Conceptualizing Knowlege Intensive Entrepreneurship: Concepts and Models

Magazine article, 2011

This AEGIS article examines knowledge intensive entrepreneurship in various ways. It presents a model and represents a broad framework for understanding. Knowledgeintensive entrepreneurship is considered a key socio-economic phenomenon that drives innovation, and economic growth, and is at the base of the competitiveness of countries. An initial definition of knowledge intensive entrepreneurship and the main concepts is in Section 1. We then present the proposed conceptual framework that will guide our research. Then in Section 2 we concentrate on what the literature has said about entrepreneurship: This is divided into the brief survey into economics (section 2.1), industrial dynamics (section 2.2) and innovation management (section 2.3). The article then turn into what has already been researched about knowledge intensive entrepreneurship by examining KEINS, an EU exploratory project carried out in the last years (section 3). Following a presentation of the main results from KEINS, we will introduce the main points of AEGIS, centered on linking firms, knowledge and systems (section 4). Finally, in the last section, we will focus on analyzing the phenomenon of KIE. This includes first an examination of the various empirical dimensions of AEGIS in its attempts to develop indicators to explore, identify and measure knowledge intensive entrepreneurship. The paper then concludes with some final considerations