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^ Academy oi Management Review

2000, Vol. 25, No. 1, 217-22G.

NOTE

THE PROMISE OF ENTREPRENEURSHIP AS A. FIELD OF RESEARCH

SCOTT SHANEUniversity of Maryland

S. VENKATARAMANtiniversity of VirginiaTo date, the phenomenon of entrepreneurship has lacked a conceptual framework. Inthis note we draw upon previous research conducted in the different social sciencedisciplines and applied fields of business to create a conceptual framework forthefield. With this framework we explain a set of empirical phenomena and predict asetof outcomes not explained or predicted by conceptual frameworks already in exis

tence in other fields.

For a field of social science to have usefulness,it must have a conceptual framework thatexplains and predicts a set of empirical phenomenanot explained or predicted by conceptualframeworks already in existence in otherfields. To date, the phenomenon of entrepreneurshiphas lacked such a conceptual framework.Rather than explaining and predicting aunique set of empirical phenomena, enfrepreneurshiphas become a broad label under which

a hodgepodge of research is housed. What appearsto constitute entrepreneurship researchtoday is some aspect of the setting (e.g., smallbusinesses or new firms), rather than a uniqueconceptual domain. As a result, many peoplehave had trouble identifying the distinctive contributionof the field to the broader domain ofbusiness studies, undermining the field's legitimacy.Researchers in other fields ask why entrepreneurshipresearch is necessary if it doesnot explain or predict empirical phenomena beyondwhat is known from work in other fields.Moreover, the lack of a conceptual framework

has precluded the development of an understandingof many important phenomena not adequatelyexplained by other fields.

One example of this problem is the focus inthe entrepreneurship literature on the relative

We acknowledge the helpful comments of Ed Roberts onan earlier draft of this note. The authors contributed equallyand are listed alphabetically.


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performance of individuals or firms in the contextof small or new businesses. Since strategicmanagement scholars examine the differencesin and sustainability of relative performance betweencompetitive firms, this approach is notunique (Venkataraman, 1997). Moreover, the approachdoes not provide an adequate test ofentrepreneurship, since entrepreneurship isconcerned with the discovery and exploitationof profitable opportunities. A performance advantageover other firms is not a sufficient measureof entrepreneurial performance, because aperformance advantage may be insufficient tocompensate for the opportunity cost of other alternatives,a liquidity premium for time and capital,and a premium for uncertainty bearing.Therefore, although a conceptual framework toexplain and predict relative performance betweenfirms is useful to strategic management,it is not sufficient for entrepreneurship.

We attempt an integrating framework for theentrepreneurship field in the form of this note.

We believe that this framework will help entrepreneurshipresearchers recognize the relationshipamong the multitude of necessary, but notsufficient, factors that compose entrepreneurship,and thereby advance the quality of empiricaland theoretical work in the field. By providinga framework that both sheds light onunexplained phenomena and enhances thequality of research, we seek to enhance thefield's legitimacy and prevent its marginaliza

217


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Academy ol Management Review January

tion as only "a research setting" or "teachingapplication."

The note proceeds as follows. First, we definethe domain of the field. Second, we explain whyorganizational researchers should study entrepreneurship.Third, we describe why entrepreneurialopportunities exist and why some peo-ple, and not others, discover and exploit thoseopportunities. Fourth, we consider the differentmodes of exploitation of entrepreneurial opportunities.Finally, we conclude with brief reflectionson the potential value of the frameworkpresented here.

DEFINITION OF ENTREPRENEURSHIP

Perhaps the largest obstacle in creating a conceptualframework for the entrepreneurshipfield has been its definition. To date, most researchershave defined the field solely in terms

of who the entrepreneur is and what he or shedoes (Venkataraman, 1997). The problem withthis approach is that entrepreneurship involvesthe nexus of two phenomena: the presence oflucrative opportunities and the presence of enterprisingindividuals (Venkataraman, 1997). Bydefining the field in terms of the individualalone, entrepreneurship researchers have generatedincomplete definitions that do not withstandthe scrutiny of other scholars (Gartner,1988).

The definition of an entrepreneur as a person

who establishes a new organization is an exam

ple of this problem. Because this definition does

not include consideration of the variation in the

quality of opportunities that different people

identify, it leads researchers to neglect to mea

sure opportunities. Consequently, empirical

support (or lack of support) for attributes that

differentiate entrepreneurs from other members

of society is often questionable, because these

attributes confound the influence of opportuni


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ties and individuals.

