Support to Women Entrepreneurs – of Many Kinds and for Many Reasons

Abstract

“Entrepreneurship “ has a positive connotation. The concept of “entrepreneurship” is, however, hard to define, and consequently the  “ hunt for Entrepreneurs” takes place in a haze (Berglund, 2007).  There is no  consensus in research on what constitutes entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship. Examples of different points of view, include whether or not entrepreneurship is a process or if it is connected to an individual or maybe a collective rather than to one person (Steyart & Landström, 2011).   Often, in practice as well as in research, small firm owners and the self-employed are equated with entrepreneurship and consequently, small, new firms are supposed to be more innovative than big, old ones (Blackburn & Kovalainen, 2008). In practice, we know that far from all small firms and small firm owners are entrepreneurial in the established research-definitions of the concept, and that on the other hand, entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship can be found in all kinds of organizations (Hjorth, 2012; Kovalainen & Sundin,  2012). In this article the terms entrepreneurs and small-firm-owners/self-employed/owner-managers will be used  as synonyms, as that is how they are used in the empirical material.