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Setting the Stage

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Knowledge-Intensive Entrepreneurship

Part of the book series: International Studies in Entrepreneurship ((ISEN,volume 39))

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Abstract

This chapter sets the stage for the remainder of the book. Herein we discuss the meaning of knowledge-intensive entrepreneurship (KIE), and we discuss why we have chosen to examine KIE and why we have chosen to emphasize the European textile and apparel firms in this book. The remaining chapters in the book are also outlined.

Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.

Mark Twain

The European Textiles, Clothing, Leather and Footwear manufacturing sector

is undergoing a renaissance.

European Skills Council

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Throughout the book, we will use the acronym KIE as both a noun and an adjective: KIE will refer to knowledge-intensive entrepreneurship, knowledge-intensive entrepreneurial firms, or a knowledge-intensive entrepreneur.

  2. 2.

    See, for example, Hébert and Link (1988, 1989, 2006a, b, 2009) history of intellectual thought about the entrepreneur. Obviously, we have written about entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship many times, so some duplication of discussions is inevitable.

  3. 3.

    See Audretsch et al. (2016) for a detailed description of static and dynamic entrepreneurship and for a discussion of the evolution of each concept.

  4. 4.

    We describe the educational background and the experience background of European textile and apparel founders in Chap. 5.

  5. 5.

    One might think that the definition of KIE is an outgrowth of how scholars thought about knowledge-intensive firms (KIF). For example, Blackler (1995, p. 1022) wrote: “Knowledge-intensive firms [are] organizations staffed by a high proportion of highly qualified staff who trade in knowledge itself.” Using KIF as a starting point for KIE is, in our view, not that productive.

  6. 6.

    The reference to Knight in the quoted passage refers to Frank Knight (1921).

  7. 7.

    These data, which are a small portion of all the data in the AEGIS database, are discussed in some detail beginning in Chap. 4. We thank the AEGIS consortium for providing data of the AEGIS survey which supported the empirical investigation of knowledge-intensive entrepreneurship in Europe in different sectoral, country, and socioeconomic contexts. This survey was conducted in the context of the AEGIS research project (Advancing Knowledge-Intensive Entrepreneurship and Innovation for Economic Growth and Social Well-being in Europe) co-funded by the European Commission under Theme 8 “Socio-Economic Sciences and Humanities” of the 7th Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development. We also thank Professor Yannis Caloghirou of the National Technical University of Athens and Professor Nicholas Vonortas of the George Washington University for their assistance in allowing us to use these data.

  8. 8.

    We realize that there are many metrics available to describe trends in the textile and apparel industries. Those that we have selected were readily accessible and understandable at an intuitive level and were complementary to the metrics in Chap. 3.

  9. 9.

    See Hébert and Link (1988, 1989, 2006a, b, 2009).

  10. 10.

    See http://ec.europa.eu/europe2020/index_en.htm.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Consumer, Apparel, and Retail Studies, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Greensboro, NC, USA

    Nancy J. Hodges

  2. Department of Economics, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Greensboro, NC, USA

    Albert N. Link

Authors
  1. Nancy J. Hodges
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  2. Albert N. Link
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Hodges, N.J., Link, A.N. (2018). Setting the Stage. In: Knowledge-Intensive Entrepreneurship. International Studies in Entrepreneurship, vol 39. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-68777-3_1

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