Broadening the entrepreneurship lens: beyond gazelles and unicorns

What the paper says

This paper aims to broaden the understanding of entrepreneurship beyond the conventional focus on high-growth firms like gazelles and unicorns.Much entrepreneurship research recognizes the significant contributions of a diverse range of entrepreneurial firms to economies and societies, emphasizing the need for a more inclusive approach in entrepreneurship research.As a guide for scholars in the field of entrepreneurship and prospective authors of the New England Journal of Entrepreneurship, this paper offers an overview and discussion on the evolving landscape of entrepreneurship research and its future directions.Entrepreneurship has been receiving a great deal of attention in recent years, from policymakers, practitioners, academics and even Hollywood [1] (Ahlstrom et al., 2019;Li et al., 2022).Researchers have established the importance of entrepreneurship for reducing poverty (McCloskey, 2013;Si et al., 2020) and leading economic growth and development (Audretsch et al., 2006;Bruton et al., 2015;Tomizawa et al., 2020).Recent research on transitional entrepreneurship, often in poor or distressed communities, has also shown the important value of entrepreneurship in providing economic development and employment (Javadian et al., 2023;Khosravi et al., 2023).Indeed, in the United States of America (USA) alone, according to the US Department of Commerce, there were about ten million registered minority-owned enterprises, with some $1.78tn in revenues, providing nearly ten million jobs (Minority Business Development Agency, 2022).Reviews of the empirical literature regarding the economic and social contribution of entrepreneurial firms, generally defined by the researchers as small and young startup firms, have further demonstrated the value of entrepreneurship to communities and economies in various areas (Cortes and Lee, 2021;Van Praag and Versloot, 2008).Studies found that entrepreneurial firms have constructive effects on employment, productivity, innovation and positive spillovers in technology and techniques (Audretsch et al., 2006;Hughes et al., 2021;McCloskey, 2010).In particular, with reference to employment, Van Praag and Versloot (2008, p. 135) add: "Entrepreneurs create more employment than their counterparts [firms], relative to their size."The significance of entrepreneurship to communities and economies, and the widening study of entrepreneurship itself, raises questions about the scope and future directions of entrepreneurship research.This editorial explores the diverse range of entrepreneurial firms and delves into various facets of research on entrepreneurship, particularly entrepreneurial behaviors that warrant more scholarly attention.While there is a growing consensus on the nature of entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial firms, there remains a need for further clarification and expansion of the scope of how their study should be conducted.