Strategic Entrepreneurship: Identifying Domains in a Developmental Configuration Approach

Abstract

The majority of today’s organizations – no matter what size, age or industry – are faced with the challenge of continuous and dynamic change, particularly in the context of the current financial crisis. In times of growing uncertainty and increasing speed of change, both new threats and new opportunities emerge. This leads to the question: what are the key drivers for organizational success? A growing numbers of scholars have proposed the concept of “strategic entrepreneurship” to capture a firm’s effort to simultaneously exploit existing competitive advantages while exploring to determine what needs to be done in the future to remain successful.

The identification and exploitation of these opportunities is the essence of entrepreneurship – whereas the essence of strategic management is in how these opportunities can be transformed into sustainable competitive advantages. In the last years, more and more scholars have called for the integration of two fields of entrepreneurship and strategic management. The need for integration emerges as strategists, require resources in order to exploit opportunities (mostly under uncertain conditions) – and entrepreneurs require a strategic perspective in their planning and actions.

Keywords: configuration research, entrepreneurial strategy, planning, organizational success