This book draws together William B. Gartner's key contributions to entrepreneurship research over the past 25 years. An original introduction by the author offers a comprehensive overview and analysis of his work as it pertains to the development of entrepreneurship as a scholarly field, and the articles demonstrate the many ways in which his research has explored entrepreneurship in relation to individuals, firms, environments, and processes.

Introduction -- 1. A conceptual framework for describing the phenomenon of new venture creation -- 2. Did River City really need a boy's band -- 3. The Oz in organization -- 4. "Who is an entrepreneur?" is the wrong question -- 5. Properties of emerging organizations -- 6. A taxonomy of new business ventures -- 7. A profile of new venture success and failure in an emerging industry -- 8. What are we talking about when we talk about entrepreneurship? -- 9. Acting as if: differentiating entrepreneurial from organizational behavior -- 10. Words lead to deeds: towards an organizational emergence vocabulary -- 11. A longitudinal study of cognitive factors influencing start-up behaviors and success at venture creation -- 12. Exploring start-up event sequences -- 13. Predicting new venture survival : an analysis of "anatomy of start-up." Cases from INC. Magazine -- 14. The career reasons of nascent entrepreneurs -- 15. The language of opportunity -- 16. The effects of pre-venture plan timing and perceived environmental uncertainty on the persistence of emerging firms -- 17. A "critical mess" approach to entrepreneurship scholarship -- 18. Entrepreneurial narrative and a science of the imagination -- 19. Entrepreneurship as organizing -- 20. Opportunities as attributions : categorizing strategic issues from an atributional perspective -- 21. A new path to the waterfall : a narrative on a use of entrepreneurial narrative -- Conclusion: an 'entrefesto'