Abstract
The book edited by Hayton, Salvato, and Manimala comprises 15 cases of entrepreneurial firms in 15 countries. They are geographically spread to five continents, but heavily based in Europe, which is the home base of eight cases. However, the book introduces us to entrepreneurial firms in large and small countries as well as in emerging and developed economies. The companies vary also in terms of industry and technology: the cases include both B2C and B2B firms selling products or services and using high or low tech. As a deviation from the mainstream, the book also provides insights from three failure cases – something which increases its value added considerably. Despite the variance of the cases, one of the key messages of this book is that there is homogeneity within diversity. In other words, some features of entrepreneurial behavior cross multiple borders easily. Because of this, I consider the book to be useful for entrepreneurship researchers and particularly entrepreneurship educators across countries. Nevertheless, it should be kept in mind that this book is about new venture creation and related entrepreneurial behavior in growing, often small- and medium-sized firms. Although the editors do not explicitly exclude entrepreneurship in large, more mature organizations or intrapreneurship, none of the cases take this viewpoint.
In the book, the cases are presented in the alphabetical order of the home country, from Brazil to the United States, and the editors have not attempted to classify the cases into smaller groups. The Brazilian case describes the case of a start-up in oil and gas industry, competing with large multi-national companies (MNCs). The Cypriot case provides an overview of the entrepreneurial growth process of a family bakery. The Czech case highlights the challenges of succession planning in a high-tech venture in aluminum casting industry. The Danish case raises the question of how a successful service concept could be internationalized. The Hong Kong case combines the challenges of internationalization with succession and related management problems. The Indian case presents the growth story of a high-tech start-up in an emerging economy. The Italian, New Zealand, and US cases emphasize the environmental and sustainability aspects of entrepreneurial life-style firms. The Latvian case – together with the Dutch and UK cases – provides different viewpoints to business and entrepreneurial failure and what can be learned from them. The Liechtenstein case gives an exceptional view to an entrepreneurial firm from a very small country. The Nigerian case is a rare example of African entrepreneurship and tells the growth story of a family firm in a very challenging setting. And finally, the Turkish and UK cases take the viewpoint of entrepreneurial training, but from different perspectives – the one of the trainer and the one of trainee.
Personally – as an entrepreneurship educator – I found the cases of Danish restaurant Noma and the three failure cases most interesting ones. First, the Noma case provides very useful material for both entrepreneurship and international business classes because it forces the reader to combine material from the two fields in order to solve the key question: how can we copy this excellent idea successfully to new, culturally different markets? Second, failure cases are – unfortunately – very rare, and entrepreneurship research and education overall suffers from survivor bias. Therefore, it is essential that educators also receive teaching material which challenges prevailing theories and thoughts. These three cases provide very good basis for classroom discussion, for example.
All in all, I think the book is a useful contribution to faculty members interested in entrepreneurship. However, from the viewpoint of an entrepreneurship educator, the heterogeneity of the cases is a disadvantage. It is noticeable that the authors of the chapters have had rather ‘free hands’ for writing the cases, and as a result, the structures of the cases vary considerably. Some of the cases apply the ‘North American style’ which puts the decision-maker in the center and tells his or her story, and others take a more neutral perspective. The cases which have a clear timeline of the entrepreneurial process and critical events of the company history are the ones which are easiest to use in classroom. Additionally, some of the cases provide suggestions of discussion topics, some not, and it is obvious that educators find the cases with additional material most valuable. It would have also been interesting to read an epilogue in the book in which the editors reflect on the similarities and differences of the cases.
It should also be noted that the title of the book may be slightly misleading. ‘Global entrepreneurship’ in this case refers to a global view on entrepreneurship, in line with Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM), for example. Thus, this is NOT a book on international entrepreneurship, that is, about the discovery and/or exploitation of opportunities across national borders (cf. Oviatt and McDougall, 2005). On the other hand, it is NOT a book on transnational entrepreneurship (cf. Drori et al., 2009), either. So, it does not include any cases of transnational ethnic entrepreneurs. Ignoring these two fields is very unfortunate, especially as they have been recognized as strongly emerging fields of interest among both entrepreneurship scholars and educators.