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The first part of the conclusion summarizes the findings from the historical cases. These fall into four categories. The first is where a strong world society constituency is able to influence the policy of a leading state, or group of leading states, as in the case of the slave trade or social justice in 1919. In the second case, the same holds true, but it is actually the leading states that proactively encourage world society action, as with human rights at San Francisco. In the third case, as at The Hague, there was no specific state ‘norm entrepreneur’. Fourthly, there is the negative case where the state sponsor was not strong enough to have the norm accepted, as with Japan and racial equality in 1919. Theoretically, the argument points to a degree of normative assimilation between international and world society, and a corresponding degree of social integration. The relationship is one of complementariness rather than displacement. This develops English School discussions of the topic. However, there is a warning that past coalitions between world society groups and leading states — that seem to have stimulated humanitarian norms — could in the future promote less attractive norms.

Do entrepreneurs everywhere share the same goals? Are entrepreneurship processes similar and equally collaborative? Or does the environment dictate all these aspects for entrepreneurship? This book looks into the levels of entrepreneurship and how they differ from each other by presenting a comparative study of the behaviour of entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship in the UK and in Japan. The former is associated with liberal market economies (LMEs) while the latter is associated with coordinated market economies (CMEs). The book will focus on high-tech manufacturing in order to examine the systematic differences in innovation and the processes of entrepreneurship. The findings of two original surveys and twenty-five case interviews for both countries are presented in order to examine the careers of the entrepreneurs; opportunity and business creation; founders; attitudes towards growth and risk; research, development, and innovation; competitive strategies; growth limitations, leadership and HRM, and collaborations.

The nationalization of crime policy issues is a relatively new phenomenon in American history, but has foundations that extend back to the Civil War. This chapter develops a political history of crime's place on the national agenda that lays the groundwork for understanding the appeal of crime as a national political issue and the transformation of the interest group environment from local to national arenas. The chapter highlights the shifting jurisdictional terrain between state and national governments in the 19th and 20th centuries and the opportunities these shifts provided for expanding national attention to crime and violence. In particular, the chapter focuses on the historic use of the crime issue as a symbolic political lever that served to bolster narrow interest groups, policy entrepreneurs, racial hierarchies, and federal law enforcement bureaucracies, simplifying problem definitions and narrowing policy options in the process.

The Irish political class is rather small, encompassing very few positions outside the group of elected national parliamentarians. Because of the distinctive electoral system with preferential voting (PR-STV), MPs have to combine elements of 'entrepreneurs' and 'backbenchers'. While electoral survival and career advancement depends on the party, which demands strict loyalty, the individual MP must also build a personal home base in the local party organization and among the voters in the district. The cumulation of local and national elected offices is common: local offices provide both an entry point into a political career as well as help to sustain visibility even after a rise to higher levels. Because of their limited resources, party organizations cannot provide any safe fallback-positions or alternative career paths.

American politicians have about the greatest choice in terms of the electoral offices they want to pursue. However, only a minority of these numerous offices is professionalized. Moreover, while partisan coordination of political careers was true in the second half of the nineteenth century, it no longer is. Today American politicians largely are political entrepreneurs running their own political careers with the help of other professions that have developed around professional politics and of interest groups, which collect and donate most of the money needed for electoral campaigns. The most highly prized office is that of a member of Congress. Professional politicians in the United States, hence, are mostly professional legislators. It is here that long careers can be realized whereas executive terms tend to be rather short. Changes in the situation of politicians occur most frequently as an often- unintended result of institutional reform, which has been high on the agenda for quite some time.

The question asked in the last chapter concerns how to design a public policy in a non-deterministic, evolutionary, and highly complex world. That is, a world where the most desirable outcomes are unknown but there may be many possible acceptable outcomes, and where change is characterized by both path dependence and unpredictability. Based on the case studies previously presented, the conclusion is that policy interventions exaggerate the system characteristics in cluster policies at the expense of incentives on the level of individuals, potential entrepreneurs, and firms. Particularly in Europe, with its tradition of governmentally administrated and targeted policies, there is a risk of downplaying the role of individual initiatives in the creation of clusters.

The chapter compares emergence of minimills in Germany, Japan and the US, along with the recomposition of the Integrated Steel Mill sector. Steel production as an industrial activity in each of the societies, especially in the United States, is radically reconceived, but continues to be successful in each country. Again, in contrast to the claims of Varieties of Capitalism, the American steel industry proves adept at both gradual and radical innovation, as do the German and Japanese industries.

