essay on space and entrepreneurship

• DOI: 10.1002/sej.1392
• Corpus ID: 234185034

Entrepreneurial space and the freedom for entrepreneurship: Institutional settings, policy, and action in the space industry

• Wadid Lamine , Alistair R. Anderson , +1 author A. Fayolle
• Published 5 January 2021
• Business, Engineering
• Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal

34 Citations

Policy for innovative entrepreneurship: institutions, interventions, and societal challenges, changing places: the generative effects of community embeddedness in place, environmental change, strategic entrepreneurial action, and success: introduction to a special issue on an important, neglected topic, social capital and innovative performance in networks: the journey of romanian saas entrepreneurs, investigate innovation intermediary in civilian space industry innovation network: a grounded theory study, business environment reforms effect on entrepreneurial activities of high-income economies: panel data evidence, macrolevel factors encouraging bureaucratic policy entrepreneurship: the case of religion and state in israel, rethinking and reconceptualising entrepreneurship education a legacy from alistair anderson, framing the main patterns of an academic innovation ecosystem. evidence from a knowledge-intensive case study, rethinking innovation in light of women entrepreneurship, 93 references, how actors change institutions: towards a theory of institutional entrepreneurship, institutions, economic freedom, and entrepreneurship: the contribution of management scholarship, institutional dimensions and entrepreneurial activity: an international study, sector-based entrepreneurial capabilities and the promise of sector studies in entrepreneurship, contextualizing entrepreneurship—conceptual challenges and ways forward, institutions, entrepreneurship, and economic growth: what do we know and what do we still need to know, institutional theory and entrepreneurship: where are we now and where do we need to move in the future, entrepreneurship and institutional change: a research agenda, embedded entrepreneurship in the creative re-construction of place, cultural entrepreneurship: stories, legitimacy and the acquisition of resources, related papers.

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Space Tourism, Space Entrepreneurs and the Business and Economics of Space

July 26, 2021

Recent developments related to Space are simply astonishing. Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, went to space just a few days ago on July 20, 2021 on Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket. Blue Origin is a space tourism company founded by Jeff Bezos in 2000. In addition to the brother of Jeff Bezos (Mark Bezos), the two other passengers in the trip were Wally Funk (82), who became the oldest person to go to space and Oliver Daemen (18), who became the youngest to reach space.

Another billionaire, Richard Branson, also did a similar trip just nine days before on July 11 on the Virgin Galactic space plane, VSS Unity. Branson also received a license from the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) for future commercial space flights, paving the way for many individuals to become space tourists (and astronauts) in the near future. According to a recent report , there are about 600 people who are waiting to go to space at a ticket price of $250,000. People who paid a deposit to reserve their seat are thought to include celebrities like Elon Musk, Tom Hanks, Angelina Jolie, Lady Gaga and Leonardo Di Caprio, among many others. Branson, Bezos and accompanying passengers were not the first space tourists in history but the most recent ones. The first space tourist, Dennis Tito, paid $20 million to fly to the International Space Station (ISS) in 2001. There are also many business developments related to space other than space tourism. Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC), headquartered in Sparks, Nevada, started a new commercial space company called Sierra Space in 2021. SNC’s Dream Chaser is referred to as a “space utility vehicle” with the ability to take cargo and crew to low-earth-orbit (LEO) and land smoothly on runways, which is critical for sensitive cargo items such as science experiments. It is planning its first flight to the International Space Station in 2022.

Recent interest in space tourism and space economy more broadly by so many is quite remarkable. In his recent book Space is Open for Business , Robert C. Jacobson notes that space is not just a plan or a project but an ecosystem, an “organic, multi-path process involving hundreds or thousands of independent entities, all working in their own ways to succeed in their field of endeavor.” (Jacobson, 2020, p. 41) The size of the entire space ecosystem is already big but expected to grow exponentially in coming years and decades. While there is not an easy way to measure the size of the space economy, recent estimates put it at close to $400 billion. According to a Morgan Stanley report , the global space industry may triple in size to more than $1 trillion by 2040. According to a CNBC article , a Bank of America forecast shows the space economy reaching about $1.4 trillion by 2030.

It is also important to note that recent efforts are largely private initiatives. People are now talking about an era of space entrepreneurship that involves not just those renowned companies owned by billionaires but also smaller, less-known businesses and startups. According to the European Space Agency (ESA), there have been more than 900 space related startups that were supported by their Business Incubation Centers and intensive entrepreneurship programs . At the same time, governments have always been involved in space programs, for good reason. In addition to the excessively large investments needed for space-related programs, space involves a number of public goods (e.g. national security, maintaining peace, scientific explorations) and externalities (e.g. orbital congestion from satellites and space debris). Markets may not work well in situations involving public goods or externalities, warranting government intervention. Space is seen as a global commons , where commons is defined as a resource that is open to a community without any individual ownership. In commons situations, when private parties act only in their own interest with profit motive, they may overuse and harm the resource, leading to what is called the “ tragedy of the commons .” Space debris, with a total of 128 million pieces of space junk in LEO, could create a tragedy of the space commons. Problems like this require involvement of not just one but many governments and private sector players to figure out long-term solutions. We are definitely seeing a more decentralized space economy with greater private involvement now compared to the centralized government-led programs from few decades ago. However, better coordination between private parties and governments will be key to a healthy space economy in the future.

Note: It is rather difficult to say exactly where the atmosphere ends and space starts. A widely accepted definition uses what is called the Kármán line, which is at 62 miles (or 100 km) above sea level, as the boundary for space. According to NASA and the U.S. military, space starts at 50 miles (or 80 km) above sea level. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration provides a good summary on the definitions and more. Richard Branson and his crew in VSS Unity flew to an altitude of 53.5 miles, whereas Jeff Bezos and other passengers in Blue Origin flew to 66.5 miles.

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Please note you do not have access to teaching notes, university spaces for entrepreneurship: a process model.

International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behavior & Research

ISSN : 1355-2554

Article publication date: 17 May 2019

Issue publication date: 3 August 2020

The purpose of this paper is to explore trends in entrepreneurship spaces developed by universities to support entrepreneurship education. It identifies characteristics that make a space conducive to innovation and explains whether current spaces adequately conform to those characteristics. More generally, this paper seeks to clarify what is being built, for which purposes and with what results.

Design/methodology/approach

Given the novelty of this research, the paper uses a multiple-method approach to allow for an iterative examination between theory and data. Multiple data and methods were used, including an action research method, a systematic survey of 57 entrepreneurship spaces at US universities and a thematic and content analyses of interviews carried out with individuals directly involved in the functioning of such spaces.

The paper presents a prescriptive model aimed at guiding the practitioner in the design of an entrepreneurship space. It identifies five types of entrepreneurship spaces that differentially support entrepreneurial activities and rely on different characteristics. These characteristics are centrally important for innovation and entrepreneurship spaces.

Practical implications

There are a number of practical implications from the work. It identifies key challenges in the design of entrepreneurship spaces and shows which questions to consider in the decision-making process.

Originality/value

The paper advances research on entrepreneurship spaces, an important yet poorly understood phenomenon. It reviews and introduces the literature on how space can support innovation, entrepreneurship education and entrepreneurial “spirit’” and proposes a typology of entrepreneurship spaces, providing a path toward more robust and comprehensive theory building.

• Entrepreneurial education
• Innovation spaces
• Entrepreneurship spaces
• Co-working spaces

Acknowledgements

This study reports a project that was undertaken by a large group of students and faculty at Ohio University (OU). Many participants were involved in various aspects and stages of the project. Dominique Halaby (Georgia Southern University) participated in early project design and helped identify examples. Alex Kneier and Lori Bentz are acknowledged as the founding students of the C-Suite project and secured Innovation Strategy planning grant support. Other important student contributors to the project include Maria Figueroa, Colin Espinosa, Faith Voinovich, Baylie Pollock, Drew Stroud and Ben Bowald. OU Board of Trustee member Dave Pidwell was a key institutional leader, the project team received a $16k Innovation Strategy planning grant from the Office for Research and Creative Activity and received significant assistance from University Planning and Space Management at the university during the design and construction stage of the project.

This paper forms part of a special section Filling in the Blanks: ‘Black Boxes’ in Enterprise/Entrepreneurship Education guest edited by Helle Neergaard, William B. Gartner, Ulla Hytti, Diamanto Politis and David Rae.

Pittaway, L. , Aissaoui, R. , Ferrier, M. and Mass, P. (2020), "University spaces for entrepreneurship: a process model", International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behavior & Research , Vol. 26 No. 5, pp. 911-936. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJEBR-09-2018-0584

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Your Company Needs a Space Strategy. Now.

• Matthew Weinzierl,
• Prithwiraj (Raj) Choudhury,
• Tarun Khanna,
• Alan MacCormack,
• Brendan Rosseau

Space is becoming a potential source of value for businesses across a range of sectors, including agriculture, pharmaceuticals, consumer goods, and tourism. To understand what the opportunities are for your company, the authors advise you to consider the four ways in which using space could create value: data, capabilities, resources, and markets.

For most companies thinking about their space strategy over the next five to 10 years, data will be the dominant focus. For instance, many companies are turning to remote-sensing satellites for data that will inform business decisions. Whether it’s tracking the number of cars parked in retail locations, detecting costly and environmentally damaging methane leaks from natural-gas wells, or assessing soil type and moisture content to maximize crop yields, creative uses for data gathered from space abound.

Companies looking further ahead will want to explore the value to be gained from conducting activities in space, utilizing space assets, and meeting demand from the new space age.

Businesses engaging with commercial space should be willing to experiment and should look for partners.

Rapidly falling launch costs and fleets of new satellites are opening up big opportunities for business.

Idea in Brief

The situation.

Space is becoming a potential source of value for businesses across a range of sectors, including agriculture, pharmaceuticals, consumer goods, and tourism.

The Explanation

Rocket launch companies like SpaceX, Blue Origin, and Sierra Space have leveraged advances in microelectronics and computing to drive down the costs of getting to space.

The Opportunities

This article examines four ways that companies can create value using space: through data, capabilities, resources, and markets. For most companies thinking about their space strategy over the next five to 10 years, data will be the dominant focus. The other areas hold promise for later exploration. Companies engaging with commercial space should be willing to experiment and look for partners.

In the early 2000s, as the U.S. space shuttle program was winding down, the government’s policy on space moved away from its model of flowing all money and decisions through NASA and the Department of Defense. Instead, it began to allow privately funded companies to compete for public-sector contracts. The Commercial Orbital Transportation Services program (commonly known as COTS) and its successors, for example, gave private companies fixed-price contracts, rather than the cost-plus contracts typically used in the space sector, to provide services to resupply the International Space Station.

• MW Matthew Weinzierl is the Joseph and Jacqueline Elbling Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School and a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. His teaching and research focus on the design of economic policy and the economics and business of space.
• PC Prithwiraj (Raj) Choudhury is the Lumry Family Associate Professor at the Harvard Business School. He was an assistant professor at Wharton prior to joining Harvard. His research is focused on studying the Future of Work, especially the changing Geography of Work. In particular, he studies the productivity effects of geographic mobility of workers, causes of geographic immobility and productivity effects of remote work practices such as “work from anywhere” and “all-remote.” He is the author of the recent HBR article titled “ Our Work-from-Anywhere Future .”
• Tarun Khanna is the Jorge Paulo Lemann Professor at Harvard Business School, the director of Harvard’s Lakshmi Mittal South Asia Institute, and the author of Trust: Creating the Foundation for Entrepreneurship in Developing Countries (Berrett-Koehler, 2018).
• AM Alan MacCormack is the MBA Class of 1949 Adjunct Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. He is an expert in the management of innovation and new product development and a core faculty member in the MS/MBA joint degree program with the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.
• BR Brendan Rosseau is a research associate and teaching fellow at Harvard Business School.

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What is a space entrepreneur.

Written by: Space Foundation Editorial Team

Space entrepreneurs are just one of the many emerging professions in the global space ecosystem, as the private sector is often a hub for a variety of careers and professions that go far beyond astronauts and mission control.

So, what exactly is a space entrepreneur? This blog will cover what space entrepreneurs do, how to become a space entrepreneur, reasons to consider the profession, and how space entrepreneurs contribute to working in the space industry, as well as here on Earth.

What Do Space Entrepreneurs Do?

Space entrepreneurs represent your average aspiring new business owner; but rather than working in industries like hospitality, marketing, or other “conventional/normal” industries, they work in the commercial space community.

One of the many possibilities space entrepreneurs can do is own their own company, whether it be a satellite launch company, a company that designs technology for space missions, or any other business involved in space activity.

How To Become A Space Entrepreneur

There are many different ways one could break into the space entrepreneur community, and you don’t have to have a huge net worth or celebrity-status name to start. Here are some typical ways people break into the space entrepreneurship industry:

Commercializing Space Technology

NASA is often what many people consider the ultimate space organization, and while that is often true, commercial industries play a significant role in the space industry, such as SpaceX, Blue Origin, Boeing, Virgin Galactic, Space Ventures, and more.

Many of these companies gained success after using technology that was previously only utilized and funded by government agencies. Once this technology has been created, it is much easier to access from a commercial standpoint.

For example, SpaceX did not invent the modern rocket as we know it, but they were able to commercialize its technology with the goal of one day providing hospitality in space, commercial space flights, and things that would never have been offered to the public.

As more companies commercialize technologies, their price is more obtainable to smaller enterprises. In addition, these smaller companies could be bought out or merged with larger commercial companies.

This benefits both groups, as larger companies can gain new technology and expertise, and small businesses are rewarded for the hard work they’ve put into these space endeavors.

Commercializing space technology is a great way to become a space entrepreneur because often you are not starting from scratch, and can model your business off of existing companies or technology and build from their lessons learned too.

Utilizing Space Technology In a New Way

Another way you can consider yourself a space entrepreneur is by using space technology in a new way. Many space entrepreneurs have found success this way, whether they use space technology in a unique way for space missions or projects, or to solve problems on Earth.

For example, the owners of Compass Coffee in Washington, D.C. used NASA technology to brew the perfect cup of coffee, incorporating NASA temperature controls in their espresso machines. This is just one example of how someone could create technologies from existing space tech to better serve functions on Earth.

