Changes in the external environment—whether technological breakthroughs, natural environmental disasters, regulatory reforms, economic shifts, sociocultural movements, or demographic transitions—provide the essential enablement of entrepreneurial endeavors and outcomes. Despite extensive existing research on this topic, the predominant focus on a single type of change has hindered the attainment of broadly generalizable insights or advancements in theoretical and practical knowledge. This dissertation aims to foster a unified understanding of how environmental changes enable the creation of new ventures. To this end, it draws attention to the characteristics of changes and enablement shared across different nominal types of change.

The notion of external enablers and the external enablement framework provide conceptual foundations for the four research articles included in this dissertation. The first article, a systematic literature review, demonstrates the potential for studying the characteristics of environmental changes and external enablement as a means of accumulating vastly broadened knowledge. The three remaining empirical articles delve into entrepreneurial responses to environmental changes. Experimental data evidence that variance in the characteristics of environmental changes and external enablement causes systematic differences in perceptions of entrepreneurial potential and intentions to create specific types of new ventures, i.e., family vs. non-family. This dissertation offers novel theoretical insights into the enabling impact of environmental changes on entrepreneurship. It also showcases different pathways for advancing generalizable knowledge that can be strategically applied.

Omvärldsförändringar—oavsett om det rör sig om tekniska genombrott, naturkatastrofer, lagstiftningsreformer, ekonomiska förändringar, sociokulturella rörelser eller demografiska förändringar—utgör viktiga förutsättningar för entreprenöriella strävanden och resultat. Trots omfattande befintlig forskning om detta ämne har det dominerande fokuset på en enda typ av förändring hindrat uppnåendet av brett generaliserbara insikter och framsteg i teoretisk och praktisk kunskap. Denna avhandling syftar till att skapa en enhetlig förståelse för hur omvärldsförändringar möjliggör skapandet av nya företag. I detta syfte uppmärksammas egenskaper hos förändringar och möjliggörande som är desamma för olika nominella typer av förändringar.

Begreppet “external enablers” och dess tillhörande ramverk utgör den konceptuella grunden för de fyra forskningsartiklar som ingår i denna avhandling. Den första artikeln, en systematisk litteraturgenomgång, visar på potentialen i att studera omvärldsförändringar och “möjliggörande” för att bygga kunskap med väsentligt bredare relevans. De tre återstående empiriska artiklarna fördjupar sig i entreprenörers reaktioner på omvärldsförändringar. Experimentella data visar att varians i egenskaperna hos omvärldsförändringar och deras möjliggörande orsakar systematiska skillnader i uppfattningar om entreprenöriell potential och avsikter att skapa specifika typer av nya företag (Familjedrivna kontra icke-familjedrivna). Denna avhandling erbjuder nya teoretiska insikter om hur omvärldsförändringar påverkar entreprenörskap. Den visar också på olika vägar för att utveckla generaliserbar kunskap som kan tillämpas strategiskt.

The enabling influence of environmental changes—be they technological, regulatory, demographic, sociocultural, or otherwise—on emerging ventures receives a growing interest from researchers and practitioners. To support knowledge accumulation in this important area, we systematically review and integrate research that is dispersed across disciplines, nominal types of change, and theoretical approaches. Under a unified terminology within a cross-level (environment to agent), process-aware framework, we examine what has been done and learnt. On this basis, we develop an agenda for further, future accumulation of knowledge about the strategic and serendipitous influence of environmental changes throughout and beyond the venture creation process.

This paper offers an integrative review of currently scattered research on how agent-independent changes to the technological, regulatory, demographic, socio-cultural and natural environments enable new venture creation. We believe it important and timely to highlight this literature’s approach to incorporating the role of external factors in order to balance out and leverage the otherwise dominant agent-focus in entrepreneurship research. We generate order by integrating dispersed literatures under a unified terminology and develop an improved platform for future research that can advance research on the how environmental changes are used in venture-level strategic action throughout the venture creation process."

The purpose of this study is to estimate country-level social network properties by reproducing plausible social network structures of each country. For this purpose, we suggest and utilize a novel simulation procedure using Agent-Based Modeling and Simulation (ABMS) method and the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) data. Specifically, we estimate two types of country-level social network properties that can be related to entrepreneurial activities, i.e. social network density and supportive surroundings in each country. For the estimation, we use a social network-related question in the GEM questionnaire – “Do you know someone personally who started a business in the past 2 years?” As a result, this study provides estimated values of the social network properties for 69 countries. In doing so, this study suggests a simulation procedure for estimating the country-level social network properties, provides estimated values of the properties that can be utilized in future studies, and proposes potential roles of the country-level social network structure as a contextual factor that can affect individuals’ entrepreneurial activities.