In contrast to previous research, we define the

field of entrepreneurship as the scholarly exam

ination of how, by whom, and with what effects

opportunities to create future goods and ser

vices are discovered, evaluated, and exploited

(Venkataraman, 1997). Consequently, the field

involves the study of sources of opportunities;

the processes of discovery, evaluation, and ex

ploitation of opportunities; and the set of individualswho discover, evaluate, and exploit

them.

Although the phenomenon of entrepreneurshipprovides research questions for many differentscholarly fields,' organization scholarsare fundamentally concerned with three sets ofresearch questions about entrepreneurship:

(1) why, when, and how opportunities for thecreation of goods and services come into existence;(2) why, when, and how some people andnot others discover and exploit these opportunities;and (3) why, when, and how different modes

of action are used to exploit entrepreneurial opportunities.Before reviewing existing research to answerthese questions, we provide several caveatsabout our approach. First, we take a disequilibriumapproach, which differs from equilibriumapproaches in economics (Khilstrom & Laffont,1979) and social psychology (McClelland, 1961).In equilibrium models, entrepreneurial opportunitieseither do not exist or are assumed to berandomly distributed across the population. Be-cause people in equilibrium models cannot discoveropportunities that differ in value fromthose discovered by others, who becomes an

entrepreneur in these models depends solely onthe attributes of people. For example, inKhilstrom and Laffont's (1979) equilibriummodel, entrepreneurs are people who prefer uncertainty.

Although we believe that some dimensions ofequilibrium models are useful for understandingentrepreneurship, we argue that these modelsare necessarily incomplete. Entrepreneurial


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behavior is transitory (Carroll & Mosakowski,1987). Moreover, estimates of the number of peo-ple who engage in entrepreneurial behaviorrange from 20 percent of the population (Reynolds& White, 1997) to over 50 percent (Aldrich &Zimmer, 1986). Since a large and diverse groupof people engage in the transitory process ofentrepreneurship, it is improbable that entrepreneurshipcan be explained solely by reference toa characteristic of certain people independent ofthe situations in which they find themselves.Therefore, when we argue that some people and

' For example, economists are interested in the distributionof entrepreneurial talent across productive and unproductiveactivities (Baumol, 1998).


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Shane and Veniataraman

not others engage in entrepreneurial behavior,we are describing the tendency of certain peo-ple to respond to the situational cues of opportunitiesnot a stable characteristic that differentiatessome people from others across allsituations.^

Second, we argue that entrepreneurship doesnot require, but can include, the creation of neworganizations. As Amit, Glosten, and Mueller(1993) and Casson (1982) explain, entrepreneurshipcan also occur within an existing organization.Moreover, opportunities can be sold toother individuals or to existing organizations. Inthis note we do not examine the creation of neworganizations per se but, rather, refer interestedreaders to excellent reviews on firm creation inorganizational ecology (Aldrich, 1990; Singh &Lumsden, 1990), economics (Caves, 1998;Geroski, 1995), and organizational theory (Gartner,1985; Katz & Gartner, 1988; Low & MacMillan,

1988).^

Third, our framework complements sociologicaland economic work in which researchershave examined the population-level factors thatinfluence firm creation. Stinchcombe (1965) identifiedsocietal factors that enhance incentives toorganize and organizing ability. Aldrich (1990)and Singh and Lumsden (1990) have providedreviews of factors enhancing firm foundings andhave described the effects of such factors asenvironmental carrying capacity, interpopulationprocesses, and institutional factors. Similarly,

Baumol (1996) has related the institutionalenvironment to the supply of people who arewilling to create firms.

Although these other frameworks are valuableto entrepreneurship scholars, they involvea set of issues different from those with whichwe are concerned. Our framework differs fromthese in that (1) we focus on the existence, discovery,and exploitation of opportunities; (2) weexamine the influence of individuals and opportunities,rather than environmental antecedentsand consequences; and (3) we consider a framework

broader than firm creation.

^ We also argue that entrepreneurship can be undertaken

by a single individual or a set of people who undertake the

steps of the process collectively or independently.

