The Handbook of Technology and Innovation Management

Chapter 13. Technology-Based Entrepreneurship

David H. Hsu

This chapter addresses the field of technology-based entrepreneurship (TBE). My goal is to provoke discussion and hopefully spur research in a few directions rather than attempt an exhaustive treatment of the subject. Technology entrepreneurship is a field that draws from two research areas: the study of technical innovation on the one hand, and the study of entrepreneurship on the other. Like these research areas, rather than being oriented around any particular academic discipline, the field tends to be organized around a phenomenon. In my discussion throughout this chapter, I will therefore be drawing on multiple academic disciplines that contribute to our understanding of TBE, though my bias is on management issues associated with the phenomenon.^[] In addition, although I use a framing of new ventures developed to commercialize innovation, most of the discussion will also be of relevance to entrepreneurial efforts within the setting of established firms.

^[] There is also obvious overlap with some of the other chapters contained in this volume. When this is likely to be the case, I will concentrate my discussion on a few points and refer the interested reader to more in-depth discussion in the other chapters.

The study of TBE appears to have emerged in the early 1960s (Roberts, 2004), perhaps with the rise of research-based new ventures emerging from Silicon Valley and the Boston area companies. Although academic interest ...