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1、STRATEGY AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP: OUTLINES OF AN UNTOLD STORYSaras D. SarasvathyUniversity of WashingtonS. VenkataramanUniversity of VirginiaInvited book chapter in the Strategic Management Handbook edited by Hitt et.al.(Revised December 10, 2000) In his book “InventionPage: 2It was Herbs advice not to
2、 use “editorial” adjectives while citing a work as far as possible may be the reader thinks it is a mundane piece, for example, why turn the reader off our piece based on differences of opinion about someone we are citing? The key thing is to focus on the actual content of the cite and its usefulnes
3、s in making our point than expressing our enthusiasm for it,” Professor Norbert Wiener (1993), commenting on the relative importance accorded to individuals and institutions in historical narratives of science and inventions, asks us to imagine Shakespeares “Romeo and Juliet” without either Romeo or
4、 the balcony. Weiner took his inspiration from the work of the English writer, Rudyard Kipling. The story is just not the same. He likens much of the study of the economic history of science and accounts of inventions as “all balcony and no Romeo.” The balcony for Norbert Wiener captures the context
5、 in which the story unfolds the culture, the institutions, the constraints and the catalysts that move the plot forward and thicken it. Romeos, for Wiener, play the leading parts in the story, because there is a strong fortuitous element to inventions and there is no inevitability that a possible di
6、scovery will be made at a given time and space. Take away either one, Romeo or the balcony, and the whole story falls apart. In a similar vein, we would liken studies of strategic management to “all balcony and no Romeo.” But if we accuse strategic management of being “all balcony and no Romeo,” str
7、ategic management scholars could legitimately accuse entrepreneurship of being “all Romeo and no balcony.” In this chapter we wish to suggest a point of view from entrepreneurship that will allow strategic management scholars to accommodate more Romeos in their stories. Although these two fields hav
8、e much to offer each other (trade in balconies and Romeos), they have developed largely independent of each other. We wish to suggest that entrepreneurship has a role to play in strategic management theory and that strategic management theory enriches our understanding of the entrepreneurial process
9、, although this latter aspect will not be the focus of this chapter.One useful way of thinking about entrepreneurship is that it is concerned with understanding how, in the absence of markets for future goods and services, these goods and services manage to come into existence (Venkataraman, 1997).
10、To the extent value is embodied in products and services, entrepreneurship is concerned with how the opportunity to create “value” in society is discovered and acted upon by some individuals. As Wiener has noted (Wiener, 1993: 7), at the beginning stages of a new idea, the effectiveness of the indiv
11、idual is enormous: “Before any new idea can arise in theory and practice, some person or persons must have introduced it in their own minds The absence of original mind, even though it might not have excluded a certain element of progress in the distant future, may well delay it for fifty years or a
12、 century.” The field of strategic management can be usefully described as having to do with the “methods” used to create this “value” and the ensuing struggle to capture a significant share of that “value” by individuals and firms. Thus, if we understand entrepreneurship and strategic management as
13、the fields that together seek to describe, explain, predict and prescribe how value is discovered, created, captured, and perhaps destroyed, then there is not only much that we can learn from each other, but together we represent two sides of the same coin: the coin of value creation and capture.One
14、 side of the coin, namely strategic management, has to do with the achievement of ends obtaining market share, profit, and sustained competitive advantage. The other side of the coin, namely entrepreneurship, has to do with the achievement of beginnings creating products, firms, and markets. But the
15、 clarity and complexity with which an author connects beginnings and ends is what makes a great story. We believe the really interesting story between strategic management and entrepreneurship has not yet been told. The main reason for this is that in general, creation calls for very different modes
16、 of thinking and behavior than capture and sustenance over time. Yet the creation process not only determines certain powerful tendencies for survival and growth, but some elements of it also persist over long periods of time, subtly and substantially influencing the selection and achievement of later ends. Carefully bearing in mind that large expanses of strategic management may h
