Book Releases

The book is an innovative compilation of papers that explore the relationship between cultural features and entrepreneurship. The relative stability of differences in entrepreneurial activity across countries suggests that other than economic factors are at play. The contributions to this edited volume deal with the foundations of entrepreneurship and with the effects of different cultural settings on the incidence and success of entrepreneurs. Topics are individual decision making in a cultural context, regional aspects of entrepreneurship, cross-country differences, and the influence of culture on entrepreneurial activity.

This book looks at why certain regions are successful in creating an innovative technology cluster (with chapters on Silicon Valley and the Italian Food districts) and why aspiring communities and districts seek to learn from those examples and create an internationally successful region or sector (with chapters on the Dutch Biopartner program to stimulate entrepreneurship in the life sciences, on high-tech Israel and on the Italian Slow Food Movement).

Business Regulation and Public Policy: The Costs and Benefits of Compliance

How can labour productivity growth be raised in order to safeguard sustainable economic growth? This is the main question of this thesis

This book investigates antecedents and outcomes of international entrepreneurship. International entrepreneurship as a field of research involves research into entrepreneurship in multiple countries (cross-country comparisons of the nature and extent of entrepreneurial activity) and research into cross-border entrepreneurship (international activity of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and new ventures) (Lu and Beamish, 2001; Oviatt and McDougall, 2005). Entrepreneurship or “the creation of new economic activity” (Davidsson, Delmar and Wiklund, 2006, p. 27) includes new venture creation activity and new economic activity of established firms. It is often assumed that entrepreneurship, and cross-border entrepreneurship in particular, contributes to value or wealth creation both at the firm-level and at the economy-wide level.

This unique Handbook provides a solid foundation for essential study in the nascent field of entrepreneurship policy research. This foundation is initially developed via the exploration of two significant propositions underpinning the nature of entrepreneurship policy research. The first is that entrepreneurship has emerged as a bona fide focus of public policy, particularly with respect to economic growth and employment creation. The second is that neither scholars nor policy makers are presently equipped to understand the public policy role for entrepreneurship. The contributors - experienced scholars, specialist researchers and dynamic policy makers thus grapple with novel questions of considerable policy relevance that few have previously posed. The Handbook therefore provides some of the first crucial, systematic analyses of important issues, and key questions to be raised in order to move entrepreneurship policy forward are also presented.Written by academics and practitioners drawing examples from both North America and Europe, this stimulating new Handbook is a prerequisite for students, scholars and practitioners in the incipient world of entrepreneurship policy.

Written by leading scholars, mostly during the technological revolution of the 1990s, this volume provides a valuable collection of readings that explore the role of the entrepreneurship in economic growth. The articles are carefully chosen in five areas that advance our understanding of entrepreneurship, innovation and economic growth.

The ‘knowledge economy’ is a concept commonly deemed too ambiguous and elusive to hold any significance in current economic debate. This valuable book seeks to refute that myth.