^ Many researchers argue that entrepreneurship occurs


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Academy oi Management Review January

THE EXISTENCE, DISCOVERY, ANDEXPLOITATION OF ENTREPRENEURIALOPPORTUNITIES

The Existence of Entrepreneurial Opportunities

To have entrepreneurship, you must first haveentrepreneurial opportunities. Entrepreneurialopportunities are those situations in which newgoods, services, raw materials, and organizingmethods can be introduced and sold at greaterthan their cost of production (Casson, 1982). Althoughrecognition of entrepreneurial opportunitiesis a subjective process, the opportunitiesthemselves are objective phenomena that arenot known to all parties at all times. For example,the discovery of the telephone created newopportunities for communication, whether or notpeople discovered those opportunities.

Entrepreneurial opportunities differ from thelarger set of all opportunities for profit, particularlyopportunities to enhance the efficiency ofexisfing goods, services, raw materials, and organizingmethods, because the former requirethe discovery of new means-ends relationships,whereas the latter involve optimization withinexisting means-ends frameworks (Kirzner, 1997).Because the range of options and the consequencesof exploiting new things are unknown,entrepreneurial decisions cannot be madethrough an optimization process in which mechanicalcalculations are made in response to a

given set of alternatives (Baumol, 1993).

Entrepreneurial opportunities come in a varietyof forms. Although the focus in most priorresearch has been on opportunities in productmarkets (Venkataraman, 1997), opportunitiesalso exist in factor markets, as in the case of thediscovery of new materials (Schumpeter, 1934).Moreover, within product market entrepreneurship,Drucker (1985) has described three differentcategories of opportunities: (1) the creation ofnew information, as occurs with the invention ofnew technologies; (2) the exploitation of market

inefficiencies that result from information asymmetry,as occurs across time and geography;and (3) the reaction to shifts in the relative costsand benefits of alternative uses for resources, asoccurs with political, regulatory, or demographicchanges.

Previous researchers have argued that entrepreneurialopportunities exist primarily be-cause different members of society have different


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beliefs about the relative value of resources.

given the potential to transform them into a differentstate (Kirzner, 1997). Because people possessdifferent beliefs (because of a lucky hunch,superior intuition, or private information), theymake different conjectures about the price atwhich markets should clear or about what possiblenew markets could be created in the future.When buyers and sellers have different beliefsabout the value of resources, both today and inthe future, goods and services can sell above orbelow their marginal cost of production (Schumpeter,1934). An entrepreneurial discovery occurswhen someone makes the conjecture that a setof resources is not put to its "best use" (i.e., theresources are priced "too low," given a beliefabout the price at which the output from theircombination could be sold in another location,at another time, or in another form). If the conjectureis acted upon and is correct, the individualwill earn an entrepreneurial profit. If theconjecture is acted upon and is incorrect, theindividual will incur an entrepreneurial loss

(Casson, 1982).

Eritrepreneurship requires that people holddifferent beliefs about the value of resources fortwo reasons. First, entrepreneurship involvesjoint production, where several different resourceshave to be brought together to create thenew product or service. For the entrepreneur toobtain control over these resources in a way thatmakes the opportunity profitable, his or her conjectureabout the accuracy of resource pricesmust differ from those of resource owners andother potential entrepreneurs (Casson, 1982). If

resource owners had the same conjectures asthe entrepreneur, they would seek to appropriatethe profit from the opportunity by pricing theresources so that the entrepreneur's profit approachedzero. Therefore, for entrepreneurshipto occur, the resource owners must not sharecompletely the entrepreneur's conjectures. Second,if all people (potential entrepreneurs) possessedthe same entrepreneurial conjectures,they would compete to capture the same entrepreneurialprofit, dividing it to the point that theincentive to pursue the opportunity was eliminated(Schumpeter, 1934).

But why should people possess different beliefsabout the prices at which markets shouldclear? Two answers have been offered. First, asKirzner (1973) has observed, the process of discoveryin a market setting requires the participantsto guess each other's expectations about a


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2000 Shane and VenJcataraman 221

wide variety of things. People make decisionson the basis of hunches, intuition, heuristics,and accurate and inaccurate information, causingtheir decisions to be incorrect some of thetime. Since decisions are not always correct, thisprocess leads to "errors" that create shortages,surpluses, and misallocated resources. An individualalert to the presence of an "error" maybuy resources where prices are "too low," recombinethem, and sell the outputs where prices are"too high."

Second, as Schumpeter (1934) explained, economiesoperate in a constant state of disequilibrium.Technological, political, social, regulatory,and other types of change offer a continuoussupply of new information about different waysto use resources to enhance wealth. By making itpossible to transform resources into a morevaluable form, the new information alters thevalue of resources and, therefore, the resources'

proper equilibrium price. Because information isimperfectly distributed, all economic actors donot receive new information at the same time.Consequently, some people obtain informationbefore others about resources lying fallow, newdiscoveries being made, or new markets openingup. If economic actors obtain new informationbefore others, they can purchase resourcesat below their equilibrium value and earn anentrepreneurial profit by recombining the resourcesand then selling them (Schumpeter,

1934).

