International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Innovation Editors’ Series: Innovation opportunities and future direction in entrepreneurship research

We are delighted to present the latest issue of International Journal of Entrepreneurship & Innovation. As always, the papers represent a range of topics, and include work on innovation. We take the opportunity here to present a short editorial on the importance of the links between innovation and entrepreneurship and the rich opportunities for value-adding research on innovation in the entrepreneurship field. Innovation and entrepreneurship meet in a space of curiosity, characterised by proactiveness and risk-taking towards opportunities. Changes in the current business climate have created many such opportunities. As innovation and entrepreneurship researchers, we sit at the crossroad of contextualising what we know from the past to make sense of what is happening now, and gain an insight into the future. However, it is impossible to cover the vast array of innovation pathways and trends without realising that they may soon become obsolete before seeing the light of publication. This, however, does not (and should not) discourage us as entrepreneurship scholars from exploring promising innovation trends that demand attention, particularly in light of today’s global business context. Creativity and creation processes – An entrepreneur is habitually seen as the creator of innovations that can be radical or incremental. The field has advanced from the confined positioning of innovations as physical products or services, to encompass innovative concepts, such as crowdfunding whereby potential customers are simultaneously the funders and investors in a business. As innovation research on crowdfunding matures in the entrepreneurship domain, we continue to seek new knowledge in terms of the what, why, how, when and where of crowdfunding. This growing interest also applies to other innovation domains including, for example, different forms of automation such as artificial intelligence and machine learning powered by big data, and innovative ways of producing 3D printing. Our interest goes beyond the mechanical, operative and engineering aspects of those innovations, to consider their relevance to entrepreneurship research and how they can drive the field forward. Hypes and trends Hypes and trends continue to feed an attention-hungry market with innovations and novel communication approaches. Whilst hypes are short-lived, both hypes and trends offer plentiful room for emerging opportunities, alongside ideas for marketing and entrepreneurship to converge. We often tend to theorise what can be generalised and prevail over time, however, hypes and trends can offer a foundation for other innovations to emerge, rendering them important to explore in more depth. A better understanding of this symbiotic relationship between innovations, hypes and trends can offer multiple pathways for future research in entrepreneurship. The innovation space All innovations are placed or perceived within a spatial dimension, which can be as big as a space for populating Mars or as limited as a space for social distancing. It is not surprising that space remains a hot topic in the way it contextualises what is new, and how this newness is being positioned around us. We normally view space as a dimension that we continuously build up by bringing different things into alignment. We use our imagination to ‘create’ and materialise new things that do not yet exist in the ‘real’ world. This creation of new spaces in today’s world has often become merged with the creation of virtual spaces, evidenced through the emergence of the concept of the metaverse. We argue, therefore, the need for innovation and entrepreneurship research that challenges and rethinks how we position innovations within new social, physical and virtual spaces. Decentralised innovative organisations – The view of current research on how we network and communicate has substantially developed over the years. Whilst networking Editorial