Introduction

1Entrepreneurship is a very fast growing field, which is getting a better scientific and social recognition. To give just an example, from 2000 to 2010, the growth of the entrepreneurship division of the Academy of Management has been over 230%. This division is one of the biggest of the association with over 2 700 members. There are more and more articles published in entrepreneurship journals and more importantly, there is a growth of the penetration rate of entrepreneurship research in top-tier management journals, such as Administrative Science Quaterly, Management Science, Academy of Management Review, Academy of Management Journal, Strategic Management Journal, or Journal of Management.

2In 2010, the Shane and Venkataraman’s article, “The Promise of Entrepreneurship as a Field of Research”, won the Academy of Management Review Decade Award. This article got over 2500 citations and has been influential for some reasons (Shane, 2012). It offers a process-based conceptualization of entrepreneurship discussion of entrepreneurship as a distinctive domain of research with its own questions and theories. It also opens new research avenues at the nexus of individuals and opportunities.

3Since the beginning of the third millennium, we see in the academic literature an ongoing theoretical conversation on the discovery versus the creation of entrepreneurial opportunities. A more nuanced view of entrepreneurship is also developing in the field, giving some importance to cognition, intuition, emotion, failure, learning and expertise. There is also a shared view that entrepreneurship research is becoming more theory-driven (Wiklund et al., 2011). Finally, researchers have identified specific mechanisms and theories of entrepreneurial action: effectuation, causation, bricolage, improvisation (Fisher, 2012).

4However, entrepreneurship remains a complex and multidimensional research object. And, we can still observe a lot of epistemological and theoretical debates within the field. While, in 2000, Shane and Venkataraman the two winners of the Academy of Management Review Decade Award appeared sharing the same line of thoughts, since that date their research avenues seem to be divergent. As Shane (2012), 10 years later, is analyzing the impact of the “Promise of entrepreneurship as field of research” and offering new perspectives to go further, Venkataraman is exploring a new avenue considering with Sarasvathy that entrepreneurship is a science of the artificial (Venkataraman et al., 2012). As it has been emphasized recently by influential scholars entrepreneurship is a context-based phenomenon (Welter, 2011; Zahra and Wright, 2011) and this adds to the complexity of the field. It is not new of course and notably Alistair Anderson was aware about the importance of the context claiming that “the process of entrepreneurship draws from both the individual and the context” (Anderson, 2000) and adding with Sarah Jack, a couple of year ago, that entrepreneurship is “a contextual event and the outcome of many influences” (Jack and Anderson, 2002). The context can be seen and studied in different ways and dimensions: spatial, industry, market, temporal, social, and institutional (Zarah and Wright, 2011). Obviously, there are big issues and challenges for entrepreneurship scholars in designing and doing research aiming at getting a better understanding of the importance and the role of context in its different dimensions.

5But, there are other important issues and research perspectives to be considered. To just open some doors, Zarah and Wright (2011) consider with others that entrepreneurship research has to be relevant and emphasize the need for entrepreneurship research to be useful. They talk about the “raison d’être de l’entrepreneuriat” which is its usefulness. It seems also really important that entrepreneurship research throws some light on the dark side of entrepreneurs and the hidden face of entrepreneurship as it has been done by, among others, Jones and Spicer (2010), Anderson et al. (2009) or Fayolle (2011). Finally, taking as a starting point the existence of a huge gap between what our textbooks in entrepreneurship say and what entrepreneurs really do, and following the line of research from Sarasvathy (2001) and Baker and Nelson (2005), based on fine observations of the activities of entrepreneurs, entrepreneurship research should be more often focused on the behavior of real-life entrepreneurs paying some attention to the dilemma and the problems they face and the way they deal with.

6In this article [1], we argue that to develop knowledge in entrepreneurship we need to do research digging into four perspectives: redesigning entrepreneurship research, crossing the fields and the concepts, embedding knowledge in insightful concepts and domains, and exploring (new) or revisiting (old) research topics. These four perspectives come from our convictions and our understanding of the field of entrepreneurship. The rest of the article is organized as follows: each perspective is developed in a specific section of the article and illustrated with contributions from international colleagues who have participated, with us, in a collective work aiming at drawing the future of entrepreneurship research.

1 – Redesigning entrepreneurship research

7This first part of the article is a call for thinking and designing entrepreneurship research “out of the box”. By doing so, the four contributions proposed here show the importance of the multidisciplinary dimension of entrepreneurship, the use of the historical perspective, the power of analogy and metaphor and the need for more qualitative methods.