The informational sources of opportunity maybe easier to see in the case of new technology,but they need not be restricted to technologicaldevelopments. For example, the production ofthe movie Titanic generated new informationabout who was a desirable teen idol. An entrepreneurcould respond to this new informationby acting on the conjecture that posters of Leo-nardo DeCaprio would sell for greater than theircost of production.Because entrepreneurial opportunities dependon asymmetries of information and beliefs,eventually, entrepreneurial opportunities be-

come cost inefficient to pursue. First, the opportunityto earn entrepreneurial profit will providean incentive to many economic actors. As opportunitiesare exploited, information diffuses toother members of society who can imitate theinnovator and appropriate some of the innovator'sentrepreneurial profit. Although the entry ofimitating entrepreneurs initially may validate

the opportunity and increase overall demand,


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competition eventually begins to dominate(Hannan & Freeman, 1984). When the entry ofadditional entrepreneurs reaches a rate atwhich the benefits from new entrants exceedsthe costs, the incentive for people to pursue theopportunity is reduced, because the entrepreneurialprofit becomes divided among more andmore actors (Schumpeter, 1934).

Second, the exploitation of opportunity pro-vides information to resource providers aboutthe value of the resources that they possess andleads them to raise resource prices over time, inorder to capture some of the entrepreneur'sprofit for themselves (Kirzner, 1997). In short, thediffusion of information and learning about theaccuracy of decisions over time, combined withthe lure of profit, will reduce the incentive forpeople to pursue any given opportunity.

The duration of any given opportunity dependson a variety of factors. The provision ofmonopoly rights, as occurs with patent protectionor an exclusive contract, increases the duration.

Similarly, the slowness of informationdiffusion or the lags in the timeliness withwhich others recognize information also in-crease the duration, particularly if time providesreinforcing advantages, such as occur with theadoption of technical standards or learningcurves. Finally, the "inability of others (due tovarious isolating mechanisms) to imitate, substitute,trade for or acquire the rare resourcesrequired to drive down the surplus" (Venkataraman,1997: 133) increases the duration.

The Discovery of Entrepreneurial Opportunities

Although an opportunity for entrepreneurial

profit might exist, an individual can earn this

profit only if he or she recognizes that the oppor

tunity exists and has value. Given that an asym

metry of beliefs is a precondition for the exis

tence of entrepreneurial opportunities, all

opportunities must not be obvious to everyone

all of the time (Hayek, 1945). At any point in time,

only some subset of the population will discover

a given opportunity (Kirzner, 1973).


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Why do some people and not others discover

particular entrepreneurial opportunities? Al

though the null hypothesis is blind luck, re

search has suggested two broad categories of

factors that influence the probability that partic

ular people will discover particular opportuni


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222 Academy ol Management Review January

ties: (1) the possession of the prior informationnecessary to identify an opportunity and (2) thecognitive properties necessary to value it.

Information corridors. Human beings all possessdifferent stocks of information, and thesestocks of information influence their ability to recognizeparticular opportunities. Stocks of informationcreate mental schemas, which provide aframework for recognizing new information. Torecognize an opportunity, an entrepreneur has tohave prior information that is complementary withthe new information, which triggers an entrepreneurialconjecture (Kaish & Gilad, 1987). This priorinformation might be about user needs (Von Hippel,1986) or specific asjjects of the productionfunction (Bruderl, Preisendorfer, & Ziegler, 1992).

The information necessary to recognize anygiven opportunity is not widely distributedacross the population because of the specialization

of information in society (Hayek, 1945). Peo-ple specialize in information because specializedinformation is more useful than generalinformation for most activities (Becker & Murphy,1992). As a result, no two people share all ofthe same information at the same time. Rather,information about underutilized resources, newtechnology, unsated demand, and political andregulatory shifts is distributed according to theidiosyncratic life circumstances of each personin the population (Venkataraman, 1997).

The development of the Internet provides a

useful example. Only a subset of the populationhas had entrepreneurial conjectures in responseto the development of this technology. Somepeople still do not know what the Internet is orthat profitable opportunities exist to exploit it.

