Research on entrepreneurship has flourished in recent years and is evolving rapidly. This article explores the history of entrepreneurship research, how the research domain has evolved, and its current status as an academic field. The need to concretize these issues stems partly from a general interest in defining the current research domain and partly from the more specific tasks confronting the prize committee of the Global Award for Entrepreneurship Research. Entrepreneurship has developed in many sub-fields within several disciplines-primarily economics, management/business administration, sociology, psychology, economic and cultural anthropology, business history, strategy, marketing, finance, and geography-representing a variety of research traditions, perspectives, and methods. We present an analytical framework that organizes our thinking about the domain of entrepreneurship research by specifying elements, levels of analysis, and the process/context. An overview is provided of where the field stands today and how it is positioned relative to the existing disciplines and new research fields upon which it draws. Areas needed for future progress are highlighted, particularly the need for a rigorous dynamic theory of entrepreneurship that relates entrepreneurial activity to economic growth and human welfare. Moreover, applied work based on more careful design as well as on theoretical models yielding more credible and robust estimates seems also highly warranted.

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Pilot and demonstration plants (PDPs) play important roles in technological development. They represent bridges between basic knowledge generation and technological breakthroughs on the one hand, and industrial application and commercial adoption on the other. The objectives of this article are to synthesise and categorise existing research on PDPs, as well as to suggest an agenda for future research. We review the PDP phenomena in three literature streams: engineering and natural science research, technology and innovation management, and innovation systems. The analysis highlights clear differences in e.g. conceptions of system boundaries and what the literature streams seeks to accomplish, but also similarities such as the key ideas of using PDPs for technology scale-up and uncertainty reduction.

Many studies in new product development (NPD) single out the use of information (especially market information) as a key predictor of NPD performance, but knowledge is lacking about what type of information is needed in each phase of the NDP process to enable high NPD performance. Based on a literature review and a pilot case study, this article increases the understanding of managing information in NPD. It is argued that the capability of managing information consists of three components: acquiring, sharing, and using information. By focusing on three different phases of the NPD process, 11 propositions regarding which information, information sources and means of cross-functional integration patterns that are most important to high NPD performance have been derived in each respective phase. In addition, the article also discusses antecedents and consequences of managing information. The article concludes with implications for managers, identifies limitations and proposes an agenda for further research into this area.

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