1 RESEARCH ON INSTITUTIONAL VENTURE CAPITAL: THE PAST, THE PRESENT, THE FUTURE

We need growth-oriented entrepreneurial ventures in the economy – they create innovations and industrial development, new jobs, income and wealth in society. However, one of the main problems facing these growth-oriented entrepreneurial ventures is to raise capital, but also to gain access to competence and networks for the growth of the business. It is in this domain of growth that we need an efficient venture capital market that can provide adequate capital and management skills. In this respect, it has often been argued that the scope and sophistication of the US venture capital industry is one reason for the exceptional ability of the US economy to turn innovations into business and high growth ventures such as Intel, Cisco, Microsoft, Amazon.com and Yahoo! What do we know about institutional venture capital? What don’t we know? and What can we learn from existing knowledge (or lack of knowledge)? Research on venture capital began to emerge in the 1980s. Thus, systematic venture capital research is less than 25 years old, or little more than half an academic career, but during these years our knowledge has grown exponentially – we know a great deal more today about venture capital than we did 10-1