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The purpose of this paper is to investigate how entrepreneurship opportunity formation amongst immigrants has been influenced by the COVID-19 pandemic, given that environmental changes and irregularity can contribute to entrepreneurship opportunity formation in the immigrant set-up.

The study employed a comparative narrative analysis of literature relating to entrepreneurship opportunity formation, immigrant entrepreneurship, environmental change (e.g. COVID-19 pandemic) and demand expansion (e.g. market extension resulting from environmental changes) and primary dataset from 11 semi-structured interviews.

The triangulation of the literature from these diverse topics leads to the conclusion that environmental changes and irregularity creates demand expansion that can drive entrepreneurship in any climate.

The limitation to the present study is the inability to use more than 11 primary dataset for this study, so future research on this topic should ensure the use of more primary dataset to validate the literature review.

This article contributes to existing knowledge by suggesting that irregular events within the environment (not stable economic growth alone) can positively influence entrepreneurship opportunity formation amongst immigrants.

There is a gap in understanding with regards to the discrimination and prejudice experienced by gay entrepreneurs. To address this, an intersectional perspective is adopted to facilitate a better understanding of how lesbian and gay entrepreneurs may experience heterosexism.

This qualitative study uses semi-structured interviews to explore the experiences of 14 lesbian and gay entrepreneurs as they navigate homophobia and heterosexism.

The study contributes novel insights to the field of entrepreneurship, extending the study of lesbian and gay entrepreneurs to include gender and a fine-grained analysis of the experience of heterosexism. Its inclusion of an intersectional perspective of the lesbian-female entrepreneur expands the emerging body of literature examining intersectional identities of minority entrepreneurs.

The authors provide a more nuanced understanding of the impact of heterosexism on LGBT+ entrepreneurial activities. This is facilitated by the authors' adoption of an intersectional perspective which shows how the different axes of identity influenced gender identity performance in relation to the model of perceived neutrality in LGBT+ entrepreneurship. The authors also make an original contribution to minority stress literature through the authors' exploration of one facet of minority entrepreneurship, namely the impact of heterosexism on LGBT+ entrepreneurial activities.

Entrepreneurship education has moved from an elitist view focussing on a start-up and picking-the-winners philosophy towards a broader enterprising behaviour approach; recognising entrepreneurship as an activity of relevance for everybody. The purpose of this paper is to extend this development and identify how university entrepreneurial ecosystems can be expanded to support communities that are under-represented in entrepreneurship.

Based on an integrative literature review (Torraco, 2005), this paper draws together and synthesises literature from the field of entrepreneurship, higher education studies and under-represented communities in an integrated fashion, leading to the development of a new conceptual model.

This paper challenges the traditional role of universities in supporting entrepreneurship as focussing mainly on economic growth and new venture creation, and identifies how universities are also positioned to provide greater civic support to entrepreneurial learning amongst under-represented communities. Through a critical analysis of the literature, the conceptual model proposed identifies six key considerations in the expansion of university entrepreneurial ecosystems for under-represented communities.

There are currently 96.6m people at risk of poverty and social exclusion in the EU (OECD, 2017) and an estimated 43.1m Americans (US Census Bureau, 2017). This paper explores how university entrepreneurial ecosystems can be expanded to support minority and disadvantaged communities who are under-represented in terms of entrepreneurial activity.

Given that there is little research regarding how universities might activate inclusive entrepreneurship initiatives amongst under-represented communities, this paper expands existing knowledge as it identifies the key considerations encompassing university-led community collaborative enterprise support.

This article aims to explore the potential of feminist phenomenology as a conceptual framework for advancing women’s entrepreneurship research and the suitability of interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) to the proposed framework.

The article critically examines the current state of women’s entrepreneurship research regarding the institutional context and highlights the benefits of a shift towards feminist phenomenology.

The prevailing disembodied and gender-neutral portrayal of entrepreneurship has resulted in an equivocal understanding of women’s entrepreneurship and perpetuated a male-biased discourse within research and practice. By adopting a feminist phenomenological approach, this article argues for the importance of considering the ontological dimensions of lived experiences of situatedness, intersubjectivity, intentionality and temporality in analysing women entrepreneurs’ agency within gendered institutional contexts. It also demonstrates that feminist phenomenology could broaden the current scope of IPA regarding the embodied dimension of language.

The adoption of feminist phenomenology and IPA presents new avenues for research that go beyond the traditional cognitive approach in entrepreneurship, contributing to theory and practice. The proposed conceptual framework also has some limitations that provide opportunities for future research, such as a phenomenological intersectional approach and arts-based methods.

The article contributes to a new research agenda in women’s entrepreneurship research by offering a feminist phenomenological framework that focuses on the embodied dimension of entrepreneurship through the integration of IPA and conceptual metaphor theory (CMT).