Delsys has worked closely with NASA’s Johnson Space Center, as the agency’s missions have allowed for the study of muscle functions, the effect of weightlessness on the human body, and more. Delsys used technology created by NASA, such as various gloves to test with NASA astronauts who had experienced muscle fatigue.

Another way space technology has been used uniquely is through the work of SpaceX’s Starlink system, which provides and improves internet coverage through 12,000 satellites that are in continuous orbit. Satellite technologies have helped functions on Earth in countless ways, with Wi-Fi being one of them. SpaceX Starlink system provides this type of Internet access to places that might not otherwise have the coverage at all, like rural areas.

Why Should Someone Become a Space Entrepreneur?

In addition to this significant growth, there are even more advantageous possibilities on the horizon for entrepreneurs to consider as future Moon and Mars missions by the United States and others begin to take shape. There couldn’t be a better time for anyone to be involved in space. No matter how big or small a company is, space success thus far has been built on small ideas that came to life.

How You Can Get Started Today

Are you interested in learning more about space entrepreneurship? There are plenty of resources available to educate people on space careers, the industry, and great ways to set yourself apart from the competition.

Space Foundation’s Space Commerce Institute connects you to the dynamic space industry through education, experience, training, mentorship, and consultancy. From online workshops to consulting, Space Commerce Institute provides actionable and tangible programming that facilitates growth into and within the global space ecosystem.

Explore Space Commerce Institute programming here .

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Essays on Entrepreneurship across Space: How Cities Support the Emergence, Survival, and Capital Acquisition of Entrepreneurs

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The impact of entrepreneurship on economic, social and environmental welfare and its determinants: a systematic review

• Open access
• Published: 04 August 2020
• Volume 71 , pages 553–584, ( 2021 )

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This paper presents a systematic review of (a) the impact of entrepreneurship on economic, social and environmental welfare and (b) the factors determining this impact. Research over the past 25 years shows that entrepreneurship is one cause of macroeconomic development, but that the relationship between entrepreneurship and welfare is very complex. The literature emphasizes that the generally positive impact of entrepreneurship depends on a variety of associated determinants which affect the degree of this impact. This paper seeks to contribute to the literature in three ways. First, it updates and extends existing literature reviews with the recently emerged research stream on developing countries, and incorporates studies analysing not only the impact of entrepreneurship on economic growth and welfare but also on social and environmental welfare. Second, it identifies and structures the current knowledge on the determinants of this impact. And third, it provides a roadmap for future research which targets the shortcomings of the existing empirical literature on this topic. The review of 102 publications reveals that the literature generally lacks research which (a) goes beyond the common measures of economic welfare, (b) examines the long-term impact of entrepreneurship and (c) focuses on emerging and developing countries. Regarding the determinants of the impact of entrepreneurship, the results highlight the need for empirical research which addresses both already investigated determinants which require more attention (e.g. survival, internationalisation, qualifications) and those which are currently only suspected of shaping the impact of entrepreneurship (e.g. firm performance, the entrepreneur’s socio-cultural background and motivations).

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1 Introduction

Entrepreneurship and its possible impact on the economy have been studied extensively during the past two decades but the research field still continues to develop and grow. The majority of studies from a variety of scientific disciplines have found empirical evidence for a significant positive macroeconomic impact of entrepreneurship (e.g. Atems and Shand 2018 ; Audretsch and Keilbach 2004a ; Fritsch and Mueller 2004 , 2008 ). However, several empirical studies show that the macroeconomic impact of entrepreneurship can also be negative under certain conditions (e.g. Carree and Thurik 2008 ; Andersson and Noseleit 2011 ; Fritsch and Mueller 2004 , 2008 ). Potential explanations for these contradictory results are to be found in the complex relationship between entrepreneurship and economic growth. Already some of the very first empirical studies on the macroeconomic impact of entrepreneurship showed that factors such as industrial affiliation (Fritsch 1996 ), the country’s level of development and the local density of business owners (Carree et al. 2002 ) significantly determine the impact of entrepreneurship. With more entrepreneurship datasets becoming available, researchers found evidence that only a small number of new firms such as particularly innovative new firms and firms with high-growth expectations create economic value and initiate Schumpeter’s process of ‘creative destruction’ (e.g. Szerb et al. 2018 ; Valliere and Peterson 2009 ; van Oort and Bosma 2013 ; Wong et al. 2005 ). However, over the past decade, researchers have identified a multitude of other relevant determinants (e.g. survival rates of new firms, institutional and cultural settings, motivations and qualifications of the entrepreneur), thereby drawing an increasingly complex web of interrelated determinants around the macroeconomic impact of entrepreneurship. This complexity combined with the fact that the research on determinants is scattered and mostly based on separate analyses of determinants leads to a number of hitherto unidentified research opportunities. In order to detect these opportunities and to exploit them in a targeted manner, a structured overview of the current knowledge on the determinants of the macroeconomic impact of entrepreneurship is required. In this context, a structured overview is not only essential for the scientific entrepreneurship community but also for politicians all over the world who need detailed information on the impact of entrepreneurship to promote the right types of entrepreneurship in the right situations.

To ensure that this information prepared for policy makers are truly comprehensive, it is essential that state-of-the-art research considers not only economic outcomes of entrepreneurship but also its social and environmental effects. This demand for a more holistic impact analyses is based on the call of economists who have been emphasizing since the 1970’s that economic development may is a significant part of welfare, but that social and environmental dimensions need to be considered as well (Daly et al. 1994 ; Meadows et al. 1972 ; Nordhaus and Tobin 1972 ). Tietenberg and Lewis ( 2012 , p. 553) summarised the economic, social and environmental effects in a holistic welfare definition and state that a “true measure of development would increase whenever we, as a nation or as a world, were better off and decrease whenever we were worse off”. This understatement is in line with many authors who recently highlighted the importance of entrepreneurship for social and environmental welfare (e.g. Alvarez and Barney 2014 ; Dhahri and Omri 2018 ; McMullen 2011 ). Entrepreneurship research has come to see entrepreneurs as a solution for social inequality and environmental degradation rather than a possible cause of them (Gast et al. 2017 ; Munoz and Cohen 2018 ; Terán-Yépez et al. 2020 ). This scientific consent of the past 50 years clearly illustrates how important it is that econometric research on entrepreneurship incorporates research on the economic as well as on the social and environmental impact of entrepreneurship. Footnote 1

Considering that the research on the macroeconomic impacts of entrepreneurship has been gaining increasing recognition over the last two decades and across a wide range of disciplines (Urbano et al. 2019a ), literature reviews must be conducted periodically to synthesize and reflect recent progress and to stimulate future research. Several high-quality reviews have already summarized the significant amount of research on the impact of entrepreneurship on the economy. Wennekers and Thurik ( 1999 ) were the first who discussed the link between entrepreneurship and economic growth in a narrative literature analysis. With their summary of the theoretical knowledge of that time and the first framework of the entrepreneurial impact the authors laid the groundwork for the following decade of empirical research on that matter. van Praag and Versloot ( 2007 ), extended that first review by systematically reviewing and evaluating the empirical findings of 57 articles published between 1995 and 2007. More precisely, the authors evaluated the various economic contributions of entrepreneurial firms, which have been defined by the authors as either employing fewer than 100 employees, being younger than 7 years or being new entrants into the market, relative to their counterparts. van Praag and Versloot ( 2007 ) thus made the first systematic attempt to distinguish the few new firms which are of economic relevance from the majority of meaningless new firms. Fritsch ( 2013 ), in a non-systematic monograph, exhaustively surveyed and assessed the then available knowledge on how new firms particularly effect regional development over time. Within this review, the author has established the term ‘determinants’ in the field of research on the impact of entrepreneurship and developed first suggestions on which factors may determine the impact of new firms. However, the author has not provided any empirical evidence for the effect of his proposed determinants. In contrast to these three literature reviews, the three most recent reviews also incorporated the latest findings from international studies and on developing countries. However, the three latest reviews all have a narrowly defined research focus. While Block et al. ( 2017 ; systematic literature review of 102 studies published between 2000 and 2015) analysed antecedents, behaviour and consequences of innovative entrepreneurship, Bjørnskov and Foss ( 2016 ; systematic literature review of 28 studies) and Urbano et al. ( 2019a ; systematic literature review of 104 studies published between 1992 and 2016) focused on the relationship between the institutional context, entrepreneurship and economic growth. Accordingly, all the existing reviews are either (1) already outdated, (2) mostly on highly developed countries or (3) focused on specific topics. Furthermore, none of these reviews provided (4) a structured overview on the empirical knowledge on the impact of entrepreneurship on the economy or (5) included research on the social and environmental impact of entrepreneurship.

This paper addresses these five shortcomings through a comprehensive and systematic review of empirical research into the impact of entrepreneurship on economic, Footnote 2 social and environmental welfare. The methodology of the review is based on the current knowledge of systematic reviews (e.g. Fayolle and Wright 2014 ; Fisch and Block 2018 ; Jones and Gatrell 2014 ; Tranfield et al. 2003 ), on narrative synthesis (e.g. Dixon-Woods et al. 2005 ; Jones and Gatrell 2014 ; Popay et al. 2006 ) and on recent examples of best practice (e.g. Jones et al. 2011 ; Urbano et al. 2019a ; van Praag and Versloot 2007 ). Using this approach, this paper aims to contribute to the literature on the impact of entrepreneurship on welfare in three ways. First, it updates and extends the existing literature reviews. More specifically, it follows recent research recommendations (e.g. Block et al. 2017 ; Fritsch 2013 ; Urbano et al. 2019a ) by incorporating the recent empirical stream of research on the impact of entrepreneurship in developing countries and research that goes beyond measures of common economic welfare. In practical terms, this means that this review not only considers measures of economic welfare (e.g. GDP, employment rates, innovative capacity), but also for social welfare (e.g. life expectancy, literacy rates, income inequality), for environmental welfare (e.g. CO 2 emissions, water pollution, soil quality) and for indicators which incorporate all three welfare dimensions (e.g. Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare, Genuine Progress Indicator). Second, this paper, as demanded in previous reviews (Fritsch 2013 ; Urbano et al. 2019a ), aims to provide a descriptive analysis of the factors determining the entrepreneurial impact by critically assessing (a) which determinants of the entrepreneurial impact have (b) what impact on (c) which measures of economic welfare. This paper thus represents the first comprehensive attempt to summarize and structure the empirical knowledge on the determinants of the impact of entrepreneurship. Finally, to encourage future research, this paper indicates shortcomings in the empirical research not only on the impact of entrepreneurship on economic, social and environmental welfare, but also on the described and structured determinants of this impact. It concludes with suggestions for future research avenues to close these research gaps.

To achieve these objectives, this paper is structured as follows. Section  2 describes the methodological approach of the review. Sections  3.1 and 3.2 report the available empirical research into the impact of entrepreneurship on economic, social and environmental welfare. Section  3.3 summarizes the determinants of this impact and Sect.  4 presents a roadmap for future research. Section  5 discusses the limitations of this paper and provides a conclusion.

2 Methodology

In order to clarify not only the macroeconomic impact of entrepreneurship on economic welfare but also the determinants of this impact, this paper provides a broad-ranging systematic, evidence-based literature review including a narrative synthesis. According to Mulrow ( 1994 ), systematic reviews are particularly useful in identifying and evaluating a large volume of evidence published over a long period of time and have been frequently applied in recent state-of-the-art literature reviews (e.g. Li et al. 2020 ; Mochkabadi and Volkmann 2020 ; Urbano et al. 2019a ). The systematic literature review conducted in this paper employs a rather broad empirical definition of entrepreneurship which covers both the entrepreneur, who creates or discovers new businesses (Kirzner 1973 ; Schumpeter 1942 ) and the entrepreneurial firm itself. Entrepreneurship is understood here as new business activity, which includes entrepreneurs in the process of new firm creation as well as recently founded firms. Furthermore, although not necessarily associated with the formation of new firms, self-employed individuals and owner-managers are defined here as entrepreneurs as well. This general definition is consistent with the majority of empirical studies (e.g. Bosma et al. 2011 ; Fritsch and Schindele 2011 ; Mueller et al. 2008 ). The review process comprises three major steps, namely (1) data collection, (2) the selection of relevant studies and (3) data synthesis.

2.1 Data collection

As a first step, to reduce bias and maintain objectivity in all stages of the review, a review panel was set up. The panel consists of the author, a professor and two doctoral students knowledgeable in this field of research. In order to obtain the most relevant terms for the systematic search, the suggestions of Tranfield et al. ( 2003 ) were followed and a number of scoping studies based on combinations of keywords related to the topic were performed. The insights from this initial search phase were used to further develop relevant search terms resulting in the Boolean search string presented in the online appendix. The number of selected search terms was intentionally rather broad to avoid overlooking potentially valuable studies. It included the most common terms and measures of entrepreneurship and of economic, social and environmental welfare. This search string was subsequently used to scan titles, abstracts, and enclosed keywords of studies in the electronic databases EBSCO Business Source Complete, ProQuest ABI/INFORM Global and Web of Science. These databases were selected, because they allow the application of complex search strings and cover an extensive range of scientific journals from a variety of different disciplines. In order to provide a quality threshold, only peer-reviewed journal articles were scanned, since they are considered as validated knowledge (Podsakoff et al. 2005 ; Ordanini et al. 2008 ). Unpublished papers, books, book chapters, conference papers and dissertations were omitted in the initial search. Furthermore, the search was restricted to studies written in English. The main search was conducted in May 2019 and updated once in December 2019. It yielded, after the removal of duplicates, an initial data set of n = 7533 studies.

In addition to the main search, three more steps were conducted to create an exhaustive sample. First, five journals of particular relevance for the discussion were manually searched. Footnote 3 Second, meta-studies and literature reviews on related topics were screened for additional studies. Footnote 4 And finally, based on the guidelines of Wohlin ( 2014 ), an iterative back- and forward snowballing approach was conducted. The whole process of data collection and selection and its results are summarized in Fig.  1 .

Systematic process of data collection and selection

2.2 Data selection and quality assessment

The studies collected during the main search were carefully reviewed to determine whether they were suitable for the objective of this paper. Titles, abstracts and, in doubtful cases, whole studies were checked against the following set of selection criteria.

