Entrepreneurship and country-level innovation: investigating the role of entrepreneurial opportunities

Matthias Mrożewski () and Jan Kratzer
Additional contact information
Matthias Mrożewski: Technische Universität Berlin
Jan Kratzer: Technische Universität Berlin

The Journal of Technology Transfer, 2017, vol. 42, issue 5, No 7, 1125-1142

Abstract: Abstract Since the work of Schumpeter, entrepreneurship has been regarded as a concept that is in close relation to innovation. However, recent country level investigations show that technology innovation and new business creation can be regarded as two separate phenomena. In this paper we provide an explanation for the above contradiction through the distinguishing between two types of entrepreneurship, necessity and opportunity entrepreneurship. Building on opportunity theory and rational choice theory, we investigate the influence of both types of entrepreneurship on country-level innovation, and furthermore, pay particular attention to the interaction between opportunity entrepreneurship and the amount of opportunities available. We find that necessity entrepreneurship is inversely related to country-level innovation, whereas opportunity entrepreneurship is positively linked to technological progress. The positive effect of opportunity entrepreneurship, however, diminishes with an increased amount of entrepreneurial opportunities. This interaction indicates that opportunity availability is an important element of a country’s entrepreneurship environment.

Keywords: Entrepreneurial opportunities; Necessity entrepreneurship; Opportunity entrepreneurship; Innovation; Entrepreneurial opportunity availability (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: L26 O31 O57 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (21)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10961-016-9479-2 Abstract (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:jtecht:v:42:y:2017:i:5:d:10.1007_s10961-016-9479-2

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... nt/journal/10961/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s10961-016-9479-2

Access Statistics for this article

The Journal of Technology Transfer is currently edited by Albert N. Link, Donald S. Siegel, Barry Bozeman and Simon Mosey

More articles in The Journal of Technology Transfer from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().