Entrepreneurship, in its broadest sense, is probably as old as civilization itself. Historical records show that profit-minded traders were dealing in goods and services in ancient Egypt, as well as in similar ancient civilizations in other parts of the world. Along major rivers such as the Tigris, Euphrates, Indus, Nile, and Yangtze, business flourished as traders from different parts of the world encountered each other and exchanged various goods and services. The Indian philosopher-statesman Chanakya (or Kautilya) was concerned about the appropriate environment for business and enterprise in Arthashastra (literally âThe Science of Moneyâ) in fourth century BC. Jesus famously railed against greedy businessmen (perhaps, the robber barons of yore) in his time, and before he started preaching in the desert, the Prophet Muhammad apprenticed with a woman (later his wife) who owned a successful trading business. For hundreds of years, the fabled Silk Route was the Silicon Valley of its day, witnessing the economic rise and fall of entrepreneurial traders from China in the East to Europe in the West. It was with commerce and profit in mind that enterprising European businessmen started what later became global behemoths like the East India Company that dominated global trade (and international events) for several centuries. Entrepreneurship, one could argue, is a common theme throughout human history, though it seems that the nature and intensity of entrepreneurial activity has ebbed and waned over the years and across societies (Landes 2010).
Compared to the practice of entrepreneurial activities, the academic study of entrepreneurship is of much recent vintage. Schumpeterâs (1911) German-language The Theory of Economic Development is believed to be the first academic book on entrepreneurship. Systematic entrepreneurship education started in Japan in 1938 (Hannon 2005), with the first entrepreneurship course in the United States taught in 1947 (Katz 2003). The earliest academic presentation on entrepreneurship seems to have been in the 1950s (Jennings and Brush 2013) and journal papers on this topic started to appear in 1970s. The Academy of Management (AoM) accorded division status to entrepreneurship in 1984. Today, hundreds of scientific articles and popular books are published on entrepreneurship worldwide, with the best articles and books on entrepreneurship attracting as much attention, if not more, as leading scholarly contributions in other fields.
Although some may believe otherwise and question the very legitimacy of the field (Hambrick and Chen 2008), entrepreneurship is now a well-established and respected academic discipline. It has a body of knowledge equal in rigor and relevance to its sister academic fields, some of which have much longer histories, such as strategy and organizational behavior. The growth of the field is reflected in the fact that the entrepreneurship division of AoM added the most number of membersâaround 400âcompared to other divisions in 2017 and now has 3,400 members (September 16, 2017 statistics). To contextualize these numbers, the much older divisions of Organization and Management Theory has 3985 members and Strategic Management has 4963 members. In other words, the field of entrepreneurship has grown steadily and then exponentially in the last few years. Factors contributing to this growth are the increasing importance of entrepreneurship in economic development and the large number of academic positions available for faculty carrying out research and teaching in this domain. To understand how entrepreneurship became one of the most popular and sought-out academic disciplines in the broader management field, this volume of contributions traces the impact and influence of foundational scholarship in the field of entrepreneurship.
A key factor in the legitimacy of entrepreneurship research is the contributions made by seminal publications that came out in the early years of its history and formation. We call these foundational articles or âclassicsâ as they constitute the core of the academic knowledge about entrepreneurship. The notion of âclassicsâ comes from the field of literature, where there has been a long tradition of interest in works that were considered foundational to the field. For those in English literature, for example, Shakespeareâs works are classics that have an enduring impact on the genesis and evolution of the field. Works such as Hamlet and Macbeth are widely acknowledged as classics in English literature, resulting in their continued consumption by, and inspiring influence on, more recent writers. Other academic fields, such as psychology, have borrowed the idea of âclassicsâ from literature to recognize original papers that are considered vitally important for the sustenance of the field (Bertilson and Knutson 1980; McCollom 1973).
Our purpose in the present book is to draw attention to 13 articles considered classics in entrepreneurship research. The recent works of Bygrave (2007) and Gupta et al. (2016) have stirred interest in understanding the rich legacy of foundational entrepreneurship articles. Our efforts gain greater salience when one considers that, despite invaluable contributions by early researchers to the development of the field, some consider entrepreneurship research to be a âhodgepodge of papersâ in need of a messiah (or several) to raise it from the dead (Shane 2012: 11). Contrary to such nihilistic interpretations of the history of entrepreneurship studies, we believe that seminal articles published in the early days of entrepreneurship research have had a continuing impact on the subsequent development of the field. These articles, we think, deserve recognition, appreciation, and further reflection.
There are several important reasons to draw attention to classics in entrepreneurship at this stage in the fieldâs evolution. First, as the famous physicist Sir Isaac Newton reportedly observed, science progresses when curious folks âstand on the shoulders of giants who came before themâ, which suggests that it is useful to be familiar with the thinking of impactful scholars whose writings laid the foundation of our field. Second, looking back allows us to look ahead (Bluedorn 2003), so that reflecting on the contributions of seminal articles allows us to think deeply about their future potential. Third, as scholars from different backgrounds and trainings join the growing ranks of entrepreneurship researchers, it is natural that scholarship in this area will fragment (Schildt et al. 2006), which makes it helpful to identify a common core for diverse researchers to learn from and exploit in their writings. Fourth, knowledge of classics can help strengthen the academic training of the next generation of doctoral students, the future researchers, who need to understand where we started as a field to discern where we can go from here.
Identifying the classics in any discipline can be accomplished in several ways, such as by surveying professionals engaged in scholarship (Martin and Erber 2003), perusing most frequently cited works in specific journal outlets (Ratnatunga and Romano 1997), examining web server logs (e....