Studies must analyse the macroeconomic impact of entrepreneurship by applying at least one economic, social or environmental welfare measure on an aggregated regional, national or global level.

Studies must employ definitions of entrepreneurship as discussed in the introduction of Sect.  2 . Studies that solely analysed the impact of small firms, intrapreneurship, corporate-entrepreneurship, institutional entrepreneurship, or entrepreneurial capital were excluded.

Studies must apply adequate quantitative methods to measure the impact of entrepreneurship. Studies that only discuss this matter theoretically, that follow a qualitative approach or that do not go beyond simple correlation techniques were excluded.

Studies must analyse spatial units, as they seem to be considerably better suited to analysing the impact of entrepreneurship (Fritsch 2013 ). Studies that are based on the analysis of industry units were excluded.

Studies must analyse long-term panel data or data on an adequately aggregated level to account for demographic, political and economic events. Studies that analysed single spatial units over a short period of time were excluded.

Due to the broadness of the search string, the main search yielded many studies which solely dealt with the microeconomic performance of new firms or which analyse how the local level of development determines the number of new firms. Studies which were not related to the research questions or did not meet all five selection criteria, were manually removed. This process of selection in the main search led to a total of n = 92 studies. The three additional search steps increased this number by n = 10, resulting in a final data set of n = 102 studies, including two high-quality book chapters which present empirical results of particular relevance to the paper’s objective (namely Stam et al. 2011 ; Verheul and van Stel 2010 ). When comparing the sample size with that of related literature reviews, it appears to be appropriate. Hence, even if the selected sample is not exhaustive, it is very likely to be representative of the relevant literature.

2.3 Data analysis

Given that research in this area employs a variety of measures of entrepreneurship and of economic welfare and is methodologically diverse, it was unfeasible to perform a meta-analysis. Instead, an integrative and evidence-driven narrative synthesis based on the guidelines established by Popay et al. ( 2006 ) was chosen to aggregate, combine and summarise the diverse set of studies. Narrative synthesis is considered particularly useful when, as in this case, research area is characterised by heterogeneous methods, samples, theories, etc. (Fayolle and Wright 2014 ).

Once the final set of studies had been identified, the characteristics and study findings were extracted by carefully reading the methods and results sections. To reduce research bias, a review-specific data-extraction form was employed. The extraction-form is based on the suggestions of Tranfield et al. ( 2003 ) and Higgins and Green ( 2008 ) and contains general information, details about the analysed samples, the applied measures of entrepreneurship and economic welfare, the applied econometric techniques as well as short summaries of the relevant findings and the identified microeconomic impact factors.

3 Results of the literature review

The main results of the literature review regarding the impact of entrepreneurship on economic, social and environmental welfare and the determinants of this impact are presented in Table 5 (see online appendix). The large number of gathered studies on impact of entrepreneurship (n = 102) as well as on its determinants (n = 51) attest to the fact that this field of research has already been studied in great detail. Most of the identified studies were published in high-quality management, economics, social science and environmental science journals. Table  1 illustrates that the main part of the cross-disciplinary scientific discussion, however, took place in the Journals Small Business Economics (24%) and Regional Studies (7%). The number of empirical studies published per year has increased over the last decade, indicating the topicality of the research field and the need for an updated review of the new knowledge.

Figure  2 summarizes the statistics of the large amount of data gathered in Table 5 (see appendix) and illustrates the complexity of the research field. The left-hand-side lists the measures of entrepreneurship used in the analysed studies and shows how often they were applied. The most frequently applied measure of entrepreneurship is new firm formations either (a) per work force (labour market approach), (b) per number of existing firms (ecological approach) or (c) per capita. Another frequently applied measure of entrepreneurship is total early-stage entrepreneurial activity (TEA) based on data from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (Reynolds et al. 2003 ) or its subgroups: necessity-driven entrepreneurial activity (NEA), opportunity-driven entrepreneurial activity (OEA), innovative entrepreneurial activity (IEA) and high-growth expectation entrepreneurial activity (HEA). Other authors estimated regional entrepreneurship using self-employment or business ownership rates. The Kauffman Foundation Index for entrepreneurial activity is used less frequently, as it is a specific measure of entrepreneurship for US regions.

Overview of applied measures of entrepreneurship and welfare, and analysed determinants. Note : the numbers in brackets represent the numbers of associated empirical studies

Regarding the right-hand-side of Fig.  2 , it is noticeable that the majority of authors analysed the impact of entrepreneurship on economic welfare, primarily on GDP, growth and employment-related measures. Far fewer studies analysed the impact on the economic measures of national competitiveness or innovativeness, e.g. the number of patent applications. In contrast to the clear research focus on economic welfare, only five studies were found which analysed the impact of entrepreneurship on environmental or social welfare. Although many common measures of social and environmental welfare (e.g. crime rates or ecological footprint) were explicitly included in the search string (see online Appendix), no studies could be found that analyse the impact of entrepreneurship on them.

Independent of the measures of entrepreneurship and welfare used, the reviewed studies test their relationship by applying a very heterogenous set of methods. With the availability of more and more cross-sectional data covering longer and high-frequency time-series, authors started to apply new econometric approaches such as pooled and panel data regressions, fixed effect models, and subsequently, dynamic panel data models. Most authors based their analyses on rather straightforward regression techniques.

Sections  3.1 and 3.2 discuss empirical knowledge relating to the impact of entrepreneurship on economic welfare as well as on social and environmental welfare. Section  3.3 deals with the empirical evidence on the factors which determine this impact of entrepreneurship (see the lower part of Fig.  2 ).

3.1 Impact of entrepreneurship on economic welfare

The analysed literature predominantly confirms the results of previous literature reviews and gives empirical evidence that new firm formations have a generally positive effect on regional development and economic performance. The relationship holds for all tested measures of entrepreneurship and is robust across a broad range of spatial and cultural contexts.

The impact does, however, differ over time. Fritsch and Mueller ( 2004 ) studied the time-lag structure of the impact of entrepreneurship by applying an Almon lag model of different polynomial orders in their study of 326 West German regions. Their results revealed that the impact of entrepreneurship follows a typical time-sequence: an S- or wave-shaped pattern which can be structured into three phases. Phase I is defined by a positive immediate increase of employment (direct effects of new capacities). After approximately 1 year, in phase II, this positive short-term impact becomes smaller, insignificant or even negative (displacement effects and market selection). Around year five, this medium-term impact becomes positive again and reaches a peak in year eight (supply-side and spill-over effects). This positive long-term effect of entrepreneurship on employment, which defines phase III, diminishes after a period of 10 years.

Table  2 presents the findings of all reviewed studies which analysed the impact of new firm formations on employment and GDP in one, two or all three phases. It shows that the findings regarding the impact of entrepreneurship on employment are largely consistent with the wave-pattern theory. The existence of the wave-pattern could be confirmed on different regional levels for Great Britain (Mueller et al. 2008 ), for the United States (Acs and Mueller 2008 ; Henderson and Weiler 2009 ), for Portugal (Baptista et al. 2008 ; Baptista and Preto 2010 , 2011 ), for West Germany (Fritsch and Mueller 2008 ; Fritsch and Noseleit 2013a ), for the Netherlands (van Stel and Suddle 2008 ; Koster 2011 ; Delfmann and Koster 2016 ), for Sweden (Andersson and Noseleit 2011 ), for China (Rho and Gao 2012 ) for Canada (Matejovsky et al. 2014 ) as well as in several cross-country studies on OECD countries (Audretsch et al. 2015 ; Carree and Thurik 2008 ; Koellinger and Thurik 2012 ; Thurik et al. 2008 ). Furthermore, the reviewed studies reveal that this relationship not only holds for new firm formations as a measure of entrepreneurship but also for self-employment (e.g. Matejovsky et al. 2014 ; Rho and Gao 2012 ; Thurik et al. 2008 ) and business ownership (e.g. Carree and Thurik 2008 ; Henderson and Weiler 2009 ; Koellinger and Thurik 2012 ). The latter two measures of entrepreneurship, however, seem to have a less pronounced impact (Acs and Armington 2004 ; Rho and Gao 2012 ; Dvouletý 2017 ). Empirical evidence suggests a similar wave-pattern for the impact of entrepreneurship on GDP. Studies on GDP analysing all three phases confirm the positive short- and long-term peaks. However, in contrast to the results on employment, they find the medium-term impact to be less pronounced and positive (Audretsch et al. 2015 ; Carree and Thurik 2008 ; Koellinger and Thurik 2012 ; Matejovsky et al. 2014 ). The few empirical results displayed in Table  2 , which contradict the wave-pattern theory (e.g. findings of a negative short-term impact of entrepreneurship on GDP), can largely be explained by certain determining factors such as a differing impact in developing countries (see Sect.  3.3.4 ) or of necessity-driven entrepreneurship (see Sect.  3.3.9 ).

The results for other measures of economic welfare are scarce and contradictory. Ferreira et al. ( 2017 ) analysed the short-term impact of entrepreneurship on different measures of competitiveness and found that TEA and IEA positively related to competitiveness. However, they found no significant relationship between OEA and competitiveness. On the contrary, a study by Mrozewski and Kratzer ( 2017 ) found a positive relationship between OEA and competitiveness, but not between TEA and competitiveness.

The empirical results regarding the impact of entrepreneurship on innovativeness are also inconclusive. Acs and Varga ( 2005 ) and Draghici and Albulescu ( 2014 ) found that OEA has a positive impact on patent applications and innovation indices, but that TEA and NEA do not have any significant impact on them. Anokhin and Wincent ( 2012 ) found a positive impact of TEA on innovativeness but a more recent study from Albulescu and Draghici ( 2016 ) found that neither TEA nor OEA have a significant relationship to innovativeness. Similarly, Cumming et al. ( 2014 ) found new firm formations based on the labour market approach have a positive short-term impact on patent applications, but new firm formations based on the ecological approach and business ownership rates do not.

3.2 The impact of entrepreneurship on social and environmental welfare

Contrary to the well-researched impact of entrepreneurship on employment and GDP, little is known about the impact on social and environmental welfare. Three independent studies recently found empirical evidence that entrepreneurship positively affects measures of social welfare. Rupasingha and Goetz ( 2013 ) found that in the short-term self-employment reduces poverty in rural and urban U.S. counties, Atems and Shand ( 2018 ) found that in the medium-term self-employment decreases income inequality in U.S. states and, finally, Dhahri and Omri ( 2018 ) found new firm formations to increase the national modified Human Development Index (MHDI) in developing countries.

The empirical research on the impact of new firm formations on environmental welfare, however, illustrates that entrepreneurship may also come with major drawbacks. Omri ( 2017 ) as well as Dhahri and Omri ( 2018 ) and Ben Youssef et al. ( 2018 ) found that new firms significantly increase the amount of national CO 2 -emissions. According to Ben Youssef et al. ( 2018 ), this unfortunate impact on CO 2 -emissions is in fact so great that, despite the positive impact on GDP, new firms decrease Genuine Savings (also known as adjusted net saving) in African countries. They also found that the impact is more pronounced for informal new firm formations. This finding matches the results of Omri ( 2017 ), who detected the impact on CO 2 -emissions to be lower in developed countries which generally have lower rates of informal entrepreneurship (Williams and Lansky 2013 ). Furthermore, Omri ( 2017 ) discovered that the relationship between new firm formations and CO 2 -emissions is not linear but can be described as exhibiting an inverted U-shape. Thus, at an already high level of entrepreneurship, new firm formations may result in a decrease in CO 2 -emissions.

3.3 Determinants of the impact of entrepreneurship

So far, the empirical results suggest, in many cases, a clear causal macroeconomic impact of new firm formations on economic measures of welfare. However, this topic is reasonably complex, and the complexity increases further when determining factors of this impact are considered. The lower part of Fig.  2 presents an overview of the empirical knowledge on these determinants. A key finding of this review, namely that all of the found analyses of determinants focus exclusively on the economic effects of entrepreneurship, is, however, not illustrated in Fig.  2 . The review revealed that, although they are strongly interdependent, the determinants of the impact of entrepreneurship can generally be categorized into external environmental conditions, firm level characteristics and individual characteristics of the entrepreneurs themselves. Figure  2 illustrates that most empirical research has been conducted on the determining environmental conditions and on the firm level characteristic innovativeness and on the individual level characteristic motivations . In fact, some of the determinants presented have already been thoroughly investigated in highly recommendable earlier literature reviews, namely: industry affiliation (Fritsch 2013 ), regional population - and entrepreneurship density (Fritsch 2013 ), institutions and culture (Bjørnskov and Foss 2016 ; Urbano et al. 2019a ), innovativeness (Block et al. 2017 ). The review for this paper confirms these findings and briefly summarizes the key learnings in the Sects. 3.3.1 to 3.3.3 and 3.3.5 . However, except for a recently emerged empirical research stream on innovativeness , no new insights could be gained on the already reviewed determinants. Therefore, the focus of this section is primarily on the empirical evidence which has not yet been systematically investigated.

3.3.1 Industry affiliation

Fritsch ( 1996 ) was one of the first to analyse how entrepreneurial impact differs between industries. He focused on the impact of new firm formations on employment in West Germany and found it to be significantly higher in the manufacturing sector than in the service sector. Several authors confirmed this finding for the Netherlands (van Stel and Suddle 2008 ), for West-Germany (Fritsch and Mueller 2004 ) and for Sweden (Andersson and Noseleit 2011 ). Other studies, however, found the impact of new firms on economic welfare measures to be higher in the service sector (Bosma et al. 2011 ; Koster and van Stel 2014 ). Fritsch ( 2013 ) reasoned that these contradicting results may be due to considerable differences between the industries in different regions or countries and thus an analysis at the industry level might be not appropriate at all. For more information on the industrial perspective of the entrepreneurial impact on the economy, Fritsch ( 2013 ) provides a comprehensive overview including policy implications and avenues for further research.

