Just one Damned Thing After Another: Towards an Event-based Perspective of Entrepreneurship

Abstract

Although events such as the global financial crisis, natural disasters, or the COVID-19 pandemic have large impacts on entrepreneurship, the literature lacks a differentiated analysis of such events. This editorial highlights the importance of events which are discrete and bounded in space and time, unexpected, and strong enough to produce change that can lead to subsequent events. An event based approach is well suited to integrate context and time to predict entrepreneurial activity. We provide a more systematic description of events, their characteristics, and causal mechanisms to allow more holistic and generalizable analysis of the role of events in entrepreneurship.