Technology entrepreneurship research opportunities: insights from across Europe

Abstract

Over the last two decades, the phenomenon of technology entrepreneurship has attracted the interest of researchers and policy makers due to its significant impact upon economic progress. Several authors define technology entrepreneurship as the interface of two well-established, but related fields—entrepreneurship and technological innovation. In this vein, technological opportunities can be recognized and exploited by individuals through new venture creation yet equally can be pursued by individuals or groups within existing public or private organizations. This special section provides a more fine grained understanding of technology entrepreneurship by considering interactions across these individual and organizational levels. We present three studies, empirically grounded within the specific and distinct policy contexts of Spain, Italy and the UK, that reveal new insights on the determinants of technology entrepreneurship. In this introductory paper, we consider the themes and contributions of these papers and provide an agenda for further research outlining a greater use of multi-level approaches to further our understanding of technology entrepreneurship