3.3.2 Regional population- and entrepreneurship density

In a second wave of literature, researchers analysed how the impact of entrepreneurship differs between regions. They found clear evidence that the magnitude of the entrepreneurial impact is positively related to the population density (Baptista and Preto 2011 ; Fritsch and Mueller 2004 , 2008 ; Fritsch and Schroeter 2011 ; Henderson and Weiler 2009 ; Lee 2017 ; Li et al. 2011 ; van Stel and Suddle 2008 ). In urban regions and agglomerations, new firms have a more pronounced and more positive impact on employment (Baptista and Preto 2011 ; Henderson and Weiler 2009 ; van Stel and Suddle 2008 ) and GDP (Audretsch et al. 2015 ; Belitski and Desai 2016 ) throughout all three previously described phases (see Sect.  3.1 ). On the contrary, in rural and less agglomerated regions, the entrepreneurial impact is weak and often negative (Fritsch and Mueller 2004 , 2008 ).

While the economic relevance of new firm formations seems to increase with the population density, empirical evidence suggests that this is not the case for the relation between firm formations and regional entrepreneurship density. On the contrary, several authors found that the economic effect of another new firm becomes lower the more entrepreneurs are already on the market and even zero for regions with high entrepreneurship rates close to equilibrium rate (e.g. Carree et al. 2002 , 2007 ; Mueller et al. 2008 ). These empirical insights identify entrepreneurship as a regional phenomenon and illustrate that macroeconomic effects of new firms are shaped by local conditions. An in-depth discussion of regional differences in the macroeconomic impact of new firms can be found in the monograph by Fritsch ( 2013 ).

3.3.3 Institutions and culture

To shed light on the complex interactions between institutions, entrepreneurship and economic growth, Urbano et al. ( 2019a ) and Bjørnskov and Foss ( 2016 ) recently conducted thorough literature reviews. The empirical evidence identified in the present paper (Aparicio et al. 2016 ; Audretsch and Keilbach 2004a , b , c ; Bjørnskov and Foss 2016 ) is in line with the findings of these two reviews which suggest that institutions affect the economy indirectly through endogenous factors like entrepreneurship. This holds true for formal institutions like (academic) support systems for new firms, procedures and costs to create a business, property rights or political structures as well as for informal institutions like social norms, cultures or belief systems (Urbano et al. 2019a ). However, in contrast to Bjørnskov and Foss ( 2016 ), Urbano et al. ( 2019a ) suggest that formal and informal institutions are not of equal importance, but that social norms and cultures have higher and more positive effects on the relation between entrepreneurship and economic growth.

3.3.4 Local level of development

While Sect.  3.1 illustrates that the impact of entrepreneurship in developed countries follows a typical wave-pattern, until now, no studies have analysed this time-pattern in developing countries. In general, the empirical evidence on the impact in developing countries is contradictory: some studies found a positive impact of entrepreneurship (Ben Youssef et al. 2018 ; Dhahri and Omri 2018 ; Feki and Mnif 2016 ; Stam et al. 2011 ), others found no or even a negative impact (Anokhin and Wincent, 2012 ; Ferreira et al. 2017 ; Verheul and van Stel 2010 ). However, studies which compared countries in different development stages found that the magnitude of the impact of entrepreneurship depends on the national welfare level and is generally higher in more developed countries (Anokhin and Wincent 2012 ; Carree et al. 2002 , 2007 ; Crnogaj et al. 2015 ; Hessels and van Stel 2011 ; Urbano and Aparicio 2016 ; Valliere and Peterson 2009 ; van Stel et al. 2005 ; Verheul and van Stel 2010 ). Furthermore, little is known on the mechanisms behind the impact of entrepreneurship in developing countries. Most of the few studies which specifically deal with developing countries (n = 19) analysed the impact on a national level (n = 16) based on GEM data (n = 12), focused on the impact on GDP related measures (n = 17), or solely analysed the short- or medium-term impact (n = 16).

3.3.5 Innovativeness

According to the knowledge spillover theory of entrepreneurship, new knowledge results in business opportunities and entrepreneurs exploit these opportunities by turning the new knowledge into innovative products (Acs et al. 2009 , 2013 ; Audretsch and Keilbach 2005 ). Recent studies confirm this theory and provide empirical evidence that entrepreneurship moderates the transformation of new knowledge into innovations (Block et al. 2013 ) and that innovative regions with higher levels of entrepreneurship perform economically better (González-Pernía et al. 2012 ). Accordingly, it is reasonable to assume that particularly innovative new firms are more important to economic welfare than their non-innovative counterparts. These considerations coincide with those presented in the literature review on innovative entrepreneurship by Block et al. ( 2017 ). However, the present systematic literature review extends the review of Block et al. ( 2017 ) by including previously unconsidered as well as recently emerged empirical evidence on the macroeconomic impact of innovative entrepreneurship. The identified empirical studies do indeed confirm the presumed positive impact of innovativeness. Crnogaj et al. ( 2015 ) as well as Du and O’Connor ( 2017 ) and Szerb et al. ( 2018 ) used GEM data to compare the impact of founders who stated their products or services to be new or at least unfamiliar to their customers. All of the previously mentioned authors found that innovative founders have a higher impact on GDP, economic efficiency, gross value added (GVA) and employment than less innovative founders. Furthermore, earlier studies attest to new firms which are in innovative, knowledge- or technology-intensive industries a higher than average impact on both GDP (Audretsch and Keilbach 2004a , b , 2005 , Mueller 2007 ) and employment (Baptista and Preto 2010 , 2011 ).

3.3.6 Firm survival

Empirical evidence suggests that a particularly important determinant of the impact of entrepreneurship is whether new firms are able to survive the first years. Falck ( 2007 ) was the first to find empirical evidence of a positive relationship between new firms which survive for at least 5 years and efficiency of the industry in which they are in. On the contrary, he could not find any significant relationship to industry level efficiency growth for firms which did not survive the first 5 years. Brixy ( 2014 ), Fritsch and Noseleit ( 2013b ) and Fritsch and Schindele ( 2011 ) have confirmed that Falck’s ( 2007 ) findings not only hold for the relationship between entrepreneurship and GDP but also for the relationship between entrepreneurship and employment.

3.3.7 Firm size

Baptista and Preto ( 2010 ) found that new firms of a larger than average initial size have a strong impact on employment and that this impact follows a pronounced wave-shaped time-lag structure (see Sect.  3.1 ). New firm formations which are smaller than average, on the other hand, only have a small impact. Acs and Mueller ( 2008 ) confirmed this finding and show that small new firms have a positive but declining direct impact on employment. The impact of medium and large new firms, however, is much higher and increases till it peaks in year five. Very large new firms (> 499 employees), however, decrease employment in the short- and medium-term, probably due to restructuring processes of incumbents. This empirical evidence suggests that up to a threshold, large new firms have a larger impact on employment.

3.3.8 Degree of internationalization

A less studied but yet empirically significant determinant is a firm’s degree of internationalization. Baptista and Preto ( 2010 ) analyzed 30 Portuguese regions and found that new firms which were, at least, partially owned by foreign investors had a much higher and more pronounced medium- and long-term impact on employment. A second measure of the positive impact of internationally active new firms is the export-orientation of new firms. Hessels and van Stel ( 2011 ) compared the impact of total-entrepreneurial activity and export-driven entrepreneurial activity on GDP per capita in 34 developed and developing countries. They found evidence that new firms for which the share of customers living abroad is above 26% have a more positive impact on GDP—but only in developed countries. González-Pernía and Peña-Legazkue ( 2015 ) confirmed their finding on a regional level by comparing OEA and export-oriented OEA in 17 Spanish regions. Besides a generally higher impact of export-oriented new firms, González-Pernía and Peña-Legazkue ( 2015 ) found that the impact increases with higher shares of foreign customers up to a threshold level. An earlier study by Fryges and Wagner ( 2008 ), who found a positive relationship between firm-level productivity and export-sales ratio, supports the evidence for a more positive impact of internationally active new firms.

3.3.9 Motivation

The literature review conducted for this paper provided eleven studies which empirically tested the macroeconomic importance of the entrepreneur’s motivations. All of these studies applied GEM-based data and definitions for opportunity-driven entrepreneurial activity (OEA) and necessity-driven entrepreneurial activity (NEA). Although four of these studies could not find a significant economic impact of OEA or NEA (Albulescu and Draghici 2016 ; Ferreira et al. 2017 ; Valliere and Peterson 2009 ; Wong et al. 2005 ), the other seven studies found evidence that OEA significantly increases national innovativeness (Acs and Varga 2005 ; Draghici and Albulescu 2014 ), competitiveness (Mrozewski and Kratzer 2017 ) and productivity (Du and O’Connor 2017 ; González-Pernía and Peña-Legazkue 2015 ; Ivanovic-Ðukic et al. 2018 ; Urbano and Aparicio 2016 ). Moreover, six of these seven studies confirmed that the impact of OEA is higher compared to NEA and TEA. Mrozewski and Kratzer ( 2017 ) even found NEA to decrease the national competitiveness.

3.3.10 Growth-ambitions

There are some entrepreneurs who not only seek to exploit a business-opportunity but also have high growth - ambitions for their new firms. All five empirical studies selected for this paper take GEM data on high-growth expectation entrepreneurship (HEA) as a measure of the entrepreneur’s growth - ambitions and found that it has a significantly positive impact on GDP-related measures of welfare. Furthermore, the impact of HEA seems to be more positive compared to TEA, to NEA and even to OEA (Ivanović-Đukić et al. 2018 ; Stam et al. 2011 ; Valliere and Peterson 2009 ; Wong et al. 2005 ). Generally, this macroeconomic impact of HEA seems to increase with the level of growth-aspiration (van Oort and Bosma 2013 ). The positive impact of HEA on economic welfare could be confirmed on the regional- and national-level as well as for developed countries. For less-developed countries, however, the empirical evidence is contradicting. On the one hand, Valliere and Peterson ( 2009 ) only found a significant impact of HEA on GDP for 25 developed countries, but not for the 18 emerging countries. On the other hand, Stam et al. ( 2011 ) found the impact of HEA on GDP in eight analysed lower-income to upper-middle-income economies (World Bank 2002 classification) even higher compared to the impact in the 22 analysed high-income economies.

3.3.11 Qualification

While many microeconomic studies have highlighted that an entrepreneur’s qualifications in terms of education (e.g. Kangasharju and Pekkala 2002 ), skills and experience (e.g. Brüderl et al. 1992 ; Baum et al. 2001 ; Unger et al. 2011 ) play a significant part in the success of new firms, only one of the studies empirically investigated the macroeconomic impact of education. This is an analysis of 3702 German firms conducted by Engel and Metzger ( 2006 ). It suggests that new firms founded by people with an academic degree may have a more positive direct employment effect, than firms founded by people without an academic degree. This finding is, however, based on an old dataset (1990–1993) and a simple descriptive comparison and the authors did not apply control variables such as the regional density of more educated people.

3.3.12 Gender and age

Only one study could be found which empirically analysed the economic impact of the entrepreneur’s gender and age . This study was conducted by Verheul and van Stel ( 2010 ) and was based on a dataset of 36 developed and developing countries. Their results show that there is a positive relationship between young opportunity-driven entrepreneurs between the ages of 18 and 24 and national GDP growth in developed countries, while in developing countries there is only a significant positive relationship between entrepreneurs aged between 45 and 64 and GDP growth (Verheul and van Stel 2010 ). Contrary to the microeconomic literature (e.g. Cliff 1998 ; Kalleberg and Leicht 1991 ; Rosa et al. 1996 ), Verheul and van Stel ( 2010 ) could not find any significant gender differences on the macroscale.

4 Roadmap for further research

The major scientific value and contribution of this paper lies in the groundwork for future research. Despite the extant of the reviewed existing research, many questions still remain unanswered. The following two sections therefore highlight the shortcomings of current research and make suggestions on how to address them. Section  4.1 discusses how remaining gaps in empirical research into the impact of entrepreneurship can be addressed and Sect.  4.2 presents fruitful research avenues on the determinants of the impact of entrepreneurship.

4.1 Implications for future research on the impact of entrepreneurship

4.1.1 more variety in the measures of entrepreneurship.

A high variety of measures of entrepreneurship is required to test the robustness of results but international comparative studies, in particular, are mainly based on just two entrepreneurship datasets: Comparative Entrepreneurship Data for International Analysis (COMPENDIA) based on OECD statistics and data from the GEM research project. The use of a high variety of entrepreneurship definitions and measures of entrepreneurship across studies makes it difficult to compare the results of these studies. While some studies simply estimate entrepreneurship based on self-employment rates or business-ownership rates, others measure entrepreneurship by counting new firm formations and firm exits or use holistic measures based on, e.g., Schumpeter’s understanding of entrepreneurship.

In order to test the robustness of the results and, at the same time, to allow for comparability between different studies, researchers should employ not one but multiple common measures of entrepreneurship in future studies. To make this possible, policy makers need to encourage the creation of internationally harmonized entrepreneurship databases. Furthermore, due to the limited availability of entrepreneurship data, only a few empirical studies have made a distinction between different types of entrepreneurship. That is why, as recommended by many researchers before (e.g. Baptista and Preto 2011 ; Fritsch and Schroeter 2011 ; Urbano et al. 2019a ), this study calls for more diversity in the application of measures of entrepreneurship.

4.1.2 Implementation of measures of social and environmental welfare

Section  3.1 revealed that 95.1% of the examined empirical studies only analysed the impact of entrepreneurship on economic welfare. Politicians who have no information on the impact of entrepreneurship on social and environmental welfare and thus solely rely on this economic information, however, may implement unsustainable development strategies (Tietenberg and Lewis 2012 ). Indeed, the few empirical studies (n = 5) which go beyond a traditional economic analysis indicate that entrepreneurship also has a significant contribution to measures of social and environmental welfare such as HDI, CO 2 emissions or poverty, which must not be neglected by politicians and researchers alike. To fill the immense gap in research on the impact of entrepreneurship on social and environmental welfare, two simultaneous approaches are proposed. First, as mentioned before, future research should generally include a variety of dependent welfare variables—social and environmental as well as economic ones. Second, future research should adopt research designs that have already proved effective in the macroeconomic impact analysis to answer novel research questions that address the impact of entrepreneurship on social and environmental welfare. The required methods for such analyses have been tested many times and, at least at national level, data availability poses no problem. Most countries have not only been collecting specific social and environmental welfare data for many years, but also established more holistic measures of welfare such as the Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare. Accordingly, it is up to the research community to break with traditions and expand the field of research by analysing social and environmental welfare rather than just economic welfare.

