authors identify a range of research themes relating to each context. The authors also discuss methodological issues relating to both qualitative and quantitative research.

Originality/Value – The intention is to spur further entrepreneurship, strategy, and international business research.

There has been considerable debate concerning the contribution of venture capitalists (VCs) to their investee companies (Sapienza, Manigart, & Vermeir, 1996). This research has shown that VCs can add value and impact the strategic direction of their investee firms through their skills and knowledge. These skills lie in two distinct areas: financial (monitoring) and non-financial (strategic and operational involvement) skills (Pruthi, Wright, & Lockett, 2003). The monitoring and involvement of VC firms in their investees have been shown to vary according to their needs (Lerner, 1995). On balance, the evidence suggests greater involvement during the more uncertain earlier stages than during the later stages when the firm is more established (Sapienza, Amason, & Manigart, 1994; Elango, Fried, Hisrich, & Polonchek, 1995). This suggests that the VC's ability to bring about change will be mediated by the impact of the history of the firm via path dependency (Teece, Pisano, & Shuen, 1997).

Evidence suggests habitual entrepreneurs (i.e. those with prior business ownership experience) are a widespread phenomenon. Appreciation of the existence of multiple entrepreneurial acts gives rise to the need to examine differences between habitual and novice entrepreneurs (i.e. those with no prior business experience as a founder, inheritor or purchaser of a business). This paper synthesizes human capital and cognitive perspectives to highlight behavioral differences between habitual and novice entrepreneurs. Issues relating to opportunity identification and information search, opportunity exploitation and learning are discussed. Avenues for future research are highlighted.

The aim of this paper is to review the structure of road accident data, the database framework within which it is stored, and the potential for exploiting a hierarchical structure using multilevel statistical models. Most national accident databases regard accidents as the primary units of observation, with other characteristics stored as attributes. But it is more natural to picture the network, accidents, and other variables as a collection of related objects within a hierarchical system, which can be achieved using object-oriented database technology within a Geographical Information System (GIS) framework. This would permit more efficient data capture and storage, facilitate analysis of accident frequencies as a function of road layout, and facilitate the development of multilevel statistical models.

Although it has been argued that overconfidence can lead to failure (Hayward et al., forthcoming), business failure can undermine assumptions about the self that are integral to (1) confidence in one's decision-making accuracy and (2) the motivation to engage in tasks.

Cognition has always been central to the popular way of thinking about entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurs imagine a different future. They envision or discover new products or services. They perceive or recognize opportunities. They assess risk, and figure out how to profit from it. They identify possible new combinations of resources. Common to all of these is the individual’s use of their perceptual and reasoning skills, what we call cognition, a term borrowed from the psychologists’ lexicon.

This eighth volume in the series Advances in Entrepreneurship, Firm Emergence and Growth focuses on international entrepreneurship. We are fortunate to draw on scholars both new to the field as well as some of those who founded this unique specialty. International entrepreneurship, perhaps more than any subfield of entrepreneurship, is a product of our particular zeitgeist. The last quarter of the 20th Century brought about one of the periods of the greatest internationalization in all phases of business.