8William Gartner has been interested for a long time in studying the organizing process leading to the creation of a new organization. The contribution is bringing to our collective work on the future of entrepreneurship research is around organizing. He is developing ideas and thoughts about entrepreneurship as a field of research [2]. For him, entrepreneurship can be conceptualized as organizing emergence. By “organizing emergence”, William Gartner suggests “a commonality in phenomena (both theorized and studied) that involve situations where something develops from one state to another and that within that development there is a process in which the phenomena becomes more’ organized’”. Entrepreneurship as “organizing emergence” can be studied and theorized from a wide range of disciplines. These disciplines, such as sociology, psychology, philosophy and so on, can bring value to the concept of entrepreneurship, but the opposite is true, entrepreneurship can add value to the disciplines which study the phenomena. Thinking in this stream, William Gartner offers interesting thoughts to look at the ways disciplines are informed by and informing entrepreneurship. The other main idea explored by William Gartner is that of community. Is there a need of a unique entrepreneurship scholar community? Would it be realistic? William Gartner is inviting us, as entrepreneurship scholars, to think about a set of questions in relation to this issue of community. In his conclusion, he “wishes that all entrepreneurship scholars consider how they can both speak to the expertise in their narrow community while offering ways to connect to the broader network of entrepreneurship scholars overall”. It is here probably the greatest challenge entrepreneurship will need to deal with.

9Redesigning entrepreneurship research is also based on a good understanding of the history of entrepreneurship research and Hans Landström is becoming a specialized scholar on the topic. In its contribution, he applies an historical perspective to the field of entrepreneurship [3]. History matters and entrepreneurship as a field has a long history, so the main aim of the author is to help us in getting a better understanding of the roots and the foundations of entrepreneurship research. I fully agree with Hans Landström when he states that “Entrepreneurship is a complex, heterogeneous and multi-level phenomenon, and there is a need to use knowledge from many different research fields in order to understand it”. Consequently, entrepreneurship has attracted a lot of scholars from many different fields which creates a potential for the importation of concepts and theories from many other fields of research. Hans Landström develops that he calls “early entrepreneurial thinking” focusing first on the seminal contribution of Joseph Schumpeter and then inviting us in a discussion about three eras of the evolution of entrepreneurship in relation to three core disciplines: economics, social sciences and management studies. He also claimed the importance of the multidisciplinary dimension of entrepreneurship highlighting the need and the challenge for entrepreneurship scholars to engage in the future in more systematic theory-driven research.

10Bengt Johannisson has always been a creative and original entrepreneurship scholar. He develops, in his contribution, innovative ideas mobilizing the concept of entrepreneuring [4]. To him, this notion seems well appropriated to qualify a phenomenon, entrepreneurship, that is generically associated with movement and process (Steyaert, 2007). Bengt Johannisson sees “entrepreneurship as a collective phenomenon, as creative organizing – of thoughts, actions and people in projects which accumulate for the individual into an existential endeavour, as an approach to and way of life”. His main goal here is to offer “conceptual ideas of entrepreneurship as a phenomenon that is made comprehensive through encounters between theory, art and practice”. In this way, he shows first that entrepreneuring can be understood as a process of becoming and children are natural born entrepreneurs because they live in a world of becoming where experiencing new things, learning from mistakes and failures are essential components of their life. Based on this analogy and empirical material, a strong argumentation is developed by Bengt Johannisson, highlighting the interrelationships between theory, art and practice, three modes which capture entrepreneurship as a phenomenon.

11Good and useful entrepreneurship research is not exclusively quantitative. It is why, entrepreneurship scholars should use and develop more intensively qualitative research. Helle Neergaard, in her contribution to the collective discussion, maps the landscape of qualitative methods in entrepreneurship, with a particular focus on Europe in order to provide qualitative researchers with some recommendations for how to handle the publication game [5]. It will take as its starting point review articles from different countries: France, Germany, the UK and Scandinavia. It will then analyze the trends and identify the major themes and approaches used in qualitative entrepreneurship research in four journals from 2004 to the present, picking up where a former review covering the period from 1995 till 2003 left off. It will provide an overview of the challenges that scholars using qualitative methods meet and discuss the new land we need to explore. The findings show that the challenge for qualitative researchers remains the same; there has been no change in the number of articles reporting the use qualitative methods in the recent years, although an increase in the use of combinations of qualitative and quantitative research can be seen.

2 – Crossing the fields

12Insightful knowledge in entrepreneurship can be situated at the crossroads of fields, theories or concepts. In the second part of the article, entrepreneurship is studied together with feminist theories and educational theories. It is also put in perspective with the concept of culture and the field of family business.

13Colette Henry and Susan Marlow offer an overview of how the literature on ’female entrepreneurship’ has developed through time and evaluate progress taking a feminist analytical lens. In their contribution, they encourage researchers to apply a feminist perspective to the field of entrepreneurship and to use of more analytical methodological approaches. They notably advocate the use of qualitative life history methods which can give ’voice’ to women’s personal experiences of entrepreneurship and make sense of their own personal stories.

