Strategic Entrepreneurship and SEJ: Development and Current Progress

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/sej.1255
• Author: Michael A. Hitt,Mike Wright
• Date: 01 September 2017
• Published date: 01 September 2017

Strategic Entrepreneurship and SEJ: Development

and Current Progress

Mike Wright

1,2

*and Michael A. Hitt

3,4

1

Imperial College Business School, Imperial College, London, UK

2

Department of Management, Technology and Economics, ETH, Zürich,

Switzerland

3

Mays School of Business, Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas

4

Neeley School of Business, Texas Christian University, Fort Worth, Texas

In this retrospective article, we outline the rationale for starting Strategic Entrepreneurship

Journal. We provide evidence on the percentage of published papers in SEJ in each of

10 key themes in strategic entrepreneurship identified when the journal was founded. Evi-

dence on progress toward goal achievement in terms of trends in submissions, desk reject

and acceptances rates, and downloads, plus examples of highly cited papers and entry into

key indicators such as the Financial Times list of 50 journals. We outline developments in

strategic entrepreneurship and their implications for future research, notably the need to

consider multiple levels of analysis and the role of context variety. Finally, we discuss

some of the lessons we learned from SEJ in terms of general challenges that arise in start-

ing a new journal. Copyright © 2017 Strategic Management Society.

Building on the ideas of Gary Hamel (2000) sug-

gesting that we are in a new age of uncertainty and

opportunity, a special issue on strategic entrepre-

neurship was published in Strategic Management

Journal (SMJ) in 2001. In this special issue, Hitt,

Ireland, Camp, and Sexton (2001) explored the

independent development, linkages, and comple-

mentarities of strategic management and entrepre-

neurship. They noted that both fields have the end

goal of creating wealth, by gaining and sustaining

competitive advantages in strategic management

and by exploiting opportunities in entrepreneurship.

Yet, they also noted that although the two fields

and streams of research are independent, their

boundaries overlap. For example, firms trying to

gain competitive advantages may do so by exploit-

ing opportunities. Additionally, when exploiting

opportunities, entrepreneurs seek to establish

competitive advantages to sustain their wealth crea-

tion (Hitt et al., 2001). Thus, this work suggests the

existence of a strategic entrepreneurship construct.

As such, strategic entrepreneurship is derived from

the integration of entrepreneurship and strategic

management. Strategic entrepreneurship occurs

when individuals or organizations simultaneously

act entrepreneurially (i.e., seek to identify and

exploit opportunities) and strategically (i.e., seek to

establish and maintain a competitive advantage).

So, this special issue highlighted the value and

importance of the strategic entrepreneurship con-

struct. In addition, other research in entrepreneur-

ship and strategic management questioned how

firms create value (e.g., Bruyat & Julien, 2001),

what the source of value in resources is, and then

how those resources contribute to achieving a com-

petitive advantage and firm value creation

(e.g., Priem & Butler, 2001). These works and

research thrusts in both entrepreneurship and strate-

gic management served as a catalyst for new

research to examine and understand how firms cre-

ate value that eventually spawned Strategic Entre-

preneurship Journal (SEJ).

Keywords: strategic entrepreneurship, entrepreneurship, oppor-

tunity, resource-based view, start-up

*Correspondence to: Mike Wright, Imperial College Business

School, Exhibition Road, London SW7 2AZ, UK. E-mail: mike.

wright@imperial.ac.uk

Copyright © 2017 Strategic Management Society

Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal

Strat. Entrepreneurship J., 11: 200–210 (2017)

Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com). DOI: 10.1002/sej.1255