4.1.3 More research on developing countries

Section  3.3.4 illustrated that the local level of development is a relevant determinant of the impact of entrepreneurship. Nevertheless, most of the research reviewed for this paper focused solely on developed countries. This can partly be explained by the fact that most of the authors of these studies are based in Europe and the US, as well as by the lack of adequate long-term data for developing countries. However, this has begun to change. In the past 5 years, the number of empirical studies on developing countries has more than doubled to n = 30. Nevertheless, regional-level studies as well as long-term studies for developing countries remain scarce. Because of the growing importance of developing and particularly BRICS countries, it is important to increase the knowledge on how the impact of entrepreneurship manifests in these countries.

4.1.4 More studies on the lag-structure of the impact of entrepreneurship

Section  3.1 illustrates that although the important indirect impact of entrepreneurship requires 5 or more years to unfold, most empirical research focuses on the direct short-term impact. Neglecting the long-term effects of entrepreneurship therefore results in an incomplete picture. Furthermore, the analysis of longitudinal data is required to conduct relevant causality tests. So far, the bottleneck for national-level long-term studies has been the lack of longitudinal data. But, due to more than 20 years of worldwide data collection for the GEM, there is now at least one sufficiently large entrepreneurship database. In line with other authors who have recognised this issue (e.g. Baptista et al. 2008 ; Carree and Thurik 2008 ; Fritsch 2013 ), this paper recommends that all future research should analyse not only the short-term but also the medium- and long-term impact of entrepreneurship.

4.2 Implications for future research on determinants

Table  3 summarizes key statistics for the determinants in the research reviewed for this paper. Comparing the last two rows, it seems that the studies analysing the determinants of the impact of entrepreneurship are a representative share of all reviewed studies. For this reason, the previously presented suggestions for future research also apply to literature on the determinants. On closer examination, however, Table  3 reveals further and more precise research gaps. These include, inter alia, the need to study particularly the environmental and firm level determinants in developing countries, and the analysis of individual level determinants in combination with the lag-structure of the impact of entrepreneurship. The requirement for more long-term studies is further highlighted here. This finding further specifies the previous call for more long-term studies. The following subsections present further research and research implications.

4.2.1 More variety in measures of entrepreneurship

Table  3 shows that research on environmental and firm level determinants are mainly based on new firm formations as a measure of entrepreneurship, and research on individual level determinants almost solely measures entrepreneurship using GEM data.

The only exceptions are studies on the determinants local level of development —which are comparing the entrepreneurial impact across countries and thus are also mostly based on GEM data—and on innovativeness . None of the studies on the determinants apply self-employment (for the sake of clarity not presented in Table  3 ) to estimate entrepreneurship. This illustrates that the research on all individual determinants, except for innovativeness , considerably lacks variety when it comes to the applied measures of entrepreneurship.

4.2.2 More variety in measures of welfare

In addition to the fact that there are no studies examining the determinants of the impact of entrepreneurship on social or environmental welfare, there is also a lack of variety in the studies of measures of economic welfare. Studies on all individual level determinants and particularly on the determinant local level of development almost exclusively analyse the impact of entrepreneurship on GDP-related measures of welfare. Studies on the determinants industry affiliation , population density , firm survival and firm size mainly analyse employment effects of entrepreneurship. Other common measures of economic welfare, such as innovativeness or competitiveness, are rarely studied and need further investigation.

4.2.3 Further research on determinants

Table  3 illustrates that the existing research is imbalanced and that it pays varying degrees of attention to individual determinants. Determinants such as innovativeness , motivations and most environmental level determinants have so far received a great deal of attention, while others have only been analysed in very few studies. However, some of these poorly researched factors promise to be relevant determinants. More specific, the few existing empirical results analysing firm survival , degree of internationalisation and growth - ambitions suggest that these determinants have a comparatively high effect on the relationship between entrepreneurship and economic welfare. Furthermore, these determinants as well as the largely unexplored determinant qualifications are of considerable practical and political relevance. More empirical research on these determinants and their moderating role is required to improve incentives and support programs for entrepreneurs.

4.2.4 New research focus on determinants not yet empirically investigated

Table  4 provides a short overview of determinants which are likely to shape the entrepreneurial macroeconomic impact, but which have not yet been empirically investigated. They are a selection of indicators which are believed to determine the impact of entrepreneurship on economic welfare or which are empirically related to the success and survival of new firms and thus are also likely to be of macroeconomic importance. The overview is based on a non-systematic scan of the microeconomic literature and makes no claim to completeness. Due to their particularly high microeconomic relevance highlighted by the authors listed in Table  4 , this paper specifically proposes additional research on how firm performance, organisational structure and strategies, networking activities and motivations (beyond necessity and opportunity entrepreneurship) determine the impact of entrepreneurship.

4.2.5 Methodological recommendations

Many of the determinants discussed here are highly interdependent, which makes it very difficult to extract and examine their separate effects. Individual level characteristics and environmental conditions are especially likely to affect the impact of entrepreneurship mainly indirectly through firm performance. The complexity is increased further as determinants may be indicators for other macroeconomically relevant effects. For instance, the numbers of highly innovative new firms and of highly qualified entrepreneurs may be positively correlated with the excellence of the regional educational infrastructure. This in turn could mean that the excellence of educational infrastructure is the true reason for economic growth and innovative new firms and highly qualified entrepreneurs have little or no economic impact but are merely indicators for the educational infrastructure. However, little is currently known about such interdependencies and research is required which particularly studies the path dependencies behind the impact of entrepreneurship. This is why future empirical research should examine determinants which are supposed to be interdependent as well as external effects which may be related to the determinants of interest.

5 Limitations and conclusion

This paper has shed light on the impact of entrepreneurship on economic welfare and the determinants of this impact, but it is not without limitations. First, this paper seeks to give a comprehensive overview of the empirical research, but the search was limited by a variety of in- and exclusion criteria as well as by the terms used in the search string. Although the exclusive focus on peer-reviewed articles is common practice in systematic literature reviews, this may have led to the systematic exclusion of potentially relevant research outcomes, e.g. from dissertation, book chapters, conference contributions or working papers. Furthermore, it is possible that individual studies were not identified by the automated search for the search string in keywords, titles and abstracts. These limitations were necessary to reduce the search results to a manageable level and to ensure a certain quality of the results. The additional screening of key journals, meta-studies and reviews as well as the applied back- and forward snowballing approach, however, weaken the effects of these limitations. Second, this paper only deals with empirical studies. The inclusion of qualitative studies might have revealed further studies dealing with the impact of entrepreneurship on environmental and social welfare. Additionally, the exclusion of qualitative studies limits the analytical depth within the discussion of the determinants. Third, the paper focused on research on a few selected measures of entrepreneurship. In doing so, intrapreneurship, entrepreneurship culture or diverse composed entrepreneurial activity measures of entrepreneurship were excluded. Fourth, it needs to be stated that large parts of the data selection and synthesis were only conducted by the author. Although the chosen procedure and the frequent consultation with the research panel reduced the likelihood of biases, the chance remains that the review is burdened with subjectivity and selection biases. Finally, the scope of this paper was to provide a first descriptive summary of the determinants analysed in the empirical literature and to derive research recommendation. Due to this clear focus this paper does not comprise extensive bibliometric- or meta-analyses that describe in detail the general literature on the impact of entrepreneurship.

The systematic review presented in this paper was conducted for three main reasons. First, to summarize the current state of empirical research on the impact of entrepreneurship on economic, social and environmental welfare. Second, to identify the determinants of this impact and third, to develop a roadmap for future research. Due to the application of a broad entrepreneurship definition and due to the incorporation of economic, social and environmental welfare, this paper presents the most comprehensive overview, summary and synthesis of empirical research on this topic to date. The results confirm the findings and theories of previous literature reviews on the impact of entrepreneurship, provide an update and extension to the current knowledge and finally, represent a first attempt to structure the determinants of the impact of entrepreneurship. The new determinants-driven perspective on the research field reveals several shortcomings that would otherwise have gone unnoticed. The developed roadmap for future research—combined with a higher variety of applied measures of entrepreneurship and with an increased awareness of causality and interdependency issues—will allow future researchers to unravel the complex relationship between entrepreneurship and welfare and therewith to provide politicians the comprehensive information they need to promote the right types of entrepreneurship in the right situations.

For purposes of this study, the three welfare dimensions refer to the widely used definition of the three pillars of sustainable development (economic growth, social equality protection, environmental protection) of the Brundtland Report (World Development Commission on Environment and Development 1987 ). However, the reader should note that later sustainability models like the ‘prism model’ or the ‘concentric circles model’ illustrate that the three pillars of sustainable development (resp. the three welfare dimensions) are interlinked and not always clearly separable from one another.

Although the author is fully aware of their different meanings, for simplicity, the more general term ‘economic welfare’ is used throughout this paper as synonymous with the terms ‘economic growth’ and ‘economic development’.

Namely: Regional Studies , Entrepreneurship & Regional Development , The Annals of Regional Science , Economic Development Quarterly , Technological Forecasting and Social Change .

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Open Access funding provided by Projekt DEAL. I like to thank Dirk Ludewig, of the Flensburg University of Applied Sciences and Olav Hohmeyer, of the Europa-Universität Flensburg, for their useful and valuable feedback on previous versions of this paper. Furthermore, I would like to express my appreciation to the participants of the G-Forum conference in Wien, Austria (September, 2019) and of the paper development workshop of the FGF e.V. working group on sustainable entrepreneurship in Flensburg, Germany (March, 2020), where earlier versions of the paper were discussed.

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Neumann, T. The impact of entrepreneurship on economic, social and environmental welfare and its determinants: a systematic review. Manag Rev Q 71 , 553–584 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11301-020-00193-7

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The moral space in entrepreneurship: an exploration of ethical imperatives and the moral legitimacy of being enterprising

This paper explores the morality associated with entrepreneurship. It has been argued that there is no moral space in entrepreneurship, but such instrumental views may miss out much of the nature of enterprise and how it is understood. Consequently we propose that a socially-constructed perspective, based upon the meanings of entrepreneurship, may help to understand the morality of entrepreneurship.

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Dr. Abhiram Nair on Space Sustainability, Tackling Space Debris, and Expanding into India ERETS Space, led by Dr. Abhiram Nair, is set to launch its state-of-the-art satellite manufacturing labs in Coimbatore, India, in January 2025. This strategic move marks a significant step in the company's global expansion, following its US$4 million valuation in just two years and gaining global recognition for its breakthrough laser technology in space debris mitigation.

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Since the start of the space age in 1957, rockets, spacecraft, and various instruments have been launched into space without much thought about what would happen to them once their missions ended. Over time, these numbers have grown, and with collisions and explosions in space, we've ended up with hundreds of thousands of pieces of dangerous debris.

"The biggest cause of space debris today comes from explosions in orbit, mainly due to leftover fuel and batteries on spacecraft and rockets. Even though measures have been in place to prevent this, we haven't seen a significant drop in these incidents. End-of-mission disposal is improving, but progress is still slow," explains Dr. Abhiram, CEO and Mission Director of ERETS Space.

As the number of satellites and space missions increases, the problem of space debris has become a pressing concern for the global space community. Amidst this challenge, an Indian innovator, Dr. Abhiram Nair, has emerged as a key figure in tackling this critical issue. His company, ERETS Space , is leading the world's first mission dedicated to removing space debris using cutting-edge laser technology and is recognized as one of the top 10 most watchable space traffic management companies in the world by US Insights.

Dr. Abhiram Nair's journey into the world of space technology began with a deep-rooted passion for engineering and an unwavering curiosity about the cosmos. Born and raised in India, Dr. Nair pursued his Bachelor of Engineering at Salford University in Manchester, England. His academic pursuits did not stop there; he went on to earn three specialized Master's degrees in Space Engineering and a Ph.D. from prestigious universities, further solidifying his expertise in the field. He also holds an MBA in International Business, a credential that has proven invaluable in navigating the complexities of the global space industry.

Reflecting on his early years, Dr. Nair shares, "I was always fascinated by the idea of contributing to something larger than life, something that has the potential to change the course of our future. Space, with its infinite possibilities, was the natural choice for me." It was during one of his postgraduate research projects that Dr. Nair encountered the challenge that would define his career—space debris. His research focused on deorbiting, and he soon realized the immense dangers posed by smaller particles of space debris. While larger debris had already attracted some attention, the removal of smaller particles, which pose a significant threat to millions of space assets, remained largely unaddressed.

"Mitigating smaller space debris is far more challenging than dealing with larger debris," Dr. Nair explains. "Yet, I was determined to tackle this issue head-on, not just for the sake of innovation but to preserve the cosmos for future generations."

In 2022, after years of intensive research, Dr. Nair founded ERETS Space in the United Kingdom. The company quickly gained recognition as the world's first dedicated to removing space debris using laser technology.

"The challenge with smaller debris is that it's often overlooked in space sustainability discussions," Dr. Nair notes. "However, these particles pose significant threats to space missions. At ERETS, we've developed laser technology that can target and deorbit these particles, effectively reducing the risk of collisions and contributing to a safer space environment."

ERETS Space's laser technology represents a groundbreaking approach to space debris mitigation. The company's R&D headquarters in the UK, along with a design lab in Australia and upcoming labs in India, reflect its global reach and commitment to advancing space sustainability. The laser technology developed by ERETS Space has the capability to accurately target and deorbit small debris, making it a crucial tool in the global effort to preserve the safety and longevity of space missions.

"Space debris is not just a technical challenge; it's an environmental one as well," Dr. Nair emphasizes. "Our mission at ERETS is to ensure that space remains a sustainable environment for future generations. This requires innovative solutions, and we are proud to be at the forefront of this critical field."

Beyond his role as CEO and Mission Director of ERETS Space, Dr. Nair also serves as a technical and business advisor to several companies in Australia and the UK. His expertise in space technology and international business has made him a sought-after advisor in the industry. Dr. Nair's ability to bridge the gap between technical innovation and business strategy has been instrumental in the success of ERETS Space and its mission.

