Luederitz Christopher, Westman Linda, Mercado Alexander, Kundurpi Aravind, Burch Sarah Lynn
Desautels Faculty of Management, McGill University, 1001 Sherbrooke St W, Montreal, Quebec, H3A 1G5 Canada.
Urban Institute, University of Sheffield, 219 Portobello, Sheffield, S1 4DP UK.
Urban Transform. 2023;5(1):3. doi: 10.1186/s42854-023-00048-w. Epub 2023 Feb 8.
Entrepreneurship has emerged as a key element for experimentation and niche innovation in sustainability transitions. Yet, its contributions beyond this initial stage and the multi-pronged role that entrepreneurs can play in transformation processes remain elusive. In response, we conceptualize and empirically illustrate how entrepreneurs can contribute to innovations within firms and to city-wide processes of change. With insights from small- and medium-sized enterprises in European and North American cities, we develop a framework encompassing eight intervention types through which entrepreneurs shape urban sustainability transformations. We propose avenues for future research to better understand the distributed role of entrepreneurship and how it can contribute to shaping and accelerating change toward sustainability across integrated levels of urban transformations.
创业已成为可持续发展转型中进行试验和利基创新的关键要素。然而，其在这一初始阶段之外的贡献以及企业家在转型过程中可以发挥的多方面作用仍不明确。对此，我们进行了概念化并通过实证说明了企业家如何能够为企业内部的创新以及全市范围的变革进程做出贡献。借助对欧洲和北美城市中小企业的洞察，我们开发了一个包含八种干预类型的框架，企业家通过这些类型来塑造城市可持续发展转型。我们提出了未来研究的方向，以更好地理解创业的分布式作用，以及它如何有助于在城市转型的综合层面塑造并加速向可持续发展的变革。