Given that international research is now consistently showing higher rates of entrepreneurial activity from immigrants above native people, research regarding our understanding of how immigrant entrepreneurs view business opportunity formation remains underdeveloped. Based upon a review of the literature, this chapter examines how ethnicity relates to business opportunity formation through constant interactions. It also introduces the Visual Mixed Embeddedness Framework as an empirical lens for understanding the differences in the business opportunity formation process models between immigrant and native entrepreneurs. By explaining how factors and traits from both home and host countries impact upon the immigrant entrepreneurial business activity process, the framework clearly identifies how the concept of ethnicity influences immigrant entrepreneurial opportunity formation activities in different ways. The framework contributes to existing knowledge by offering a novel method for examining the influence on business opportunity formation of ethnicity, the role of home and host countries and variations between immigrant and native entrepreneurs.

A decade after the 2008 global financial crisis, economic growth is returning to many OECD countries and EU states. However, a “rising tide does not lift all boats” and there are currently 96.6 million people at risk of poverty and social exclusion in the EU (OECD, 2017). Addressing this concerning social situation, requires innovative approaches and it has been suggested that inclusive entrepreneurship may be part of the solution. Yet, many under-represented groups (in terms of entrepreneurial activity) face significant barriers to entrepreneurship. This research study identifies how Higher Education Institutions can utilise their multidisciplinary knowledge and expertise in partnership with government, industry and civil society to address the economic and social challenges within under-represented communities by engendering higher levels of enterprising behaviour. Emerging studies in the literature have demonstrated how some Higher Education Institutions are providing tailored and holistic enterprise support to under-represented groups in their communities. However, such initiatives are not common and there is little research on how other HEIs might replicate inclusive entrepreneurship initiatives. Through the presentation of a conceptual model, this chapter identifies how HEIs can move outside of their formal education setting and dynamically support the development of enterprising competencies and behaviours amongst people within their local communities. The findings highlight six key areas for consideration in such developments including: 1. Teaching and Learning; 2. Resources; 3. Infrastructure; 4. Multidisciplinary Approaches; 5. Stakeholders and 6. Culture. These findings highlight the requirements for impactful HEI-community engagement and suggest that HEI community engagement through entrepreneurial education is a novel way of adding value for both under-represented communities and HEIs.

While the growth of the Irish economy (“Celtic Tiger”) has been well documented, not enough attention has been given to the role of education as a cornerstone for the success. This paper seeks to review education policy in Ireland over the past 50 years and to identify the significant educational initiatives that helped shape modern Ireland.

Primarily utilising history books and governmental papers with specific reference to education policy in Ireland, the paper is a review of the relevant literature offering an insight into a variety of schemes instigated by various Ministers for Education over the past five decades.

The key finding was that the consistent education policies of the preceding decades bore fruit: during the 1990s, there was growing demand for educated human capital in all developed countries, and its ready availability in Ireland helped to attract foreign direct investment and to promote the development of indigenous companies.

This paper uses education policy in Ireland to create a link from mass emigration in the 1950s to the “Celtic Tiger” boom years of recent times.

The purpose of this paper is to explore hypothesis that high‐growth firms founded by entrepreneurial teams use a unique combination of organic structure and emergent strategy.

A quantitative study of 445 software development firms in the USA and 219 firms in Ireland was undertaken with a valid response rate of 22 per cent and 38 per cent, respectively.

Generally, all classifications of firms in the USA and in Ireland demonstrated a combination of organic structure and emergent strategy at the beginning of their existence. As the US firms grew older they moved towards a combination of organic structure and deliberate strategy, while Irish firms moved towards a combination of mechanical structure and deliberate strategy that was hierarchical and organised.

The survey was conducted in only one industry and some firm classifications had small cell sizes.

The ambition of this study was to offer owner‐managers an evidence‐based structure/strategy combination that would support the attainment of high‐growth.

This was the first occasion that the concept of a combination of structure and strategy was explored as an explanation for high‐growth amongst firms founded by entrepreneurial teams.

The paper aims to describe the manner in which entrepreneurship policies are embedded in the national contexts and then through analysis offers a deeper understanding of the development of Finnish and Irish entrepreneurship policies. It seeks to focus on three questions: What is the context for entrepreneurship policies in the studied countries?; What kind of governance structure for entrepreneurship policy can be identified and derived from theoretical perspectives?; and What policy instruments and content are associated with governance rationale?

The empirical data involve primary data on national entrepreneurship policy documents illustrating the governance structure for policy development and implementation, as well as policy objectives and targets. Additionally, concrete policy measures were studied within six sub‐areas of entrepreneurship. The analysis is based on a framework with two layers of policy: governance structure, and specific policy measures.

The results show that the countries studied are implementing strikingly similar approaches in entrepreneurship policy‐making: state‐institutional coordination marked by a strong role for the government, complemented by a more recent shift towards a competitive approach. Because political, national and economic context plays a significant role in understanding entrepreneurship policy approaches it is justified to add a third layer, context, to the framework.

Particular measures or good practices cannot be imported from other countries without understanding the theoretical rationale and policy context for the measures.

The study highlights the role of time and path‐dependency in policy‐making; therefore, future research and evaluations on entrepreneurship policies need to be strongly contextualised.