Entrepreneurship has come a long way as an academic field, just as it has in our modern economy and society. Entrepreneurship provides a much needed retrospective view of academic work in the area.
Scholars in the field approach entrepreneurship from a variety of disciplines and often exhibit little agreement when attempting to define the term itself. To many, however, 'entrepreneurship' is about innovation and creativity - hardly the province of any one discipline. Instead, the field embraces a disparate set of topics and domains that need not have much in common.
This collection highlights the importance of studying multiple contextual forces, including research that derives from economics, history, sociology, psychology and from different business disciplinary bases, such as marketing, finance and strategy.
The overall focus is on 'entrepreneurial' activity, rather than specifically small business (or family business), and favours research articles over those that deal purely with practice.
The articles selected are useful and influential, and demonstrate the remarkable breadth of research questions, many of which are far from settled. The pieces included are often not readily available to libraries and will provide researchers with a unique source on which to build their own work.
A thorough index enables the reader to follow a particular theme through the four volumes, while the new introductions by the editor also provide suggestions for further reading on particular topics.

Introduction by: Norris Krueger