Sources of Knowledge and Entrepreneurial Behavior

Book excerpt: Sources of Knowledge and Entrepreneurial Behavior delves into the nature and importance of the relationship between sources of knowledge and entrepreneurial behavior, and should be of interest to both academics and policy-makers. David B. Audretsch and Albert N. Link use the Knowledge Spillover Theory of Entrepreneurship as the conceptual foundation for why individuals decide to become entrepreneurs. Then, using a database of more than 4,000 small and relatively new European companies from 10 different countries, called the AEGIS database, Audretsch and Link offer new insights about the relationship between knowledge sources and entrepreneurial behavior. In their analysis of the empirical evidence in support of the Knowledge Spillover Theory of Entrepreneurship, Audretsch and Link conclude that there is no singular source of knowledge driving entrepreneurship, but a plethora of knowledge sources, each associated with different dimensions of entrepreneurial activity. The intellectual breakthrough in this book is not that knowledge matters or that it especially matters for entrepreneurship. Rather, Audretsch and Link show that knowledge, and especially entrepreneurial knowledge, is not a homogeneous phenomenon. There are multiple sources of knowledge that act on entrepreneurial performance in a myriad of ways.