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The literature on international entrepreneurship offers two competing views on why new ventures internationalize: (a) the nature of the opportunity pulls them international or (b) the founder pushes the firm international. While these two internationalization drivers are not independent, they do represent unique causal mechanisms. Previously, the tools available to understand the entrepreneur’s disposition toward internationalization were limited. The present study uses the theoretical foundation of the international entrepreneurial orientation construct and from it develops and tests an attitudinally-based individual-level measure of disposition toward internationalization. To ensure the validity and reliability of the new measure, termed International Entrepreneurial Orientation Disposition, studies were conducted to: develop new scale items, examine their psychometric properties and construct validity, and demonstrate criterion validity. A strong measurement model is developed using structural equation modeling (CFI = 0.93, RMSEA = 0.07), and the measure is shown to be useful as a predictor of perceived international venture attractiveness.

The relationship between entrepreneurial orientation (EO) and performance is often moderated by different factors. Specifically, scholars have called for research examining whether commitment to long-term objectives improves EOʼs effectiveness, believing that commitment may help firms overcome obstacles associated with EO. In response, we collected survey data from executives in 126 small, high-technology firms, and found that EO and commitment to objectives enhanced sales growth. In addition, the study determined that commitment to objectives was associated with greater increased sales growth of companies high in EO, as compared to those low in EO.

While extant literature has advanced our understanding of senior and middle managers in corporate entrepreneurship, studies have only recently attended to the role of non-managerial employees (NMEs). These organizational members bring ideas, resources and energy to the pursuit of innovative opportunities, yet the determinants of their entrepreneurial behavior are poorly understood.

The authors performed a systematical literature review on the subject of NMEs in corporate entrepreneurship to identify gaps and recommend an agenda for future research.

The review revealed gaps regarding (1) the distance of NMEs from decisions on corporate strategic intent, (2) agentic choices made by NMEs to use their subject matter expertise for their employers' benefit, and the influences of (3) job characteristics and (4) organizational infrastructural support of entrepreneurial behavior.

The authors present a theoretical framework and directions for future research.

This chapter synthesizes works contained within the volume and paints a picture of where entrepreneurial orientation (EO) research stands today and where it is likely heading in the future. From the necessity for better theorizing and measurement to new directions and context, today’s research into EO is setting the foundation for future research that brings greater understanding to what it means for firms and organizations of all types to be entrepreneurial.

In business environments characterized by intense competition, globalization, rapid technological diffusion, accelerated product life cycles, and evolving industry boundaries, the ability of firms to adapt effectively to their changing environments is a strategic imperative (Hitt, Keats, & DeMarie, 1998; Nadler & Tushman, 1999). The exhibition of strategic adaptability – the ability of a firm to alter its alignment with the environment through reactive and proactive behaviors (Evans, 1991) – is a function of the goodness-of-fit that exists between the capabilities of a firm and the demands imposed by its relevant industry context (Burgelman & Grove, 1996). When firm capabilities are well aligned with industry success factors, those capabilities constitute strategic assets for the firm, or resources that lead to the achievement of competitive success in that context (Amit & Schoemaker, 1993). The possession of strategic assets thus contributes to a state of adaptation, defined by Chakravarthy (1982) as a state in which an organization exhibits the capacity to survive the conditions of its changing environment. Because of the constantly shifting nature of the environment, a state of adaptation is not a permanent settling point for the organization, but rather a moving target for the organization as it attempts to remain “mapped on” to the exigencies of the environment.

This tenth volume in the series Advances in Entrepreneurship, Firm Emergence, and Growth focuses on entrepreneurial strategic processes. Papers related to strategic processes in entrepreneurship have been a recurring feature of the Advances series, starting with the second volume, which included Slevin and Covin's (1995) article of record on entrepreneurial strategic behavior, as well as process-related strategy articles by Carsrud and Kruerger (1995) and Bloodgood, Sapienza, and Carsrud (1995). Subsequent explorations included Volume 7's material on corporate entrepreneurship, Fernhaber and McDougall's (2005) work on strategic adaptation in Volume 8, as well as Salvato, Lassini, and Wiklund's (2006) acquisition process model and Samuelsson's innovative-imitative process comparison in Volume 9. Common to all of these has been the central intent of the strategy approach: the pursuit of organizational success.

Entrepreneurship education has had a remarkable evolution over time and the number of entrepreneurship textbooks has multiplied given the increased interest in entrepreneurship programs in higher education. Yet, studies that review the coverage of textbooks focusing on entrepreneurship are scarce. This study provides an inventory of entrepreneurship textbooks and the topics they cover as well as specific emerging topics they do not cover by analyzing the content of 57 textbooks. Our results suggest that most textbooks provide significant coverage of such topics as the nature of entrepreneurship, business plans, financing, marketing, and cases. Among emerging concepts, social media has been relatively well covered with increasing coverage in more recent textbooks, while business canvas, as an example of alternatives to conventional business plans, is rarely covered. Most textbooks have provided little coverage of such topics as sales, family business, women and minorities, as well as ethics and sustainability. This study not only reveals areas that are covered by existing textbooks but also themes that future textbooks and research could cover to address the challenges of future entrepreneurship education.

New ventures contribute to the competitiveness of the United States in global markets, creating jobs and wealth. Understandably, public policy makers and researchers alike have shown an interest in understanding the factors that spur these ventures’ growth, which is also an important research issue in the field of entrepreneurship. Researchers have highlighted the role of owners’ needs and aspirations and industry conditions as determinants of new ventures’ growth. This study proposes that new ventures’ resource endowments influence their growth in domestic and international markets. Using the resource-based view (RBV) of the firm, the study examines the effect of select technological resources on the domestic and international sales growth of 419 new ventures. Start-ups (5 years or younger) benefit from using a different set of technological resources in achieving growth than those of adolescent firms (6–8 years old). These differences persist in low vs. high technology industries, reflecting the maturation of these ventures.