One of the company's most notable achievements is its rapid growth and international recognition. Within just two years of its founding, ERETS Space achieved a valuation of US$4 million, without the backing of venture capital. This remarkable feat is a testament to Dr. Nair's leadership and the company's unique value proposition. ERETS Space has also filed five patent applications, further solidifying its position as a leader in space debris mitigation technology.

"Our success is a result of relentless focus on innovation and collaboration," Dr. Nair explains. "We've established strong partnerships with universities and research institutions across the globe, which has allowed us to advance our technology and expand our impact. We're not just building a company; we're building a movement dedicated to sustainable space."

In addition to its technological advancements, ERETS Space is also making a significant impact through its educational initiatives. The company offers students in space engineering the opportunity to work on its mission as part of their thesis programs. This hands-on experience allows students to contribute to a cause that has far-reaching implications for the future of space exploration.

"At ERETS, we're passionate about empowering the next generation of space engineers and scientists," Dr. Nair says. "By involving students in our mission, we're not only advancing space technology but also ensuring that young minds are equipped to tackle the challenges of tomorrow."

As ERETS Space continues to grow, its global impact is becoming increasingly evident. The company's upcoming satellite manufacturing labs in Coimbatore, India, set to launch in January 2025, mark a significant milestone in its expansion efforts.

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Elon Musk and Space X: A Case Study of Entrepreneuring as Emancipation

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Elon Musk and SpaceX are central to the profound change underway in the space industry, opening up the sector to entrepreneurship and innovation by non-traditional new entrants. We employ the emancipation perspective on entrepreneuring as a theoretical lens to describe, explain, and interpret the entrepreneuring activities of Musk to launch and grow SpaceX. Applying an event study approach that combines case methods and process theory methods on publicly-available sources, we develop six examples of seeking autonomy, seven examples of authoring, and four examples of making declarations- the three core elements of the emancipation perspective on entrepreneuring. Our work contributes to the theory and practice of innovation by adding to the corpus of descriptive case studies that examine entrepreneuring as an emancipatory process. Our results and our method will also also be of interest to space industry entrepreneurs, investors, analysts, managers, policy-makers, and officers at governmental space agencies.

Keywords: Elon Musk; SpaceX; NewSpace; technology entrepreneurship; entrepreneuring as emancipation; seeking autonomy; authoring; declarations.

We are at a turning point in the history of space exploration and development. ... The established state-run industrial space sector is no longer the only game in town.

Gary Martin, Director of Partnerships, NASA Ames Research

Introduction

The article presents results from a case study of the entrepreneuring activities undertaken by Elon Musk between 2001 and 2015 to launch and grow Space Exploration Technologies Corporation (SpaceX, https://www.spacex.com/), a private commercial spaceflight venture. We employ the emancipation perspective on entrepreneuring (Rindova et al. 2009) as a theoretical lens to identify, describe, and interpret examples of seeking autonomy, authoring, and making declarations- the three core elements of entrepreneuring emancipation. Our work contributes to the theory and practice of innovation by adding to the corpus of descriptive case studies that examine entrepreneuring as an emancipatory process.

First proposed by Rindova et al. (2009) in the Academy of Management Review, Jennings et al. (2016, p. 81) describes the emancipation perspective as "groundbreaking," with "paradigm-shifting potential" for understanding entrepreneurship and innovation.

While theory-building requires careful observation and accurate description (Christensen & Raynor, 2003) undertaken by engaged scholars (Van de Ven, 2007), the features of both description and explanation are strengths of case study research designs (Yin, 2014; Eisenhardt et al. 2016). Thus, we argue that a corpus of well-designed and rigorously-executed case studies that employ the emancipation perspective to examine highimpact technology innovations, could accelerate theorybuilding about technology entrepreneurship and innovation. Nonetheless, there remains a dearth of published case research on these topics (Jennings et al. 2016; Reid, 2018). This paper is the second in a series of case study publications addressing this gap by examining the activities of NewSpace entrepreneurs (Zubrin, 2013; Pekkanen, 2016; Martin, 2017). Our previous paper examined Sir Richard Branson and Virgin Galactic (https://www.virgingalactic.com/) (Muegge & Reid, 2018) and a forthcoming paper will examine Peter Diamandis and the XPRIZE Foundation (https:/ /www.xprize.org/).

The article proceeds as follows. The first section reviews the relevant prior research perspectives on entrepreneuring emancipation. The second section describes the research method, and the third introduces the case of Elon Musk and SpaceX. The fourth, fifth, and sixth sections each present results about one of the three core elements of entrepreneuring: seeking autonomy, authoring, and making declarations, respectively. The seventh section discusses the results, and the eighth section concludes.

Entrepreneuring as Emancipation

Entrepreneuring refers to "efforts to bring about new economic, social, institutional, and cultural environments through the actions of an individual or group of individuals" (Rindova et al. 2009, p. 477). Entrepreneuring is thus about the creation of something new, not merely about change.

Emancipation refers to "the act of setting free from the power of another" (Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, 1996). The focal point of inquiry is thus the "pursuit of freedom and autonomy relative to an existing status quo" (Rindova et al. 2009, p. 478).

The Rindova et al. (2009) emancipation perspective of entrepreneuring connects these two ideas, emphasizing verbs and actions rather than nouns and things. "We theorize that ... three core elements are central to an emancipatory process" (p.479):

* Seeking autonomy is the impetus for entrepreneuring- the perceived need of the entrepreneur to break free of or break up perceived constraints

* Authoring is defining new resource arrangements, relationships, and rules of engagement-taking ownership to change positions of power, to realize change-creating intent, and to preserve and enhance emancipatory potential

* Making declarations is about managing interpretations and expectations, mobilizing support, and generating change effects through discursive and rhetorical acts about intended change

The emancipation perspective emphasizes change creation: wealth creation may feature also, but it need not dominate the intended change. Rindova et al. (2009) write, "We believe that entrepreneurship research perhaps has become a bit too narrowly focused on wealth creation via new ventures" (p. 478) and "The implied opposition between emancipatory projects to create change and a 'hard-nosed business strategy' is a false one" (p. 483).

Our research problem is the identification and description of the NewSpace entrepreneuring activities undertaken by Musk using the framework and constructs of the emancipation perspective on entrepreneuring. Our field setting is the space industry, which is currently in the midst of resurgence and profound change (Reid, 2018b, 2019; Davenport, 2018; Fernholz, 2018). Davenport (2016, p. 3) writes:

"'Another space race is emerging, this time among a class of hugely wealthy entrepreneurs who have grown frustrated that space travel is in many ways still as difficult, and as expensive, as ever. Driven by ego, outsized ambition and opportunity, they are investing hundreds of millions ofdolla,rs of their own money in an attempt to open up space to the masses and push human space travel far past where governments have gone".

Martin (2017), Director of Partnerships for the NASA Ames Research Center, writes: "The established state-run industrial space sector is no longer the only game in town" (p. 3).

Our research design is an event study (Van de Ven, 2007), combining case methods (Yin, 2014; Eisenhardt et al. 2016) with process theory methods (Poole et al. 2000) to operationalize the core constructs of the emancipation perspective. We focus on a single entrepreneur and their venture using publicly-available data sources. Our source for identifying events was a book-length biography, Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future (Vance, 2015). Musk cooperated in the production of the book by providing interviews, documents, and access to other people, but did not review the book prior to publication or exert editorial control.

We employed NVivo qualitative data analysis (QDA) software, a set of coding rules, and a common framework for specifying events. Our analysis began with incident coding of the main source to identify and tag relevant passages of text, followed by event coding of the incidents to identify and specify a set of emancipation events. We then enfolded additional evidence, context, and perspectives from other sources, including published interviews with Musk, press releases from the SpaceX website, and articles about Musk and SpaceX. Each event record in the QDA software preserved links to evidence in the source material.

Our use of publicly-available sources (rather than primary interviews) is similar to the approach of Rindova et al. (2009) in the seminal article about emancipation. First-hand accounts by the focal entrepreneur are triangulated with stories from others and with other publicly-available records.

Our outcome is a set of case results, presented in a narrative form, structured using the constructs of the emancipation perspective. We report seventeen emancipation events:

* Six seeking autonomy events as the impetus for entrepreneurship, describing Musk's perceived need to break free of or break up a perceived constraint

* Seven authoring events of Musk taking ownership by defining relationships, arrangements, and rules of engagement, and changing the positions of power

* Four making declarations events of Musk's discursive and rhetorical acts about changecreating intent

Elan Musk and Space Exploration Technologies Corporation (SpaceX)

According to the company website: "SpaceX designs, manufactures and launches advanced rockets and spacecraft. The company was founded in 2002 to revolutionize space technology, with the ultimate goal of enabling people to live on other planets."

Elon Musk was born in South Africa in 1971, moved to Canada in 1989 to attend Queen's University (Kingston, Ontario), then transferred to the University of Pennsylvania in 1991. After completing degrees in economics and physics, he moved to to Silicon Valley in 1995, where he launched and exited two technology startups. Vance (2015, p. 14) summarizes this period prior to SpaceX, as follows:

"Fresh out of college, he founded a company called Zip2-a primitive Google Maps meets Yelp. That first venture ended up a big, quick hit. Compaq boughtZip2 in 1999for $307 million. Musk made $22 million from the deal and poured almost all of it into his next venture, a startup that would morph into PayPal. As the largest shareholder in PayPal, Musk became fantastically well-to-do when eBay acquired the company for $1.5 billion in 2002".

Musk moved to Los Angeles in 2001. Regarding this move, Vance writes, "While Musk didn't know exactly what he wanted to do in space, he realized that just by being in Los Angeles he would be surrounded by the world's top aeronautics thinkers. They could help him refine any ideas, and there would be plenty of recruits to join his next venture" (p. 99). One of those people was Robert Zubrin, an aerospace engineer, advocate of human exploration of Mars, and co-founder of The Mars Society (https://www.marssociety.org). Like Musk, Zubrin was frustrated by the priorities and slow progress at NASA, saying, "America's human spaceflight program is now adrift" (2013, p. 24). He nevertheless noted "a bright spot on the horizon in the form of a wave of entrepreneurial activity, most particularly that of the SpaceX company" (p. 54).

Zubrin (2013, p. 56) describes some of his impressions of Musk:

"Unlike the other would-be space magnates, Musk did not simply throw an expendable chunk of his fortune into the game; he put the fall force of his talent and passion into it. When I met Musk in 2001, he had a good grasp of scientific principles, but knew nothing about rocket engines. When I visited him at his first small factory in Los Angeles in 2005, he knew everything about rocket engines. By the time of my next visit a few years later, he had experienced two straight failures of his first launch vehicle, the Falcon 1, but was determined to push on despite the blows to his finances and reputation. It is this level ofcommitment that has made all the difference. None of the other billionaire-backed space startups have ever cleared the tower. SpaceX has delivered Cargo to the space station and will soon be sending people".

By all close accounts (for example, Zubrin, 2013; Diamandis & Kotier 2015; Vance, 2017), Musk's ultimate ambition, even before founding SpaceX in 2002, was sustainable human settlement on Mars, thus making humans a multi-planetary species (Musk, 2017).

Table 1 reports a timeline of Musk's early entrepreneurial activities, significant milestones for SpaceX, and stated future goals. Our emphasis here is exclusively SpaceX. Musk's other business and not-forprofit ventures subsequent to founding SpaceX-including Tesla (2003), SolarCity (2006), Hyperloop (2012), OpenAI (2015), Neuralink (2016), and The Boring Company (2016), are therefore not part of the article's scope. The following three sections each introduce one of three core elements in the emancipation perspective. They report examples identified from the main source (Vance, 2015), and supported with further details from additional sources. Page numbers refer to Vance (2015) unless otherwise noted. Because our main source for identifying emancipation events was published in 2015, all of the examples that follow began prior to 2015.

First Core Element: Seeking Autonomy

Seeking autonomy is the entrepreneurial impetus of the emancipation perspective- the perceived need of the entrepreneur to break free of or break up a perceived constraint in the environment (Rindova at al. 2009). For Schumpeter (1942), creative destruction was a means of entrepreneurship, but in the emancipation perspective it is also a goal, an entrepreneur seeks escape by overcoming or removing perceived constraints that "can be of an intellectual, psychological, economic, social, institutional, or cultural nature" (Rindova et al. 2009, p. 479).

A first example of seeking autonomy was Musk's perceived need to break free of the constraint that space had become boring. People "had grown cynical about anything novel happening in space again" (p. 103). "Musk would inspire people to think about exploring space again by making it cheaper" (p. 108). "He wanted to inspire the masses and reinvigorate their passion for science, conquest, and the promise of technology" (p. 101). Musk (2017, p. 46) writes: "I want to make Mars seem possible-make it seem as though it is something that we can do in our lifetime. There really is a way that anyone could go if they wanted to."

A second example was Musk's perceived need to do something that matters, breaking free of the constraint that the Internet runs on advertising and low-impact problems, and that top talent is too-often wasted on selling more ads. Musk states: "There are probably too many smart people pursuing Internet stuff, finance, and law" (p. 9). "Where Mark Zuckerberg wants to help you share baby photos, Musk wants to... well... save the human race from self-imposed or accidental annihilation" (p. 17). "[Musk's] empathy is unique. He seems to feel for the human species as a whole without always wanting to consider the wants and needs of individuals" (p. 363).

A third example was Musk's perceived need to be CEO in control of his own company. Musk "wanted to be CEO" (p. 67), but "at both Zip2 and PayPal, the companies' boards came to the conclusion that Musk was not yet CEO material" (p. 91). Both companies "had been ripped away from Musk and given to someone else to run" (p. 97). Musk founded SpaceX with US$100M of his own money from the acquisition of PayPal by eBay in 2002. Launching, growing, and exiting two previous companies provided credibility, and investing his own money provided autonomy. "With such a massive up-front investment, no one would be able to wrestle control of SpaceX away from Musk as they had done at Zip2 and PayPal" (p. 116). In a 2013 email to staff, Musk wrote: "Creating the technology needed to establish life on Mars is and always has been the fundamental goal of SpaceX. If being a public company diminishes that likelihood, then we should not do so until Mars is secure" (p. 260).

