A Tale of Two Kirzners: Time, uncertainty and the 'nature' of opportunities.

TY - CONF

T1 - A Tale of Two Kirzners

T2 - Nordic Conference on Small Business Research

AU - Korsgaard, Steffen T.

AU - Berglund, Henrik

AU - Thrane, Claus

AU - Blenker, Per

N1 - Conference code: 16

PY - 2010

Y1 - 2010

N2 - This paper takes its starting point in the massive influence that the work of Kirzner has had on the field of entrepreneurship research. We show in the paper that the work of Kirzner holds two distinct and different descriptions of entrepreneurship. One that discusses entrepreneurship in an artificial single time period situation, emphasizing reactive alertness (Kirzner Mark I), and one that sees entrepreneurship as unfolding over time, thus emphasizing proactive speculation and creativity (Kirzner Mark II). Strangely, it is the first of these descriptions that has been used by entrepreneurship scholars. We propose to shift the focus to the latter description and show how this results in new ontological underpinnings of entrepreneurship research as well as new sets of research questions.

AB - This paper takes its starting point in the massive influence that the work of Kirzner has had on the field of entrepreneurship research. We show in the paper that the work of Kirzner holds two distinct and different descriptions of entrepreneurship. One that discusses entrepreneurship in an artificial single time period situation, emphasizing reactive alertness (Kirzner Mark I), and one that sees entrepreneurship as unfolding over time, thus emphasizing proactive speculation and creativity (Kirzner Mark II). Strangely, it is the first of these descriptions that has been used by entrepreneurship scholars. We propose to shift the focus to the latter description and show how this results in new ontological underpinnings of entrepreneurship research as well as new sets of research questions.

KW - Iværksætteri

KW - Kirzner

KW - Entrepreneurship

KW - Kirzner

M3 - Paper

Y2 - 20 May 2010 through 21 May 2010

ER -