Cognitive properties. Since the discovery ofentrepreneurial opportunities is not an optimizationprocess by which people make mechanicalcalculations in response to a given a set ofalternatives imposed upon them (Baumol, 1993),people must be able to identify new means-endsrelationships that are generated by a given

change in order to discover entrepreneurial opportunities.Even if a person possesses the priorinformation necessary to discover an opportunity,he or she may fail to do so because of aninability to see new means-ends relationships.Unfortunately, visualizing these relationships isdifficult. Rosenberg (1994) points out that historyis rife with examples in which inventors failedto see commercial opportunities (new meansendsrelationships) that resulted from the inven


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tion of important technologiesfrom the telegraphto the laser.

Prior research has shown that people differ intheir ability to identify such relationships. Forexample, research in the field of cognitive sciencehas shown that people vary in their abilitiesto combine existing concepts and informationinto new ideas (see Ward, Smith, & Vaid,1997, for several review articles). Recently, a fewresearchers have begun to evaluate empiricallythe role that cognitive properties play in thediscovery of entrepreneurial opportunities (seeBusenitz & Barney, 1996; Kaish & Gilad, 1991;Shaver & Scott, 1991). For example, Sarasvathy,Simon, and Lave (1998) have shown that successfulentrepreneurs see opportunities in situationsin which other people tend to see risks, whereasBaron (in press) has found that entrepreneursmay be more likely than other persons to discoveropportunities because they are less likelyto engage in counterfactual thinking (i.e., less

likely to invest time and effort imaging what"might have been" in a given situation), lesslikely to experience regret over missed opportunities,and are less susceptible to inaction inertia.

The Decision to Exploit EntrepreneurialOpportunities

Although the discovery of an opportunity is anecessary condition for entrepreneurship, it isnot sufficient. Subsequent to the discovery of anopportunity, a potential entrepreneur must decide

to exploit the opportunity. We do not haveprecise figures on the aborting of discoveredopportunities, but we do know that not all discoveredopportunities are brought to fruition.Why, when, and how. do some people and notothers exploit the opportunities that they discover?The answer again appears to be a functionof the joint characteristics of the opportunityand the nature of the individual (Venkataraman,1997).

Nature of the opportunity. The characteristicsof opportunities themselves influence the willingness

of people to exploit them. Entrepreneurialopportunities vary on several dimensions,which influences their expected value. For example,a cure for lung cancer has greater expectedvalue than does a solution to students'need for snacks at a local high school. The exploitationof an entrepreneurial opportunity re


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2000 Shane and Venicafaraman 223

quires the entrepreneur to believe that the expectedvalue of the entrepreneurial profit will belarge enough to compensate for the opportunitycost of other alternatives (including the loss ofleisure), the lack of liquidity of the investment oftime and money, and a premium for bearinguncertainty (Kirzner, 1973; Schumpeter, 1934).

To date, research has shown that, on average,entrepreneurs exploit opportunities havinghigher expected value. In particular, exploitationis more common when expected demand islarge (Schmookler, 1966; Schumpeter, 1934), industryprofit margins are high (Dunne, Roberts,& Samuelson, 1988), the technology life cycle isyoung (Utterback, 1994), the density of competitionin a particular opportunity space is neithertoo low nor too high (Hannan & Freeman, 1984),the cost of capital is low (Shane, 1996), and population-level learning from other entrants isavailable (Aldrich & Wiedenmeyer, 1993).

Individual differences. Not all potential entrepreneurswill exploit opportunities with thesame expected value. The decision to exploit anopportunity involves weighing the value of theopportunity against the costs to generate thatvalue and the costs to generate value in otherways. Thus, people consider the opportunitycost of pursuing alternative activities in makingthe decision whether or not to exploit opportunitiesand pursue opportunities when their opportunitycost is lower (Amit, Mueller, 8f Cockburn,1995; Reynolds, 1987). In addition, people consider

their costs for obtaining the resources necessaryto exploit the opportunity. For example,Evans and Leighton (1991) showed that the exploitationof opportunities is more commonwhen people have greater financial capital.Similarly, Aldrich and Zimmer (1986) reviewedresearch findings that showed that stronger socialties to resource providers facilitate the acquisitionof resources and enhance the probabilityof opportunity exploitation. Furthermore,Cooper, Woo, and Dunkelberg (1989) found thatpeople are more likely to exploit opportunities ifthey have developed useful information for entrepreneurship

from their previous employment,presumably because such information reducesthe cost of opportunity exploitation. Finally, thetransferability of information from the prior experienceto the opportunity (Cooper et al., 1989),as well as prior entrepreneurial experience(Carroll & Mosakowski, 1987), increases the

probability of exploitation of entrepreneurialopportunity because learning reduces its cost.