A fourth example was breaking free of dependency on Russian launch vehicles. "The Russians were the only ones with rockets that could possibly fit within Musk's budget" (p. 103). Instead of contracting out, SpaceX built the Falcon rocket for small payload missions: "Musk would inspire people ... by making it cheaper to explore space" (p. 108).

A fifth example, one that was central to Musk's identity and ultimate ambitions, was breaking free of the obvious constraint that there were no humans on Mars. Musk was frustrated that humans had no way to travel to Mars, and even more so, that there were no credible projects to get humans to Mars at any point in the future. Musk states: "At first I thought NASA just had a badly designed website. Why else couldn't you find this critical piece of information that would obviously be the first thing you'd want to know when you go to NASA.gov? But, it turned out, NASA had no plans for Mars. In fact, they had a crazy policy that didn't even let them talk about sending humans to Mars" (Diamandis & Kotler, 2015, p. 118). Musk also dreamed bigger, not only to travel to Mars, but to live there: "The thing that's important in the long run is establishing a selfsustaining base on Mars. In order for that to work- in order to have a self-sustaining city on Mars- there would need to be millions of tons of equipment and probably millions of people" (p. 332).

A sixth example was breaking up the entrenched notion that space is special-not like other industries- implying a set of constraints that prohibited practices that were effective elsewhere. Anything designed and built for space is expensive and takes a long time (p. 114), and rockets and capsules were used only once. "So long as we continue to throw away rockets and spacecraft, we will never have true access to space" (p. 257). Musk therefore demanded reusable rockets, reusable capsules, and massive cost reduction:

* SpaceX rockets "push their payload to space and then return to Earth and land with supreme accuracy on a pad floating at sea or even their original launchpad" (p. 217).

* "SpaceX proved that the Falcon 9 could carry the Dragon capsule into space and that the capsule could be recovered" ... "The Dragon 2 will... [use] SuperDraco engines and thrusters to come to a gentle stop on the ground. No more landings at sea. No more throwing spaceships away" (p. 254, 257).

* "Musk's goal is to use manufacturing breakthroughs and launchpad advances to create a drastic drop in the cost of getting things to space" (p. 217).

Consistent with the emancipation perspective on entrepreneuring, seeking autonomy was an impetus for action. Musk was driven to action by at least six perceived constraints: (1) space had become boring, (2) profitable tech companies too often address low-impact problems, (3) founder-entrepreneurs give up control of successful companies, (4) launches required Russian launch vehicles, (5) there were no humans on Mars, and no credible plans to send humans there, and (6) shared belief that practices driving massive cost-reductions in other industries would not work in space. He sought escape from these constraints by launching SpaceX- to inspire, to do something that matters, to be in control, to demonstrate that change is possible, and ultimately, to put humans on Mars.

Second Core Element: Authoring

Authoring refers to taking ownership by defining relationships, arrangements, and rules of engagement, and changing the positions of power. "Authoring does not refer to an outright rejection of all established norms and forms of authority but, rather, designing arrangements that support the change-creating intent of the entrepreneuring individual" (Rindova et al. 2009, p. 484). The authoring entrepreneur positions an entrepreneurial project in a system of resource relationships with resource holders. This contrasts with the opportunity recognition and creation themes prevalent in entrepreneurship research.

A first example of authoring was Musk joining the network. Prior to 2001, Musk was an outsider to the space industry. Musk's 2001 move from Silicon Valley to Los Angeles gave him access to the space industry (p. 97). Musk joined social networks: he donated to the Mars Society and Mars research (p. 100), joined the Mars Society board of directors, announced founding the Life to Mars Foundation (p. 102), discussed investing $20M to $30M in a Mars project (p. 103), and built connections with ambitious engineers (p. 111).

A second example was Musk's (unsuccessful) attempt to buy Russian missiles. Launches required specialized launch vehicles such as Russian Soyuz rockets. In 2002, "Musk intended to buy a refurbished intercontinental ballistic missile, or ICBM, from the Russians and use that as his launch vehicle" (p. 104). Musk met with Russians twice in Moscow and once in California. He was willing to pay $20M for three ICBMs, but did not reach a deal (pp. 106-107). This was a novel approach that had not previously been attempted.

A third example was organizing SpaceX as a Silicon Valleyspace company. "Musk felt that the space industry had not really evolved in about fifty years. The aerospace companies had little competition and tended to make supremely expensive products that achieved maximum performance. They were building a Ferrari for every launch" (p. 114). When he founded SpaceX in 2002 with US$100M of his own money, he brought with him a Silicon Valley way of thinking. Vance describes how "[Musk] had taken much of the Silicon Valley ethic behind moving quickly and running organizations free of bureaucratic hierarchies and applied it to improving big, fantastic machines and chasing things that had the potential to be the real breakthroughs we'd been missing" (p. 14). Musk set "insanely ambitious timelines" (p. 114), used open-concept offices where scientists and engineers worked alongside welders and machinists (p 113), hired young overachievers fresh from college for rank-and-file engineers and poached top engineers from Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and Orbital Sciences (p. 120), contracted with suppliers outside of the aerospace sector (p. 132), and "never relented in asking his employees to do more and be better" (p. 131). "The only way to keep up", explains Vance, "was to do what SpaceX had promised from the beginning: operate in the spirit of a Silicon Valley startup" (p. 130).

A fourth example was utilizing unconventional launch facilities. Launch tests traditionally happened at air force bases, imposing high costs and long wait times. Musk instead procured a former U.S. military missile test site on the Kwajalein Island (Kwaj) between Guam and Hawaii in the Marshall Islands, and adapted it to his needs (p. 135).

A fifth example was creating the SpaceX system as an end-to-end modular engineering platform (Baldwin & Clark, 2000; Muegge, 2013; Gawer & Cusumano, 2014) of launch vehicles, capsules, and engines that were all designed, manufactured, assembled, and tested at SpaceX facilities. Components included the Falcon 1, Falcon 5, Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy, and ITS Launch Vehicle, the Dragon and Dragon 2 capsules, and the Merlin, Kestrel, Draco, and SuperDraco engines. (These are the component names used by Vance for the components of the SpaceX system. As of 2019, several components have been renamed, new components have been added, and some components are no longer used. However, the principle of a modular platform architecture remains deeply entrenched). SpaceX sourced key capabilities in-house and "increased its internal welding capabilities so that it could make the fuel tanks in [a SpaceX facility] and ditch Spincraft [a suppler]" (p. 132). "[Musk] doesn't want to handle a few launches per year or to rely on government contracts for survival. Musk's goal is to use manufacturing breakthroughs and launchpad advances to create a drastic drop in the cost of getting things to space" (p. 217). Musk's ambitions about Mars shaped even the earliest design decisions about system architecture and components intended for low Earth orbit: "NASA researchers studying the Dragon design have noticed several features of the capsule that appear to have been purpose built from the get-go to accommodate a landing on Mars ... It could be feasible for NASA to fund a mission to Mars in which a Dragon capsule picks up samples and returns them to Earth" (p. 235).

A sixth example was commercial contracts. Prior to SpaceX, NASA contracted only with traditional aerospace and military suppliers. In 2006, SpaceX contracted with NASA and the U.S. Military to develop technology, and in 2008, to operate missions. In 2012, a Dragon capsule became the first private spacecraft to dock with the International Space Station (Chang, 2012). In 2019, a Crew Dragon capsule became the first private spacecraft rated for human transportation to dock with the ISS (O'Callaghan, 2019); it returned successfully to earth a few days later for an ocean landing (Wall, 2019). SpaceX expects to transport a human crew to the ISS later in 2019.

A seventh example was a viable plan for humans as an interplanetary species. If a catastrophic event were to render Earth unfit for human life, neither human civilization nor the human species would survive. "Musk's ultimate goal" according to Vance, is "turning humans into an interplanetary species. This may sound silly to some, but there can be no doubt that this is Musk's raison d'etre" (p. 331). Musk (2017, p. 46) writes:

"Why go anywhere? I think there are really two fundamental paths. History [is] going to bifurcate along two directions. One path is we stay on Earth forever, and then there will be some eventual extinction event. I do not have an immediate doomsday prophecy, but eventually, history suggests, there will be some doomsday event. The alternative is to become a space-bearing civilization and a multi-planetary species, which I hope you would agree is the right way to go. "

Consistent with the emancipation perspective on entrepreneuring, Musk took ownership by defining new arrangements in place of the established status quo of the traditional space industry. He first became embedded in the social communities of people in the space industry through action and investment, then sought to privately obtain unconventional launch vehicles, then launched SpaceX with his own personal funds as a Silicon Valley space company, utilizing unconventional launch facilities, developing a modular platform of re-usable components, and securing commercial contracts, with an ultimate goal of making humans an interplanetary species. Musk's SpaceX status quo operated under different rules and arrangements than the traditional space industry status quo that it displaced, and preserved emancipatory potential for continued change.

Third Core Element: Making Declarations

Making declarations refers to "unambiguous discursive and rhetorical acts regarding the actor's intentions to create change" ... "[declarations are intended for specific audiences and are bound by customs of rhetoric, speaking, and listening" (Rindova et al. 2009, p. 485, 486). Unlike legitimation activities that disguise differences, entrepreneuring may involve exposing contradictions and differences to generate stakeholder support for an intended change in the status quo. Contestations from others may be an inevitable consequence of declarations: "The process of declaration and contestation ... is also one of meaning and rhetoric and ultimately of altering societal beliefs about the very nature of things" (p. 486). The entrepreneur making declarations positions an entrepreneurial project within the web of meaning within which stakeholders interpret the value of products and activities.

A first example of making declarations was Musk's commitment and persistence to building a SpaceX launch vehicle. After failing to secure a Russian missile in 2002, Musk declared: "I think we can build this rocket ourselves" (p. 107). The SpaceX website boldly stated: "SpaceX is privately developing the entire Falcon rocket from the ground up, including both engines, the turbopump, the cryogenic tank structure and the guidance system" (p. 118). Initial reactions were tepid: "As word travelled around the space community about Musk's plans, there was a collective ho-hum [from people who had seen this situation before]... The techies usually ended up spending the rich guy's money for two years, and then the rich guy gets bored and shuts the thing down" (p. 108). Musk nonetheless persisted, spending his own money.

A second example was Musk's commitment to persevere. Musk vowed to continue despite three failed test launches and severe time and cost overruns, declaring "I will spend my last dollar on these companies. If we have to move into Justine's parents' basement, we'll do it" (pp. 198-199). He made confident statements to employees and the public after each setback. "It took six years- about four and a half more than Musk had once planned- and five hundred people to make this miracle of modern science and business happen" (p. 203). The fourth test launch finally succeeded in 2008, when "SpaceX simply did not have enough money to try a fifth flight" (p. 200). "When the launch was successful, everyone burst into tears" (p. 203). Musk told Diamandis & Kotler (2015, p. 122): "Even if the probability of success is low, if the objective is really important, it's worth doing."

A third example was making declarations about a new paradigm in the space industry. Musk declared that SpaceX would do things differently, and insisted that massive cost reduction was both necessary and possible. Tom Mueller explained: "People thought we were crazy. At TRW, I had an army of people and government funding. Now we were going to make a low-cost rocket from scratch with a small team" (p. 116). "The whole situation was ludicrous. A start-up rocket company had ended up in the middle of nowhere trying to pull off one of the most difficult feats known to man" (p. 137). Musk persevered and succeeded. By 2015, "SpaceX spent $2.5 billion to get four Dragon capsules to the ISS, nine flights with the Falcon 9, and five flights with the Falcon 1. It's a price-per-launch total that the rest of the players in the industry cannot comprehend let alone aspire to" (p. 247). Musk (2017) detailed the SpaceX Mars vision of humans as a multiplanetary species:

"As we show that this is possible and that this dream is real-it is not just a dream, it is something that can be made real-the support will snowball over time. "

A fourth example was making declarations that SpaceX would remain privately held to pursue its ambitious goals of making humans an interplanetary species. Musk wrote a 2013 letter to SpaceX employees about the timing of going public (p. 260), and made consistent statements about staying private: "For those who are under the impression that they are so clever that they can outsmart public market investors and would sell SpaceX stock at the 'right time,' let me relieve you of any such notion." Zubrin (2013) writes: "At SpaceX, initially all-and still a significant fraction today-ef the funds spent have been Musk's. In short, SpaceX spends money as like it is its own-because much of it is" (pp. 57-58). Musk (2017, p. 57) writes:

"The main reason I am personally accumulating assets is in order to fund this. I really do not have any other motivation for personally accumulating assets except to be able to make the biggest contribution I can to making life multi-planetary. "

Consistent with the emancipation perspective on entrepreneuring, Musk made unambiguous discursive and rhetorical acts regarding intentions to make change. Musk's declarations were about building a launch vehicle (and later the SpaceX system) with private funds, persevering despite set-backs, doing things differently, and remaining privately-held. Musk's declarations shaped the interpretations of stakeholders about the value and meaning of SpaceX activities and intent for change.

Our research problem was the identification and description of the NewSpace entrepreneuring activities of Elon Musk using the framework and constructs of the emancipation perspective on entrepreneuring. Our solution was a set of seventeen examples of entrepreneuring as emancipation: six examples of Musk seeking autonomy as an impetus for entrepreneurship, seven examples of authoring to enact change, and four examples of making declarations about change-creating intent. Admittedly, these examples may provide an incomplete and partial view of Musk and SpaceX. Nonetheless, we argue that our work here is insightful for theory and practice. In the paragraphs that follow, we discuss and position (1) the results of this case, (2) the implications about the emancipation perspective, and (3) the broader implications about understanding entrepreneurship and innovation.

Our case results, interpreted through the lens of the emancipation perspective on entrepreneuring, portray Musk as driven to action by seeking escape from perceived constraints: space had become boring, tech companies addressed low-impact problems, successful founder-entrepreneurs lost control of their companies, launches required Russian launch vehicles, humans lived only on earth, and practices that had driven massive cost-reduction in other industries were not used in space. SpaceX was the means for liberation: to inspire, to do things that matter, to maintain control, to show change is possible, and to make humans into a multi-planetary species. Musk authored new arrangements in place of the industry status quo, in particular founding SpaceX with personal funds as a Silicon Valley space company, with unconventional facilities, a modular platform of re-usable components, and commercial contracts to develop technology and provide services. Musk made declarations to shape interpretations of stakeholders about the value and meaning of SpaceX activities and intent for change- about building a launch vehicle and the SpaceX system, persevering despite set-backs, doing things differently, and remaining privately-held.

