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Cognition has always been central to the popular way of thinking about entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurs imagine a different future. They envision or discover new products or services. They perceive or recognize opportunities. They assess risk, and figure out how to profit from it. They identify possible new combinations of resources. Common to all of these is the individual’s use of their perceptual and reasoning skills, what we call cognition, a term borrowed from the psychologists’ lexicon.

The history of the field of entrepreneurship and the entrepreneurship program at Saint Louis University is discussed, along with the descriptions of the Gateways to Entrepreneurship Conferences and the creation of the Advances in Entrepreneurship, Firm Emergence, and Growth (AEFEG) series given in relation to those national- and campus-level contexts. The growth and development of the AEFEG series is discussed and the editorial contributors are noted, which could be of use to those interested in editorial roles and processes. Based on these elements, the chapter concludes with observations on the field of entrepreneurship and some ideas about its future.

Communications regarding this column should be addressed to Mrs. Cheney, Peabody Library School, Nashville, Tenn. 37203. Mrs. Cheney does not sell the books listed here. They are available through normal trade sources. Mrs. Cheney, being a member of the editorial board of Pierian Press, will not review Pierian Press reference books in this column. Descriptions of Pierian Press reference books will be included elsewhere in this publication.

The peer-reviewed chapters in Volume 12 emphasize the role of family systems in shaping entrepreneurial outcomes. Interestingly, spousal influence is a major topic in three of the chapters. Another important theme is family business identity and how a range of different influences – from within-family perceptions to broad institutional pressures – affect family business image and organizational performance. Both quantitative and qualitative research methods are employed to address the role of entrepreneurship in family businesses.

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.

This chapter looks at the development of the original contribution “Toward a Theory of Entrepreneurial Competency” in the 1995 volume of the Advances series. The reflection discusses the conceptual and career issues underlying that original work. What follows is a reflection on the impact of the original chapter and on the key concept of the competency of learning itself. Among major ideas that emerge from this analysis is that entrepreneurship education helps individuals develop self-concepts and the social roles of entrepreneurs, that the intersection of personality, learning style, and learning effectiveness could be a useful focus of future work, that reflection is an under-developed competency, that success-related competencies need to be the focus going forward, that the atemporality of entrepreneurship and competencies should be tested, that critical entrepreneurship competencies may be industry-specific, and that the relative weights of competencies also need to be considered.

This chapter is a reflection of how Venkataraman’s “The Distinctive Domain of Entrepreneurship Research” has influenced the field of entrepreneurship. The theory underlying the original chapter provided the first true theoretical basis for the discipline of entrepreneurship, grounded in Kirzner and Schumpeter. Its two discrete components, opportunity, and role of the individual became the basis for new approaches in empirical research and new conceptualizations of entrepreneurship theory. These components led to new approaches to concepts such as motivation, perception, and information’s role in the entrepreneurial process. The chapter revisits the three core questions raised by “The Distinctive Domain”: how opportunities arise, why do only some recognize and pursue opportunities, and what are the consequences of the pursuit of opportunities. The chapter concludes with a consideration of the impact of the original chapter in practice and academia.