History and Strategic Entrepreneurship

The Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal has released a special issue on historical approaches to entrepreneurship, which includes an article by myself and Andrew Godley as well as several excellent articles by world-leading business historians (Dan Wadhwani, Stephanie Decker, and Matthew Hollow, among others). Our article explores how historical experience matters to entrepreneurs, shaping their expectations about markets and opportunities, including possibilities for strategic alliances with larger firms. Rather than assuming that the events of the past structurally determine entrepreneurial expectations for the future, we demonstrate how experience, interpretation, and memory shape the nature of competition and collaboration in emerging industries. Our approach relies on the comparative method, suggesting a new way to consider how uses of the past might shape entrepreneurship in industries other than the U.S. and U.K. poultry industries that serve as our empirical focus.