Awards

• Winner of CHOICE Outstanding Academic Titles of 2019 awarded by the American Library Association 2019 (United States)

Overview

Sources of Knowledge and Entrepreneurial Behavior delves into the nature and importance of the relationship between sources of knowledge and entrepreneurial behavior, and should be of interest to both academics and policy-makers. David B. Audretsch and Albert N. Link use the Knowledge Spillover Theory of Entrepreneurship as the conceptual foundation for why individuals decide to become entrepreneurs. Then, using a database of more than 4,000 small and relatively new European companies from 10 different countries, called the AEGIS database, Audretsch and Link offer new insights about the relationship between knowledge sources and entrepreneurial behavior. In their analysis of the empirical evidence in support of the Knowledge Spillover Theory of Entrepreneurship, Audretsch and Link conclude that there is no singular source of knowledge driving entrepreneurship, but a plethora of knowledge sources, each associated with different dimensions of entrepreneurial activity. The intellectual breakthrough in this book is not that knowledge matters or that it especially matters for entrepreneurship. Rather, Audretsch and Link show that knowledge, and especially entrepreneurial knowledge, is not a homogeneous phenomenon. There are multiple sources of knowledge that act on entrepreneurial performance in a myriad of ways.

Full Product Details

9781487501129

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Reviews

Much of traditional economics and management has been woefully lacking in its treatment of the contribution of knowledge and entrepreneurship to economic activity. In this path-breaking volume, Audretsch and Link make a step change in our understanding of the role of knowledge in the new economic environment where knowledge capital supersedes physical capital. Their rigorously derived, novel insight that knowledge for entrepreneurship emanates from a myriad of sources has profound implications for researchers, practitioners, and policy makers alike. - Mike Wright, Professor of Entrepreneurship, Imperial College London The knowledge spillover theory of entrepreneurship (KSTE) is among the most important contributions of the economics of entrepreneurship since its revival in the late 1980s. The theory is all about context and contributes little to the antecedents of entrepreneurial behavior, which is another but poorly understood part of the economics of entrepreneurship. The present book addresses precisely this gap. Using a big European data set of entrepreneurial firms and a combination of KSTE and a human capital perspective, it is shown that a diversity of knowledge sources drives a diversity of entrepreneurial behaviors. The book is a brilliant example of the richness of the economics of entrepreneurship: individual human capital and context lead to a diversity of entrepreneurial behaviors. - Roy Thurik, Emeritus Professor of Entrepreneurship and Economics, Erasmus School of Economics and Montpellier Business School Where entrepreneurs draw their inspirational ideas from has both fascinated but also eluded researchers and thought leaders in policy and business. This important new book is able to unravel this mystery and explicitly identify the key sources of knowledge and ideas fueling entrepreneurship. - Erik E. Lehmann, Professor of Management and Organization, University of Augsburg

Author Information

David B. Audretsch is a Distinguished Professor and the Ameritech Chair of Economic Development at Indiana University. Albert N. Link is the Virginia Batte Phillips Distinguished Professor at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

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