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The missing pillar: the creativity theory of knowledge spillover entrepreneurship

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Abstract

Knowledge spillover theory of entrepreneurship and the prevailing theory of economic growth treat opportunities as endogenous and generally focus on opportunity recognition by entrepreneurs. New knowledge created endogenously results in knowledge spillovers enabling inventors and entrepreneurs to commercialize it. This article discusses that knowledge spillover entrepreneurship depends not only on ordinary human capital, but more importantly also on creativity embodied in creative individuals and diverse urban environments that attract creative classes. This might result in self-selection of creative individuals into entrepreneurship or enable entrepreneurs to recognize creativity and commercialize it. This creativity theory of knowledge spillover entrepreneurship is tested utilizing data on European cities.

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Acknowledgments

We are grateful to Zoltan Acs, Michael Fritsch, Erik Stam, Sameeksch Desai and other participants in the Academic Policy and the Knowledge Theory of Entrepreneurship Workshop (University of Augsburg, Germany, 20–21 August 2012) for helpful comments. We greatly appreciate the valuable suggestions made by two anonymous reviewers. Suggestions and comments by Erik E. Lehmann on the final revision have significantly improved the quality of this paper. We would also like to thank Stadtsparkasse Augsburg for financial support of the workshop.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Development Strategies, Indiana University Bloomington, 1315 E. 10th Avenue SPEA Bloomington, Bloomington, IN, 47405, USA

    David B. Audretsch & Maksim Belitski

  2. School of Economics and Management, Free University of Bolzano-Bozen, Universitätsplatz 1, 39100, Bozen, Italy

    Maksim Belitski

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  1. David B. Audretsch
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  2. Maksim Belitski
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Correspondence to Maksim Belitski.

Appendix

Appendix

See Table 3.

Table 3 Entrepreneurship and employment in creative industries, 1999–2010 (sorted in descending order of new business startups)
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Audretsch, D.B., Belitski, M. The missing pillar: the creativity theory of knowledge spillover entrepreneurship. Small Bus Econ 41, 819–836 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11187-013-9508-6

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