A Conceptual Approach of the Entrepreneurial Orientation Within the Small Business Context

International audienceThere is an abundant literature about the individual entrepreneurship (entrepreneurs) and about corporate entrepreneurship within organizations, but little is written about a related concept like Entrepreneurial Orientation (EO) in small businesses, and also, about how to describe its usefulness for their strategic formulation.The paper attempts to identify main attributes of the EO concept, and its determinants within small business context. It clearly appears that EO consists of three components: Innovativeness, risk-taking, and proactiveness of strategic leaders in these firms. An innovative small business will not be an entrepreneurial if it does not take risks or is not sufficiently proactive towards competitors and environment. After describing the emergence of this concept, the paper shows the importance of the EO as a valid strategic orientation for small businesses when they rethink their strategic analyses with Opportunity-based and Resource-based views. Adopting such orientation seems to reflect a needed conciliation between other strategic orientations (market-, technology- and stakeholder orientations) and altogether a mixing of them. Finally, the paper concludes with proposing some implications for future research to deepen the study (conceptually and empirically) of the EO within small business context