Conceptualizing Knowledge Intensive Entrepreneurship: Concepts and Models.

This paper examines knowledge intensive entrepreneurship in various ways and represents a broad framework within which the AEGIS project will take place. Knowledgeintensiveentrepreneurship is considered a key socio-economic phenomenon that drives innovation, and economic growth, and is at the base of the competitiveness of countries. Afteran initial definition of knowledge intensive entrepreneurship and the main concepts, inSection 1 we will present the proposed conceptual framework that will guide our research.Then in Section 2 we will concentrate on what the literature has said about entrepreneurship:we will divide the brief survey into economics (section 2.1), industrial dynamics (section 2.2)and innovation management (section 2.3). We will then turn into what has already beenresearched about knowledge intensive entrepreneurship by examining KEINS, an EUexploratory project carried out in the last years (section 3). Following a presentation of themain results from KEINS, we will introduce the main points of AEGIS, centered on linkingfirms, knowledge and systems (section 4). Finally, in the last section, we will focus onanalyzing the phenomenon of KIE. This includes first an examination of the various empiricaldimensions of AEGIS in its attempts to develop indicators to explore, identify and measureknowledge intensive entrepreneurship. We then conclude with some final consideration