Studies of entrepreneurship increasingly focus on the context of entrepreneurship, rather than on the characteristics of the entrepreneur. Arguing that the inability of particular firms to control high-skill labor is responsible for a critical component of contemporary entrepreneurship—technologically based spin-offs—the author provides a theoretical basis for the effects of career dynamics on entrepreneurship. A theory of entrepreneurship, drawing on human capital theory, skills–opportunity theory, and internal labor-market theory, links declines in firm market share to a disequilibrium in labor-market matches. That imbalance leads to the breakdown of control and the consequent generation of spin-offs. Combining theory with qualitative and quantitative evidence, support is drawn from a study of the US semiconductor industry from its beginning until its early maturity in the mid-1970s.
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