EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Although the ®eld of entrepreneurship is recognized as being of fundamental importance for our economy, and although many researchers throughout the world have turned their attention to it, there is, as yet, no agreement as to the research object in this scienti®c ®eld. Empirical research has described the phenomenon from different standpoints. It has also shown that the phe-nomenon is much more complex and heterogeneous than was thought in the 1980s. However, to advance knowledge and produce tools that are useful in practice, it has become neces-sary to establish theories that will generate more productive empirical research. Some effort at de®nition is therefore needed. The de®nition proposed here takes a constructivist stance, and is at the service of a research projectÐ that of understanding or forecasting the entrepreneurial act and its success or failure, and de®ning more accurately the environmental conditions favourable to that act. Here, the scienti®c object studied in the ®eld of entrepreneurship is the dialogic between individual and new value creation, within an ongoing process and within an environment that has speci®c characteristics. This de®nition emphasizes the fact that we will not understand the phenomenon of entrepreneurship if we do not consider the individua