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The decision to exploit an entrepreneurial opportunityis also influenced by individual differencesin perceptions. The creation of new productsand markets involves downside risk,because time, effort, and money must be investedbefore the distribution of the returns isknown (Knight, 1921; Venkataraman, 1997). Severalresearchers have argued that individualdifferences in the willingness to bear this riskinfluence the decision to exploit entrepreneurialopportunities (Khilstrom & Laffont, 1979; Knight,1921). For example, people who exploit opportunitiestend to frame information more positivelyand then respond to these positive perceptions(Palich & Bagby, 1995).

The decision to exploit entrepreneurial opportunitiesis also influenced by individual differencesin optimism. People who exploit opportunitiestypically perceive their chances ofsuccess as much higher than they really areand much higher than those of others in theirindustry (Cooper, Woo, & Dunkelberg, 1988).

Moreover, when these people create new firms,they often enter industries in which scale economiesplay an important role at less than minimumefficient scale (Audretsch, 1991), and theyenter industries at rates exceeding the equilibriumnumber of firms (Gort & Klepper, 1982).^

However, in most industries, at most points in

time, most new firms fail (Dunne et al., 1988), and

few firms ever displace incumbents (Audretsch,

1991), suggesting that people who exploit oppor

tunities, on average, are overly optimistic about

the value of the opportunities they discover. This

overoptimism motivates the exploitation of op

portunity by limiting information, stimulating

rosy forecasts of the future (Kahneman &

Lovallo, 1994), triggering the search for rela

tively small amounts of information (Kaish &

Gilad, 1991), and leading people to act first and

analyze later (Busenitz & Barney, 1997).


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Other individual differences may be impor

tant in explaining the willingness to exploit op

portunities. Researchers have argued that peo-

ple with greater self-efficacy and more internal

locus of control are more likely to exploit oppor

tunities, because exploitation requires people to

* The information signals generated by the entrepreneurialprocess are weak.


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market imperfections make it difficult for independententrepreneurs to, secure financing (Cohen& Levin, 1989). Entrepreneurship is morelikely when the pursuit of entrepreneurial opportunityrequires the effort of individuals wholack incentives to do so in large organizations;when scale economies, first mover advantages,and learning curves do not provide advantagesto existing firms (Cohen & Levin, 1989); andwhen industries have low barriers to entry (Acs& Audretsch, 1987). Research on the appropriabilityof information has shown that entrepreneurshipis more likely to take the form of denovo startups when information cannot be protectedwell by intellectual property laws, inhibitingthe sale of entrepreneurial opportunities(Cohen & Levin, 1989). Finally, research on thenature of opportunities has shown that entrepreneurshipis more likely to take the form of denovo startups when opportunities are more uncertain(Casson, 1982), when opportunities donot require complementary assets (Teece, 1986),and when opportunities destroy competence

(Tushman & Anderson, 1986).

CONCLUSION

Entrepreneurship is an important and relevantfield of study. Although those in the fieldface many difficult questions, we have presenteda framework for exploring them. We recognizethat we may have offered some uncertainassumptions, potentially flawed logical arguments,or have made statements that will prove,ultimately, to be inconsistent with data yet to becollected. Nevertheless, this framework pro-

vides a starting point. Since it incorporates informationgained from many disciplinary vantagepoints and explored through manydifferent methodologies, we hope that it willprod scholars from many different fields to joinus in the quest to create a systematic body ofinformation about entrepreneurship. Manyskeptics claim that the creation of such a body oftheory and the subsequent assembly of empiricalsupport for it are impossible. We hope thatother scholars will join our effort to prove thoseskeptics wrong.


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2000 Shane and VenJcataraman 225

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Scott Shane is associate professor of entrepreneurship in the Robert H. Smith Schoolof Business and director of research at the Dingman Center for Entrepreneurshipatthe University of Maryland. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania.His current research focuses on entrepreneurship in high-technology settings.

S. Venkataraman is the Samuel L. Slover Associate Professor of Business Administration

and director of research at the Batten Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership intheDarden Graduate School of Business Administration at the University of Virginia.Hereceived his Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota. His current research focuses onentrepreneurship theory.


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