Environmental change, strategic entrepreneurial action, and success: Introduction to a special issue on an important, neglected topic

Abstract

Research Summary: The two premises that underpin this SEJ Special Issue on Environmental Change, Strategic Entrepreneurial Action, and Success are that all environmental changes provide positive potentials for some ventures, and that this has been under-emphasized in past theory and research. After stating these premises and illustrating how present research treats the environment, we proceed to explain how the five articles selected for the special issue advance our thinking in this domain. We then broaden our discussion to how future entrepreneurship research can make further progress by studying interaction among environmental changes as well as their links to entrepreneurial agents, contexts (sectoral, spatial, organizational, etc.) and the entrepreneurial artifact (emerging venture). Throughout, the focus is on the enabling rather than constraining role of environmental changes. Managerial Summary: The COVID-19 pandemic, the digital revolution, and the sustainability transition forced by climate change demonstrate significant business impact of environmental changes, including potentials for new business initiatives. This editorial and the five vanguard articles included in this SEJ Special Issue on Environmental Change, Strategic Entrepreneurial Action, and Success outline how future research can develop better theory and evidence on this important topic. The articles address matters ranging from how COVID-19 facilitated some technology firms' recruiting and reignited media firms' dormant initiatives to how environmental degradations sparked entrepreneurial ecosystem development in Kenya, how the level of environmental dynamism at a venture's birth impact its current ability to benefit from change, and the consequences of passing on potentials provided by environmental change.