14Entrepreneurship education is both a research domain and a practice. There is an urgent need to develop research at the crossroads of entrepreneurship and education (Fayolle, 2013). Benson Honig and Bruce Martin start their reflection by offering a general theory of learning (largely based on the Piaget’s learning theory) which seems to them particularly relevant to the field of entrepreneurship before discussing its implications at the pedagogical and educational levels [6]. They also review and discuss entrepreneurship education outcomes and suggest recommendations for both scholars and practitioners. Benson Honig and Bruce Martin show the relevance of the Piaget’s theory of equilibration for entrepreneurship scholars and educators. This theory, based on assimilation and accommodation processes, has been elaborated while Piaget was fascinated with the ways children learn. I can observe here that both Johannisson and Honig consider of the greatest importance for entrepreneurship and entrepreneurship education the analogy between the ways children and entrepreneurs act and learn in uncertain, new or ambiguous situation and context. Benson Honig and Bruce Martin, using the findings of a meta-analysis (Martin et al., 2013), show that entrepreneurship education was found to have a significant relationship with entrepreneur-related human capital assets such as knowledge, skills and attitudes. Their thoughts and ideas open new perspectives for entrepreneurship scholars.

15We all know the importance of culture in the field of entrepreneurship. James Hayton and Gabriella Cacciotti, propose a review of empirical research on the relationship between entrepreneurship and culture [7]. They take as a starting point the framework elaborated in the Hayton, George and Zahra’s article (2002) on the basis of 12 empirical studies. Since 2002, Hayton and Cacciotti have identified and incorporated in the framework 28 empirical studies. Their contribution provides a state of the art and a summary of the recent developments in the literature crossing entrepreneurship and culture. The review is accompanied by some critical observations and followed by a range of suggestions for future research directions in this important domain.

16Other and final illustration of the crossing the field perspective is given by the contribution from Lucie Begin and Alain Fayolle. They offer a literature review and research propositions about a new concept at the crossroads of entrepreneurship and family business [8]. Family entrepreneurship is an emerging field of research that calls for an integrated study of the network of influences and relationships between family, family business and entrepreneurship. Based on a review of the most influential works published on the topic of family entrepreneurship, Begin and Fayolle propose a conceptual framework for the study of the connections between the family, family members, entrepreneurial behaviour, and family businesses. This approach leads them to generate a series of propositions for future research in the field.

3 – Embedding knowledge in (insightful) concepts and domains

17It is important for the field of entrepreneurship to develop empirical and theoretical studies about key concepts and domains. The third part of the article gives us the opportunity to get relevant and up to date information, trough out four contributions, on entrepreneurial orientation, the psychology of entrepreneurship, effectuation and entrepreneurial finance.

18Brian Anderson and Jeffrey Covin propose insightful thoughts about entrepreneurial orientation (EO) a well-known concept in the literatures of entrepreneurship and strategic management [9]. EO–the decision-making practices, managerial philosophies, and strategic behaviors that are entrepreneurial in nature–is a ’troublesome’ construct, or so it is argued to be in a recent review of the EO literature. One aspect of EO that earns the troublesome label is whether EO is a managerial disposition, a behavioral phenomenon, or some combination of the two–although despite this conceptual ambiguity the bulk of EO research adopts the behavioral approach. Anderson and Covin suggest that this behavioral focus in EO research unnecessarily diminishes the importance of the senior manager, and that we cannot meaningfully consider a firm entrepreneurial without explicitly accounting for the dispositions of senior managers that influence entrepreneurial decision-making. In short, they argue that managerial dispositions matter a great deal to how we identify and classify entrepreneurial firms. In making their observations, Anderson and Covin review the relevant EO literature, integrate a cognitive decision-making framework–regulatory focus theory–to demonstrate how dispositions influence behaviors, and discuss the implications of reconsidering the significant role that managerial dispositions play in the EO conversation.

19Stuart Read and Sharon Dolmans directly address the double questions at the origin of our collective work and discussion: what do we know and what we need to know [10]? About effectuation, which is become a key concept in the field (Fisher, 2012). They start with the personal history of Saras Sarasvathy, who conceptualized the theory of effectuation. They also give a brief view on the foundation of this concept before to offer a review of the literature highlighting the impact of both empirical and theoretical contributions. Read and Dolmans then propose a number of directions to improve our knowledge on effectuation around the concept itself, its antecedents, conditions and consequences.

