Gender, ethnicity and social entrepreneurship: Qualitative Approaches to the Study of Entrepreneuring,

The discourse, the words we use to define enterpreneurship sets the boundaries of how we think about and study it. Whilst it can be argued that economic theory has still not furnished a thoroughgoing definition of entrepreneurial activity (Bull and Willard, 1993), one may nevertheless note that what we know about entrepreneurship derives mainly from the early and classic studies of the twentieth century. This involves, Schumpeterian theories, the theories on ‘enterprise creation’ of Collins and Moore, and Knight’s theory of risk. According to these authors, the distinctive feature of entrepreneurial activity is a capacity for innovation. This, however, is regarded as being essentially a quality intrinsic to persons, rather than simultaneously a set of practices, so that some theoreticians have been explicit in espousing a Darwinian and heroic model of entrepreneurship.