The International Picture

Chapter three presented the development of entrepreneurship and small business research from a mainly US perspective. Compared to Europe, American society is more characterized by entrepreneuria1 ideology, and the international dissemination of entrepreneurship research has been dominated by US scholars, and therefore it is only natural that many of the works on the history of entrepreneurship and small business research reflect this bias. As a consequence, most of the history of entrepreneurship and small business research has been written by US researchers, for US researchers and about US research — it is an American story. Nevertheless, entrepreneurship and small business research in Europe has a long tradition, and Europe can in many ways be regarded as the birthplace of theoretical entrepreneurship studies (see Chapter 2), although for a long period entrepreneurship was ignored in policy and research. However, in the late 20th century, entrepreneurship and small business re-emerged on the political agenda across Europe, and during the 1980s and especially in the 1990s developed a foothold within European research. Entrepreneurship and small business research is to a great degree international, exhibiting the same positive development in Europe as in other parts of the world — not least in Australia. In this chapter I will therefore first present a description of European entrepreneurship and small business research. This is followed by a section about the development of entrepreneurship and small business research in Australia. Finally, some reflections and comparisons are made regarding the research in Europe, Australia and the US. Recent Years have witnessed a trend toward a greater interest in the development of entrepreneurship and small business research in the US as well as in Europe and Australia, and the following review will describe this dynamic development.