ABSTRACT
Research on entrepreneurship is itself a typical "rags to riches" story. Although it has become almost customary to begin a study on entrepreneurship by complaining about how little attention the topic has been paid (see Cole 1968; Drucker 1985; and Kirzner 1973, for three very different works that insist on the same point), the truth is that, as Vesper (1988) points out, it has become a "successful field":
The Academy of Management has set up its own "Entrepreneurship Division."
Research conferences on entrepreneurship are being organized at leading business schools: 37 papers were presented at the 1983 Babson Conference on Entrepreneurship Research; in 1988, this figure had grown to 106.
Scholarly books on the subject are being published frequently with contributions featuring interdisciplinary approaches
(see, for instance, Backman 1983; Kent, Sexton, and Vesper 1982).New high-quality academic journals, such as the Journal of Business Venturing, specifically devoted to the field of entrepreneurship, are appearing. Other journals have changed focus from small business to entrepreneurship. At the same time, mainstream journals carry more and more articles on related issues (Churchill and Lewis 1985). The growth in nonacademic publications has been even faster
(see McClung and Constantin 1982).As of today, most business schools in the United States have at least one course on entrepreneurship and studies of business education argue for more
(Porter and McKibben 1988).