Musk may be an atypical entrepreneur in both attributes and circumstances. In a new epilogue written for the paperback edition, Vance (2017, p. 374) writes that, "Musk does not operate like your typical CEO. He's charging after a personal calling- one that's intertwined with his soul and injected into the deepest parts of his mind." Furthermore, Musk began SpaceX with a personal fortune, a munificent resource environment that is unavailable to most entrepreneurs. We purposely selected Musk and SpaceX as an extreme case in pursuit of fresh insights, following the research design advice of March et al. (1991), Christensen & Raynor (2003), Van de Ven (2007), Yin (2014), and Eisenhardt et al. (2016). Nonetheless, we found that the emancipation perspective was valid here also in an extreme case for identifying, describing, and explaining Musk's entrepreneuring activities. This suggests that the emancipation perspective may be applicable to entrepreneurship with broad scope conditions (Suddaby, 2010) that include the most extreme outlier cases. Jennings et al. (2016, p. 99) had previously observed that most empirical work utilizing the emancipation perspective has been conducted in developing economies or with marginalized populations. Our results therefore lead us to call also for empirical investigation of entrepreneuring as emancipation in the world's most-developed economies, most-advanced technologies, and mostadvantaged populations. Likewise, our results support the Rindova et al. (2009) assertion that "implied opposition between emancipatory projects to create change and a 'hard-nosed business strategy' is a false one" (p. 483). SpaceX is both a profitable venture inspired by dreams and a social mission with profit potential. Musk simultaneously pursues a bold societal goal while building a successful company. The emancipation perspective thus accommodates social outcomes and wealth creation within the same framework, thereby calling into question the common practice of treating social entrepreneurship as somehow different from "regular" entrepreneurship.

Some of Musk's entrepreneuring activities appear anomalous from a strict wealth-creation perspective. However, these same activities appear coherent and logically consistent when interpreted as emancipatory change creation to escape from perceived constraints. Other theoretical perspectives on entrepreneurship may also offer coherent explanations for some of Musk's activities - for example, entrepreneurial hubris (Hayward et al. 2006) could perhaps account for the relentless perseverance in 2008 for a fourth launch attempt despite three failures and dwindling resources, entrepreneurial effectuation (Saravathy, 2001) could account for organizing SpaceX as a Silicon Valley company in an industry that organized in unfamiliar ways, and entrepreneurial bricolage (Baker & Nelson, 2005) could account for both the attempt to procure Russian missiles and the use of unconventional launch facilities. A rigorous consideration of hubris, effectuation, bricolage, and other perspectives is beyond the scope of the current article. However, each of these alternative perspectives appears likely to inform only a subset of the seventeen examples of entrepreneuring as emancipation identified here, and each perspective seems incompatible with or unhelpful for explaining other examples. There are at least two broader implications for scholarship. First, researchers of entrepreneurship and innovation phenomena should continue to adopt multiple theoretical perspectives, a tactic advocated by Christensen & Raynor (2003), Van de Ven (2007), Yin (2014), and others for methodologically rigorous and high-impact management research. Second, the emancipation perspective can provide an organizing framework that accommodates wealth-creation, hubris, bricolage, effectuation, and other perspectives on entrepreneurship and innovation as partial and complementary explanations of the motivations and processes for some entrepreneuring activities. We agree with Rindova et al. (2009, p. 478) that "research that considers both more closely and more broadly the entrepreneurial dreams and efforts to create change in the world may bring us to a fuller, more comprehensive understanding of the processes of discovery, change, value creation, and ultimately wealth creation" - especially for technology entrepreneurs.

Limitations of this research include the single-case research design, use of a single narrative source for identifying emancipatory events (Vance, 2015), and exclusive reliance on text sources (i.e., no primary interviews or direct observation). We attempted to address the threats to validity and reliability resulting from these limitations by employing the best practices recommended in the case method literature (Yin, 2014; Eisenhardt et al. 2016), and developing additional cases about other entrepreneurs (Reid, 2018a; Muegge & Reid, 2018) for cross-case comparisons (Eisenhardt, 1989; Yin, 2014). Nonetheless, coding additional sources about Musk and SpaceX could reveal more examples. Future research should develop more cases of entrepreneurs in the space industry to more fully describe this sector and to enable cross-case comparison within the industry, develop more cases in other sectors to enable crosscase comparison between industries, and examine more variables to understand how emancipation relates to other management constructs, and to high-impact research questions about entrepreneurship, innovation, competitive advantage, and benefits to stakeholders.

This article has employed the emancipation perspective on entrepreneuring (Rindova et al. 2009) to examine the case of Elon Musk and SpaceX, a "Silicon Valley space company" at the centre of profound change underway in an industry that was once the exclusive domain of government, military contractors, and incumbent aerospace companies. Our work adds to the corpus of descriptive case studies that examine entrepreneuring as an emancipatory process, and demonstrates the application of emancipation as a unifying perspective on entrepreneurship and innovation anchored around change creation.

As an entrepreneur, Musk is an outlier in multiple respects. Nonetheless, we showed that the emancipation perspective accommodated our case results within its framework: seeking autonomy as an impetus for entrepreneurship, authoring to enact change, and making declarations about change-creating intent. We also demonstrated the capability for emancipation to enfold other perspectives from the entrepreneurship literature, such as bricolage and effectuation as partial explanations for authoring events, and both wealth-creation and liberation from established social order as possible forms of changecreating intent. We agree with the Jennings et al. (2016) assertion that the emancipation perspective has much potential for new knowledge production and fresh insights in a wide range of management contexts. We argue in conclusion that our results support broad scope conditions for the emancipation perspective that includes the most-advanced technologies, mostdeveloped economies, and most-advantaged entrepreneurs, as well as developing economies and individuals most in need of liberation.

Further Reading

A previous version of this article was presented at the ISPIM Connects Ottawa conference (April 7-10, Ottawa, Canada), and published in the conference proceedings (Muegge & Reid, 2019).

This is the second in a series of case studies examining the activities of NewSpace entrepreneurs using the emancipation perspective on entrepreneuring. Results from our case study of Sir Richard Branson and Virgin Galactic were previously presented at the 2018 Portland International Conference on Management of Engineering and Technology (PICMET '18, August 19-23, Honolulu, Hawaii, USA), and published in the conference proceedings (Muegge & Reid, 2018).

Ewan Reid's Master of Applied Science Thesis (Reid, 2018a) is available online through the Carleton University open access repository (CURVE): https://curve.carleton.ca

About the Authors

Steven Muegge is an Associate Professor of Entrepreneurship at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. Dr. Muegge leads an active research program in technology entrepreneurship within the Technology Innovation Management (TIM) program. His research, teaching, and community service interests include platforms, communities, and business ecosystems, and the business models of technology entrepreneurs, especially in early-stage product-market spaces. Dr. Muegge holds a Bachelor of Engineering degree in Engineering Physics from McMaster University, a Master of Engineering degree in Telecommunications Technology Management from Carleton University, and a Ph.D. in Management from Carleton University.

Ewan Reid is President and CEO of Mission Control Space Services, a space exploration and robotics company with a focus on mission operations, onboard autonomy, and artificial intelligence. Prior to founding Mission Control, Ewan worked at a major Canadian space company as a systems designer and project manager. He has been a subsystem design lead on three rover prototypes for the Canadian Space Agency, a systems and electrical designer and operations engineer on the Space Shuttle Program, and a mission controller for ten Space Shuttle missions at NASA. Ewan has degrees in Electrical Engineering and Economics from Queen's University and a Master's degree in Technology Innovation Management from Carleton University.

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Tech billionaire returns to Earth after first private spacewalk

A billionaire spacewalker returned to Earth with his crew on Sunday, ending a five-day trip that lifted them higher than anyone has traveled since NASA’s moonwalkers.

This image made from SpaceX video shows its capsule, center, carrying tech entrepreneur Jared Isaacman with his crew after it reached the Gulf of Mexico near Florida’s Dry Tortugas early Sunday, Sept. 15, 2024. (SpaceX via AP)

This image made from SpaceX video shows the four-member crew including tech entrepreneur Jared Isaacman, third left, seated in its capsule as they wait to get off the capsule after it landed in the Gulf of Mexico near Florida’s Dry Tortugas early Sunday, Sept. 15, 2024. (SpaceX via AP)

In this image made from SpaceX video, tech entrepreneur Jared Isaacman, center, greets as he gets out of its capsule upon his return with his crew after the capsule landed in the Gulf of Mexico near Florida’s Dry Tortugas early Sunday, Sept. 15, 2024. (SpaceX via AP)

In this image made from SpaceX video, tech entrepreneur Jared Isaacman, center, reacts as he gets out of its capsule upon his return with his crew after the capsule landed in the Gulf of Mexico near Florida’s Dry Tortugas early Sunday, Sept. 15, 2024. (SpaceX via AP)

This black and white, thermal image made from SpaceX video shows its capsule, center bottom, carrying tech entrepreneur Jared Isaacman with his crew minutes before it reached the Gulf of Mexico near Florida’s Dry Tortugas early Sunday, Sept. 15, 2024. (SpaceX via AP)

This black and white, thermal image made from SpaceX video shows its capsule, center, carrying tech entrepreneur Jared Isaacman with his crew as it splashes down in the Gulf of Mexico near Florida’s Dry Tortugas early Sunday, Sept. 15, 2024. (SpaceX via AP)

This image made from a SpaceX video shows the start of the first private spacewalk led by tech billionaire Jared Isaacman Thursday Sept. 12, 2024. (SpaceX via AP)

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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — A billionaire spacewalker returned to Earth with his crew on Sunday, ending a five-day trip that lifted them higher than anyone has traveled since NASA’s moonwalkers.

SpaceX’s capsule splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico near Florida’s Dry Tortugas in the predawn darkness, carrying tech entrepreneur Jared Isaacman, two SpaceX engineers and a former Air Force Thunderbird pilot.

They pulled off the first private spacewalk while orbiting nearly 460 miles (740 kilometers) above Earth, higher than the International Space Station and Hubble Space Telescope. Their spacecraft hit a peak altitude of 875 miles (1,408 kilometers) following Tuesday’s liftoff.

Isaacman became only the 264th person to perform a spacewalk since the former Soviet Union scored the first in 1965, and SpaceX’s Sarah Gillis the 265th. Until now, all spacewalks were done by professional astronauts.

“We are mission complete,” Isaacman radioed as the capsule bobbed in the water, awaiting the recovery team. Within an hour, all four were out of their spacecraft, pumping their fists with joy as they emerged onto the ship’s deck.

It was the first time SpaceX aimed for a splashdown near the Dry Tortugas, a cluster of islands 70 miles (113 kilometers) west of Key West. To celebrate the new location, SpaceX employees brought a big, green turtle balloon to Mission Control at company headquarters in Hawthorne, California. The company usually targets closer to the Florida coast, but two weeks of poor weather forecasts prompted SpaceX to look elsewhere.

During Thursday’s commercial spacewalk, the Dragon capsule’s hatch was open barely a half-hour. Isaacman emerged only up to his waist to briefly test SpaceX’s brand new spacesuit followed by Gillis, who was knee high as she flexed her arms and legs for several minutes. Gillis, a classically trained violinist, also held a performance in orbit earlier in the week.

The spacewalk lasted less than two hours, considerably shorter than those at the International Space Station. Most of that time was needed to depressurize the entire capsule and then restore the cabin air. Even SpaceX’s Anna Menon and Scott “Kidd” Poteet, who remained strapped in, wore spacesuits.

SpaceX considers the brief exercise a starting point to test spacesuit technology for future, longer missions to Mars.

This was Isaacman’s second chartered flight with SpaceX, with two more still ahead under his personally financed space exploration program named Polaris after the North Star. He paid an undisclosed sum for his first spaceflight in 2021, taking along contest winners and a pediatric cancer survivor while raising more than $250 million for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.

For the just completed so-called Polaris Dawn mission, the founder and CEO of the Shift4 credit card-processing company shared the cost with SpaceX. Isaacman won’t divulge how much he spent.

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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Four astronauts on Polaris Dawn flight return to Earth after 1st commercial spacewalk

Russell Lewis

In this image posted by SpaceX following the first-ever commercial spacewalk by the Polaris Dawn crew, shows (L-to-R) mission specialist Sarah Gillis, commander Jared Isaacman, pilot Scott Poteet and mission specialist Anna Menon aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule. Image courtesy of SpaceX via X.com hide caption

Polaris Dawn — a daring private mission to space — ended successfully for its four astronauts with a pre-dawn Sunday splashdown near the Dry Tortugas off the Florida coast.

The five-day trip, funded by billionaire internet entrepreneur Jared Isaacman in which he served as the mission commander, broke several records including the first-ever commercial spacewalk using SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule.

Isaacman, along with fellow astronaut Sarah Gillis, took turns spending about 20 minutes each outside the capsule taking in the view and testing new spacesuits on Thursday.

SpaceX Polaris Dawn astronauts conduct the first-ever private spacewalk

It was the centerpiece of the mission, which also set the highest-ever Earth orbit by humans : 874 miles above the surface, eclipsing the record set by Gemini 11 in 1966 (and more than three times higher than the orbit of the International Space Station). The last time humans were this far from the planet was during the Apollo lunar program more than a half-century ago.

This mission was also the first time SpaceX had its own employees on a flight. Gillis is a lead space operations engineer at SpaceX and responsible for overseeing the company’s astronaut training program. She was joined by engineer Anna Menon who manages development of crew operations at SpaceX. The fourth crewmember, Scott "Kidd" Poteet, is a retired Air Force pilot who works with Isaacman.

This trip to space is the first of three flights Isaacman purchased under the Polaris Program . He previously spent three days in orbit in 2021 aboard this same SpaceX capsule on the Inspiration4 mission . He also paid for that flight and donated three seats as a fundraiser for St. Jude Children’s Hospital in Memphis, Tenn.

Polaris Dawn is the 14th time SpaceX has sent humans into orbit.