Entrepreneurship, Community, and Community Development

Book excerpt: While entrepreneurship is widely cited as playing a key role in economic development, job creation, and advances in well-being in capitalist nations, there has been an overwhelming focus on the firm, firm founders, and founders’ strategies and decision-making processes. Only more recently, the important link between communities and entrepreneurs has emerged as a new frontier in entrepreneurship research. This book brings the emerging nexus between community and entrepreneur to light by exploring the mutual impact that communities and entrepreneurs have on one another. It focuses on how entrepreneurship development can push beyond the traditional emphasis on economic growth: from enriching the local lifestyle to building self-sufficiency; from attracting new markets to rediscovering traditional work; from the highest tech enterprises to the most ancient crafts and trades. The authors cover a wide variety of topics including rural community entrepreneurship development and culture, innovation and regional development, community-based enterprise learning, and urban revitalization strategies. This book was originally published as a special issue of the journal Community Development.