Regional Entrepreneurship

Regional entrepreneurship (RE) is an emerging field within entrepreneurship research. It reflects Maryann Feldman’s frequently quoted notion that “entrepreneurship is primarily a regional event.” In this article “regional” is defined as subnational (i.e., below the country level). RE covers all issues related to the regional causes and regional impacts of entrepreneurial activities and government policies to support entrepreneurial activities. This article covers the most important contemporary theories dealing with regional entrepreneurship; it also provides an overview about important results of empirical studies on regional disparities and regional impact of entrepreneurial activities in subnational regions of various countries. It gives some insights into the role of government policies to support regional entrepreneurship. The above definition implicitly acknowledges that there are other spatial impacts of and causes for individuals’ entrepreneurial activities, namely at a supra-national (e.g., EU), national (e.g., a selected country such as Germany) or local (e.g., a specific area within an urban agglomeration) level. These other spatial perspectives on entrepreneurship are not considered in this article. Furthermore, this article considers regional entrepreneurship primarily from an economic and an economic geography perspective, while publications from other academic disciplines (e.g., management) are less often cited. As there is no single, generally accepted definition of entrepreneurship in the research community, this contribution considers two principal meanings essential. First, the occupational notion of entrepreneurship that refers to owning and managing a business on one’s own account and at one’s own risk. Its “practitioners” are called entrepreneurs, self-employed, or business owners. Within this concept of entrepreneurship, a dynamic perspective focuses on the creation of new businesses. Second, the behavioral notion of entrepreneurship refers to seizing an economic opportunity. I understand entrepreneurship as a combination of some elements of behavioral entrepreneurship with some aspects of the dynamic perspective of occupational entrepreneurship, making new venture creation the hallmark of entrepreneurship. More specific definitions that can be operationalized are needed for empirical work, however. I work on the assumption that entrepreneurship is about creating something new and that the definition of entrepreneurship according to the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) is the best compromise between competing characteristics such as novelty, the availability of data, or interregional, intertemporal, and international comparability. GEM defines entrepreneurially active people as adults in the process of setting up a business if they will (partly) own and/or currently own and manage an operating young business.