20The psychology of entrepreneur has always been a key topic in entrepreneurship research. Kelly Shaver shows clearly the importance of psychology, as a discipline, to study entrepreneurial behavior [11]. Psychology, together with economics and sociology, can be considered as a “parent discipline” for entrepreneurship. But psychology may play a more important role than economics and sociology as stated by Shaver and Scott (1991, pp.39): “Economics circumstances are importants, social networks are importants, entrepreneurial teams are importants… But none of these will, alone, create a new venture. For that we need a person, in whose mind all of the possibilities come together, who believes that innovation is possible, and who has the motivation to persist until the job is done”. Kelly Shaver also evokes some hot topics, which regularly appear in the entrepreneurship literature such as cognition, decision making, self-efficacy, identity, motives and emotions.

21What about finance, financing start-up and entrepreneurial finance? To answer the questions, Mike Wright and Philippe Desbrieres examine the options and challenges entrepreneurs may have in obtaining finance for their new ventures and their firms [12]. They outline the different sources of finance, equity capital, bank debt, that can be used by entrepreneurs. They also propose a discussion of the take-up and utilization of informal business angel finance, and formal finance provided by venture capital (VC) firms. Finally, financing issues facing entrepreneurial firms are highlighted.

4 – (Re) Exploring (new) research topics

22Finally, in the fourth part of the article, four contributions are dedicated to both the exploration of new research topics, rural entrepreneurship and illegal entrepreneurship, and the revisiting of older ones, incubation and entrepreneurial decision. Both approaches offer insightful reviews and new and fresh research perspectives.

23Gerard McElwee and Robert Smith address a lack of study of rural enterprise, an emergent area of research, by developing a conceptual typology of rural enterprises [13]. This typology corresponds to one of the main goals of this contribution. Three other aims are targeted. Firstly, Gerard McElwee and Robert Smith attempt to define what constitutes a rural enterprise. Secondly, they explore those structures and processes which create the requirement for enterprise success by examining the drivers and the barriers which impact upon rural businesses. Finally, some policy recommendations are considered.

24Sarfraz Mian re-explores the concept of incubation [14]. He starts by defining this concept and providing the reader with a typology of incubator mechanisms. He, then, offers a brief history and growth of incubators worldwide. His main contribution is a review of the literature on business incubators and a benchmarking of incubator mechanisms from which Sarfraz Mian highlights interesting ways of learning based of some best practices. In the conclusion, he suggests future direction of research in this domain.

25Among an increasing number of forms of entrepreneurship, informal, illicit and illegal entrepreneurship appear as emergent research areas. Gerard McElwee, Robert Smith and Peter Somerville propose an exploration of illegal entrepreneurship into rural entrepreneurship [15]. By developing the work of Baumol’s discussion of unproductive and destructive entrepreneurship (Baumol, 1990), they elaborate a conceptual framework for categorizing illegal entrepreneurs and illicit enterprise activity. Further, to understand the extent and manifestations of illegal enterprise a typology of enterprising activity is developed. Since illegal entrepreneurship is under-researched and scrutinized, this constitutes an original attempt to frame the phenomenon.

26The final contribution to the collective work is addressing the issue of decision in the field of entrepreneurship. Saulo Barbosa building on a process view of entrepreneurship, elaborates a framework which can be applied to any focal decision related to the entrepreneurial process and contributes to generate a sound decision making research agenda for the study of entrepreneurship [16]. This framework includes four dimensions of entrepreneurial action derived from Katz and Gartner (1988): definition of purpose (ends), acquisition, creation and use of resources (means), establishment of boundaries and configuration of exchanges with others. These dimensions help to structure and articulate seven key questions that are to be asked in an entrepreneurial decision making paradigm. Those questions are: who, when, where, what, why, how, and what for. Saulo Barbosa opens then the door for a discussion around the theoretical and practical implications of his framework. This leads, through the need to reconsider the nature of entrepreneurial decisions, to a discussion about the notion of value creation and the need for entrepreneurship research to shift from the assumption of value creation to the study of the creation of values.

Conclusion

27Thinking the future of entrepreneurship research through French lenses does not necessarily mean that our thoughts, ideas and suggestions come exclusively from French or French-speaking research. We show in this article, or at least we have attempted to show, that new research perspectives can emerge from a collective work leading to a wide discussion, involving a group of international scholars. The French lenses appear here when it comes to elaborate the framework, the topics to be discussed and to invite the scholars engaged in the debate. I would strongly encourage French-speaking entrepreneurship scholars to regularly attend international entrepreneurship events and conference and to become part of the international community of entrepreneurship researchers. French-speaking research is to a certain extend close to research developed by scholars such as Gartner, Johannisson, Neergaard and others. But French-speaking entrepreneurship research is insufficiently diffused into the international scientific community and does not appear frequently in the best entrepreneurship journals. French-speaking entrepreneurship scholars must be aware of this concern and put their efforts and energy to get published in the best management and entrepreneurship journals.