Research on Nascent Innovative Entrepreneurship

Dear Colleagues,

Innovative entrepreneurship appears as one engine for developing a knowledge-based society in modern times. Innovative entrepreneurs channel new knowledge and technological opportunities into products and services, the need of which could not have been imagined a few decades ago. Digital technology and the Internet have fundamentally transformed people's behaviour and habits. We experienced the importance of biotechnology in the search for a vaccine during the COVID crisis. These manifestations illustrate the connection between new scientific knowledge and everyday life.

Entrepreneurship is a process phenomenon (Shane, 2012; Moroz and Hindle, 2012). The current Special Issue deals with nascent entrepreneurship, which mediates new knowledge to real life, characterised by its innovativeness. According to Schumpeter (2013/1949), an entrepreneur introduces innovation into the market. However, innovation in this context, besides the novelty, also means the process from the idea to its application on the market. That means the innovative entrepreneur carries entrepreneurial and innovation processes together, probably not distinguishing them from each other. 

In order to understand the emergence of innovative nascent entrepreneurship, it is necessary to find answers to some essential questions: (1) how do opportunities for the creation of innovative ventures arise? (2) Where do innovative ideas come from? (3) Who implements these ideas of launching innovative ventures and how? These are questions about the entrepreneurial process and journey on both a societal and an individual level. However, this is, in part, the task of better understanding the entrepreneurial process, knowledge of which has developed very little in the last thirty years (Davidsson and Gruenhagen, 2021).

Entrepreneurial opportunities are a widely discussed topic to which there is no single answer, whether they are so-called objectively exciting and need to be discovered, are created by the entrepreneur (Alvarez and Barney, 2007), or are a combination of the two. This situation has raised the question about the definition and operationalisation of opportunity (e.g., Davidsson, 2015). Regardless of different interpretations, we can state that the opportunities (in a more general sense) to implement innovative ideas depend on the entrepreneurial/start-up ecosystem (Stam, 2015; Isenberg, 2010). The combination of entrepreneurial ecosystems with digital (Song, 2019) and other (Trabskaja and Mets, 2019) ecosystems should be considered. The specific opportunities and ecosystems and the impact of their so-called instruments—incubators and accelerators—on emerging innovative start-up processes, among other topics, could be answered in this Special Issue.

In addition to the ecosystem, research institutions, including universities, should be noted as new knowledge sources from which spin-off start-ups emerge. Universities contribute, besides research, by educating digitally competent generations and enabling digital entrepreneurship. Some innovative nascent ventures implementing new business models with support from venture capital grow fast, scaling-up businesses and becoming 'unicorns' (e.g., Piaskowska et al., 2021). The development trajectory analysis of knowledge-intensive start-ups in the (technology) knowledge, market extent, time, and any other dimension could be a better understanding for society on how to deal with these challenges.

The preceding is only a brief introduction to the field of the Special Issue 'Research on Innovative Nascent Entrepreneurship'. Qualitative and quantitative research articles that reveal the multifaceted nature of innovative nascent entrepreneurship and its contribution to the development of the knowledge of society are welcome. Expected articles include theory building, review, policy, and empirical studies. The topics should include the keywords below but are not limited to the list.

References (optional)

Alvarez, A., and Barney, B. 2007. Discovery and creation: alternative theories of entrepreneurial action. Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal (1): 11–26.

Davidsson, P. 2015. Entrepreneurial opportunities and the entrepreneurship nexus: A re-conceptualisation. Journal of Business Venturing 30 (5): 1-22.

Davidsson, P. and J. H. Gruenhagen. 2020. Fulfilling the Process Promise: A Review and Agenda for New Venture Creation Process Research. Entrepreneurship, Theory and Practice 45(5): 1083–1118.

Isenberg, D.J. 2010. How to start an entrepreneurial revolution. Harvard Business Review June: 41-50.

Malerba, Franco, and Maureen McKelvey. 2019. Knowledge-intensive innovative entrepreneurship. Foundations and Trends® in Entrepreneurship 14(6): 555-681.

Moroz, P. W. and Hindle, K. 2012. Entrepreneurship as a Process: Toward Harmonizing Multiple Perspectives. Entrepreneurship Theory & Practice 36(4): 781-818.

OECD (2005). Oslo-Manual: Proposed Guidelines for Collecting and Interpreting Technological Innovation Data. 3rd edition. Paris: OECD Publishing.

Piaskowska, D., Tippmann, E. and Monaghan, S., 2021. Scale-up modes: Profiling activity configurations in scaling strategies. Long Range Planning 54(6): 102101.

Schumpeter, J.A., 2013. Capitalism, socialism and democracy. London & New York: Routledge.

Song, A. K., 2019. The Digital Entrepreneurial Ecosystem—a critique and reconfiguration. Small Business Economics 53(3): 569-590.

Stam, E. 2015. Entrepreneurial Ecosystems and Regional Policy: A Sympathetic Critique. European Planning Studies 23(9): 1759-1769.

Trabskaja, J. and Mets, T., 2019. Ecosystem as the source of entrepreneurial opportunities. Foresight and STI Governance 13(4): .2500-2597.

Prof. Dr. Tõnis Mets 
Dr. Kärt Rõigas
Guest Editors

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• nascent entrepreneurship
• innovative entrepreneurship
• digital innovation
• high growth entrepreneurship
• high-technology entrepreneurship
• unicorns
• entrepreneurial startup process
• entrepreneurial journey
• process-based model
• startup ecosystem
• incubators
• accelerators