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This is the 50th Anniversary book of"best practice" in research across the Four ICSB Pillars: Research; Policy; Education; and Practice

Keystones of Entrepreneurship Knowledge
Van der Horst, R., King-Kauanui, S., and Duffy, S (Editors) ICSB - Blackwell Publishing 2005

Below is the introduction to the section on Best Papers in the Field of Research. This will provide you with a feel for the book.

"Best Papers in the Field of Research"

Introduction
by J. Hanns Pichler and Roy Thurik

Entrepreneurship and small business are related concepts, but they are not synonymous. Entrepreneurship is a type of behavior dealing with opportunities rather than resources that is displayed in businesses large and small and also elsewhere. Small businesses, on the other hand, can be a vehicle for both Schumpeterian entrepreneurs introducing new products and processes that change an industry and for people who run and own a business to provide a living for themselves.

Entrepreneurship and small businesses are important where they overlap, notably in the area of new small and often fast-growing businesses. However, the way in which they matter has evolved over time. During the first decades of the last century, small businesses were both a vehicle for entrepreneurship and a source of employment as well as income. This is the era in which Schumpeter conceived his Theory of Economic Development (1912), emphasizing the role of the entrepreneur as the very cause for the dynamics of economic development, in describing how the innovating entrepreneur challenges incumbent firms by introducing new inventions that make existing technologies and products obsolete. This process of creative destruction essentially characterizes what has been called the entrepreneurial economy.

During the years after World War II, small business continued to matter, although less on the grounds of economic efficiency than for social and political purposes. At a time when large firms had yet to establish their position they enjoyed in the 1960s and 1970s, small businesses were the main source of employment and hence contributed to social and political stability. However, scholars, economists, intellectuals, and policymakers at the time were convinced that the future lay rather in the hands of large corporations and that small businesses would tend to fade away because of their own inefficiencies. Such view was inspired by Schumpeter’s Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (1942), with its specific emphasis on the innovative activities of large and established firms in describing how they outperform their smaller counterparts through a strong positive feedback loop, from innovation to increased research and development (R&D).

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