Organizational Dynamics of Creative Destruction: Entrepreneurship and the Emergence of New Industries

Throughout this book our focus has been on developing the contribution of organization theory to the study of entrepreneurship. We have done this in terms of four primary ideas; we will review each of these and suggest some implications for future research from each as a way of concluding our book. The first idea is that demand side perspectives on entrepreneurship have been prominently featured in refereed journal articles in the recent past. Much of this work is derived from the sub-field of sociology known as organizational theory. Of most direct relevance to students of entrepreneurship, we have argued that applying perspectives from organization theory to understand entrepreneurship expands the definition and the scope of the phenomenon. In terms of definitions, we suggest, following Mezias and Kuperman (2000) that both innovative and imitative behaviors by both newly founded and existing firms are essential to understanding the emergence of new industries. In terms of level of analysis, we interpret perspectives from organization theory as suggesting that levels of analysis higher than the individual founder or even the individual founded firm are necessary to fully comprehend entrepreneurship.