ABSTRACT
Never before in history have so many individuals been able to identify and implement the definition that we use to guide our research and teaching at Harvard. That definition is: “Entrepreneurship is the pursuit of opportunity beyond the resources you currently control” (Stevenson 1983; Stevenson and Gumpert 1985; Stevenson and Jarillo-Mossi 1990). This definition takes into account both the individual and the society in which the individual is embedded. The individual identifies an opportunity to be pursued and then, as an entrepreneur, must seek the resources from the broader society. This approach follows on the work of early scholars such as Schumpeter (1934) who identified the interaction of the individual with the context in his early work. It corresponds to later admonitions, such as those of Aldrich (1992), who argued that
individuals, organizations, and the context need to be studied to develop a theory of entrepreneurship.