This chapter focuses on the economic culture of Jews with particular emphasis on myths and practices. While steering clear of essentialist assumptions about intrinsic ‘racial traits’, it asks whether there was, in fact, anything distinctive about the attitudes and activities of Jewish entrepreneurs. It examines ‘Shylock's shadow’, the scurrilous stereotypes that pictured Jews as greedy, materialistic, and acquisitive; the historical and sociological literature regarding Jewish economic behaviour; and the role of Jews in specific sectors of the American economy, notably in book publishing. It is argued that the Jewish experience in American business underlines the role of social marginality as an important source of innovation.

This chapter considers the pathways to becoming an artistic social entrepreneur. Previous research on social entrepreneurs has emphasized the impact of one's stock of human, social, and cultural capital on one's mobilization of requisite resources for launching and sustaining a social enterprise. Less sociological attention has been given to the influence of career-biographical factors, such as family, religion, education, and pivotal career turning points that may inspire and compel one to become a social entrepreneur and to envision and shape one's social enterprise, let alone an artistic social enterprise. The profiles of four artistic social entrepreneurs in this chapter illustrate how their strategic and risk orientations and career pathways shape the social enterprises they envision and influence their assumption and enactment of their roles as artist activists.

This chapter analyses the forces that prompted a relocation in the early 20th century of the US film industry from New York to Hollywood. First, even though there were many other conceivable locations, Southern California was a suitable location for film production in the winter months due to the climate and the scenic landscape. Second, an unfavorable institutional set-up — particularly for independent motion producers — fostered a growing accumulation of movie production facilities in Hollywood. That led to various experiments, entry and exit, and created a sufficient agglomeration of activity (‘critical mass’) for take-off. Third, a new business model was invented. Thomas Ince, who arrived in 1911 in Southern California, established a new studio and re-organized the production process.

This chapter considers the world's most iconic cluster: Silicon Valley. The emergence of Silicon Valley shares some features with the motion picture industry; both places experienced an inflow of entrepreneurs from other parts of the country and also saw a novel business model emerge. The environment that existed in the late 1950s, later known as Silicon Valley, was not unique; similar conditions existed in Boston and New York, for example. Both places were also influenced by policies — institutions in the motion picture case and governmental spending on defence in the Silicon Valley case. The partially random nature of the process is evidenced by the fact that William Shockley, one of the co-inventors of the transistor at Bell Labs in New Jersey and the founder of the first semiconductor firm, wanted to be near his mother.

The development of the biotech industry in Boston and the San Francisco Bay area, the two most prominent biotech clusters in the United States, are compared. Their analysis rests on three presumptions: high-tech clusters in particular require both the presence of networks and spatial density, inter-organizational networks serve the dual purposes of being locus of innovation and the underlying support structure that host the institutional and social context necessary for innovation, and, finally, the form and substance of innovation in successful clusters vary over time and with patterns of emergence. It is concluded that a process of convergence has been going on over the last twelve years. Consequently, even though path-dependence and variety in culture and norms determine the trajectory, clusters may still be quite comparable in terms of performance.

This chapter examines the spatial and temporal dimension of a variety of forms of entrepreneurship across cities in the United States in the human biotherapeutics. The first finding is that clusters grow predominantly through the investments of local entrepreneurs, local firms, and local venture capitalists. Second, for three of the regions with the largest clusters — San Diego, Boston, and San Francisco — the critical spur to growth appears to be a tendency of entrepreneurs to leave local, established firms to found additional firms. Moreover, only those regions, however, that exhibited this secondary, or second-generation growth grew to substantial sizes relative to other clusters. The attraction of entrepreneurs and firms to a region is a tertiary influence on growth, occurring late in the history of the industry and the clusters.

This chapter examines the forces that sparked the emergence of a leading European biotechnology cluster — Medicon Valley. This cluster displays one characteristic feature which separates it from most other biotechnology clusters: its geographical location stretches over two countries: parts of Sweden and Denmark. The emergence of the Medicon Valley biotechnology cluster seems to have followed a somewhat different path than the biotech clusters in the United States. Whereas entrepreneurs orchestrated the emergence of clusters in the United States, universities played a crucial role in the Medicon Valley case and entrepreneurs entered — and reinforced — the process in a later stage. The more dynamic and fast growing biotechnology sector in Denmark is argued to be partly policy driven, partly associated with cultural differences.