Dean A. Shepherd

Europe and Entrepreneurship Research

The hallmark of the “European Approach to Entrepreneurship,” if there is such a thing, has been its diversity. European entrepreneurship research has been like Europe itself, a panoply of diverse ways of thinking, expressed in theories, methods, or research questions. Only when comparing European research to North American do observers find a semblance of commonality. For example, it appears that European researchers as a whole tend to use more fieldwork and qualitative analysis approaches than do their North American counterparts (e.g., Aldrich, 2000). However, this perhaps reflects a stronger academia-based and quantitative dominant research paradigm among North American researchers than among the diverse research traditions currently active in Europe.

Preconceptions, Lessons Learned, and Other Changes: Three Editors’ Journeys

As we end our respective tenures as editors of Entrepreneurship Theory & Practice (ET&P; D. Ray Bagby, 33+ years), Family Business Review (FBR; Pramodita Sharma, 9 years), and Journal of Business Venturing (JBV; Dean Shepherd, 8 years), we reflect on our preconceptions about journal publishing as we came into the job, lessons we learned along the way, and the changes we observed in our field. We end this editorial with some thoughts of our expectations for the future of entrepreneurship and family business studies.

Images of entrepreneurship: exploring root metaphors and expanding upon them

Despite increasing recognition of the importance of metaphors to theory development, metaphors’ influence on entrepreneurship theorizing has been largely unexplored. This is problematic because a field’s metaphors shape its underlying assumptions. This study takes stock of the entrepreneurship field through its metaphors by analyzing a corpus of highly cited entrepreneurship articles. We identify and explain eight root metaphors for entrepreneurship—parenthood, mutagen, conduit of knowledge, method, mindset, networking, exploration, and politics—underpinning the mainstream of the field. We then extend and combine the metaphors to develop a research agenda for building on the metaphors and moving beyond them.

Prior Knowledge and Entrepreneurial Cognition

This chapter discusses the role of prior knowledge in entrepreneurial cognition. We assume that heterogeneity in individuals’ knowledge provides an answer to one of the most important questions in entrepreneurship research: Why do some individuals recognize new business opportunities while others do not? More specifically, we ask: How do different types of knowledge trigger the recognition of different types (e.g., commercial, sustainable, health-related, international) of opportunities? How do different sources of knowledge (internal and external to the entrepreneur) influence opportunity recognition? Having identified important types and sources of knowledge, how do cognitive processes, in particular structural alignment, in conjunction with prior knowledge impact opportunity identification? In this chapter, we address the above questions drawing on extant research from both cognitive science and entrepreneurship.

Emotion and Entrepreneurial Cognition

In this chapter, we point out that entrepreneurship has often been depicted as an “emotional rollercoaster” with multiple, and sometimes extreme, ups and downs, and psychologists have long established that these emotional experiences impact individuals’ cognitions. How do emotions, both positive and negative, impact entrepreneurs’ opportunity recognition? How do emotions, displayed by supervisors, impact employees’ entrepreneurial motivation? Further, given that the failure of entrepreneurial projects is known to often cause substantial negative emotions, how do these emotions impact team members’ learning and organizational commitment? And how do these effects depend on the organizational environment and individual coping behaviors and self-compassion? In this chapter, we explore the above questions to shed more light on the role of emotions for entrepreneurial cognition.

Motivation and Entrepreneurial Cognition

In this chapter we highlight how motivation is an important driver of entrepreneurs’ identification and subsequent exploitation of opportunities. While we acknowledge the motivational role of financial rewards for entrepreneurship and explore how financial rewards interact with prior knowledge, we note that many entrepreneurs are driven by non-financial motivation. What types of motivation other than financial can motivate (or demotivate) entrepreneurial action? What types of motivation trigger the exploitation of opportunities targeted toward sustaining nature or the communal environment and developing society as a whole? And how does one’s psychological and physical health impact entrepreneurial motivation? What is the role of one’s personal values in driving such motivation? And finally, what triggers the motivation to persist with entrepreneurial action in the face of obstacles (as opposed to engaging in it in the first place)? In this chapter we address the above questions from multiple theoretical angles to gain a comprehensive understanding of what motivates entrepreneurs to discover, exploit, and persist with new opportunities of various types.

Attention and Entrepreneurial Cognition

In this chapter we describe the important role of attention in the entrepreneurial process. Given that attention is a limited cognitive resource, allocation to those aspects of the environment that are related to new opportunities is central to entrepreneurial action. How can managers’ attention be guided in organizations to facilitate opportunity identification? How does the allocation of entrepreneurs’ attention impact opportunity evaluation? What drives managers’ attention to underperforming entrepreneurial projects? Finally, how does attention interfere with entrepreneurs’ metacognitive processes—processes which are known to be of central importance to develop entrepreneurial cognition? In this chapter, we try to answer these questions and illustrate how attentional processes guide entrepreneurial cognition.

What Are We Explaining? A Review and Agenda on Initiating, Engaging, Performing, and Contextualizing Entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurship is multifaceted. The purpose of this review is to acknowledge and critically assess the many and varied dependent variables (DVs) of entrepreneurship over the last 17 years. By focusing exclusively on systematically reviewing entrepreneurship’s DVs, this paper maps out, classifies, and provides order to the phenomena that scholars consider part of this self-defined field of research. Using a systematic selection process and an inductive approach to categorization, we offer a meta-framework for organizing entrepreneurship’s DVs. On the basis of this meta-framework, entrepreneurship involves the (a) initiation, (b) engagement, and (c) performance of entrepreneurial endeavors embedded in (d) environmental conditions in which an entrepreneurial endeavor is the investment of resources into the pursuit of a potential opportunity. For each category, we offer both a review of the different DVs and opportunities for future research.