Understanding the green entrepreneur

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the phenomenon of ‘environmental entrepreneurship’. It examines the key characteristics of entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial firms, and the link with sustainability and environmental responsibility. Ecopreneurship is a relatively new field of academic inquiry and study, and, although some work on the phenomena began in the 1970s, it was not until the 1990s that the topic began to receive much attention. Today there are still many areas in which more understanding of ecopreneurship and individual green entrepreneurs is needed. Current issues that require greater investigation include the development of an accurate and widely acceptable definition of the concept; profiling and identifying 'typical' characteristics of green entrepreneurs and the industries they occur in; identifying the factors that act as barriers and triggers to environmental entrepreneurship; the development of a body of research-based case studies and quantitative studies; and understanding policies which can be used to encourage a greater level of ecopreneurship. Difficulties in researching and understanding ecopreneurs include the problem of developing effective operational definitions of the concept, the choice between emphasizing qualitative or quantitative research approaches, and the fact that most studies only examine business ventures already in action, thus omitting both nascent green entrepreneurs and terminated ventures