Abstract
The development of regions is considerably shaped by their history. We review research that finds significant persistence of regional levels of entrepreneurship over longer periods of time. It is argued that the long term persistence of regional entrepreneurship indicates the presence and effect of a culture of entrepreneurship that is conducive to new business formation and regional growth. Hence, regional development is characterized by long term trajectories of entrepreneurship. We derive a number of policy implications and propose avenues for further research.
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Quite interestingly, we also find a rather pronounced entrepreneurial personality structure of the regional population in some regions that had high levels of historical self-employment but are characterized by low levels of self-employment and new business formation today (e.g., the region of Stuttgart). This finding suggests that the relationship between entrepreneurial tradition and current entrepreneurial culture is rather complex. One explanation in the case of the Stuttgart region may be that a number of regional enterprises have grown into rather large firms, and that employment opportunities in these firms make self-employment relatively unattractive. Quite remarkably, the regional entrepreneurial culture, in terms of the local population’s personality structure, still prevails.
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Fritsch, M., Wyrwich, M. (2019). Regional Trajectories of Entrepreneurship and Growth. In: Lehmann, E., Keilbach, M. (eds) From Industrial Organization to Entrepreneurship. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25237-3_16
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