A Model of Strategic Entrepreneurship: The Construct and its Dimensions

TLDR

Strategic entrepreneurship combines opportunity‑seeking and advantage‑seeking behaviors, with small firms excelling at opportunity identification but weaker at building competitive advantages, while large firms are better at establishing advantages but less adept at spotting new opportunities. The authors contend that strategic entrepreneurship is a distinct construct that enables firms to create wealth and propose a model illustrating how its dimensions integrate to generate that wealth. The model identifies entrepreneurial mindset, culture, leadership, strategic resource management, and creative innovation as key dimensions that together drive strategic entrepreneurship.

Abstract

Strategic entrepreneurship (SE) involves simultaneous opportunity-seeking and advantage-seeking behaviors and results in superior firm performance. On a relative basis, small, entrepreneurial ventures are effective in identifying opportunities but are less successful in developing competitive advantages needed to appropriate value from those opportunities. In contrast, large, established firms often are relatively more effective in establishing competitive advantages but are less able to identify new opportunities. We argue that SE is a unique, distinctive construct through which firms are able to create wealth. An entrepreneurial mindset, an entrepreneurial culture and entrepreneurial leadership, the strategic management of resources and applying creativity to develop innovations are important dimensions of SE. Herein we develop a model of SE that explains how these dimensions are integrated to create wealth.