Technopreneurship (entreprenology) as the Holy Grail of SMEs growth: a historical analysis

Abstract

Technopreneurship / entreprenology is a relatively new term and is receiving increasing recognition from the scholars of various streams of business and science and technology disciplines, as well as from the industry players and business men practically. Technopreneurship is, indeed, becoming vital in the current globalization and liberalization economy, as it provides greater opportunities and enables effective optimization of resources to attain high profit margins. This article presents a summary of research on entrepreneurs and discusses the trends in the development of entrepreneurship to present day technopreneurship. It begins by introducing the pioneers of the domain, Cantillon, Say and Schumpeter. The contribution of economists such as Knight, Hayek, Penrose, Kirzner and Casson are mentioned. A second section presents the contributions of the behavioral scientists and the characteristics most commonly ascribed to entrepreneurs. From the 1980s onwards, the field of entrepreneurship detonated and was absorbed into almost every soft science discipline. Two separate trends - one applied, the other theory-based - began to emerge. Thus, the article necessitates that the field is in the process of dividing into two separate entities: entrepreneurship, the applied aspect, and technopreneurship, the theoretical aspect. Keywords: technopreneurship, entreprenology, enterpreneurship, SMEs. JEL Classification: L26