Entrepreneurship research: A bibliometric study of the ENANPADs 1997-2008

We have witnessed a fast growth in academic interest on entrepreneurship over the past two to three decades, although at disparate paces in different countries. A wealth of papers presented and published, books, dedicated journals, websites, professional and research groups have emerged accompanying this increased interest. It is thus important to understand what are these scholars studying. In this paper we examine the state of the art in entrepreneurship research in Brazil, by scrutinizing the entire track record of the papers presented at the EnANPAD over a twelve years period: 1997 -to 2008. The results of the bibliometric analysis revealed that entrepreneurship research maintains a broad spectrum of interests, focusing both on contextual, individual and process issues. Less visible is a unified theoretical background or the use of established theories foundational to other management disciplines. It is notable the increase in Brazilian entrepreneurship research, both empiric, theoretical and casestudy based. We conclude with an umbrella discussion and suggestions for future research.


Introduction
Entrepreneurship has been taking increased attention from both policy makers and academia.We have witnessed a fast growth in academic interest on entrepreneurship over the past two to three decades, although at disparate paces in different countries (KATZ, 2003).A wealth of papers presented and published, an increasing number of books, dedicated journals, websites, professional and research groups and associations have emerged to accompany and support this growth in interest and research.It is thus important to understand what are these scholars doing and what are they studying (BUSENITZ et al., 2003;LOW;MACMILLAN, 1988;UCBARASAN;WESTHEAD;WRIGHT, 2001).
Albeit entrepreneurship research has been taking on attention from several disciplines such as management, economics, sociology, international business and economic geography there is not a specific theory, or a unified paradigm, that we may easily use to set the boundaries of entrepreneurship as a single standing discipline.Argued that recent developments are building a core domain for entrepreneurship.Indeed, we may nonetheless identify a set of issues, or themes, that are arguably more popular in entrepreneurship research, such as psychological traits (LOUW et al., 2003;MCGRATH;MACMILLAN;SCHEINBERT, 1992;REYNOLDS et al., 2001), intrafirm and corporate entrepreneurship (KURATKO et al., 2005;ZAHRA;KURATKO;JENNINGS, 1999), entrepreneurship education (GORMAN; HANLOW; KING, 1997;PETERMAN;KENNEDY, 2003), innovation (DRUCKER, 1985;NOTEBOOM, 2008), economic and regional development (FRITSCH, 2008) and internationalization (OVIATT; MCDOUGALL, 1997).
In this paper we examine the papers presented at the EnANPAD, in the period from 1997 to 2008, to understand the kind of intellectual communities and the themes, objects, theories and methods most commonly used in entrepreneurship research in the Brazilian academia.We take on the purpose of accounting, or describing, for de diversity in existing research.Or, in other words, of describing the focus and research questions that are put forward in the field of entrepreneurship.The motivation is to overcome some scholars' fears that entrepreneurship research is too fragmented and incapable of building a whole that permits a true advancement of research (SHANE; VENKATARAMAN, 2000).
The paper is organized as follows.First we present a review of the literature on entrepreneurship broadly revealing the main streams and objects of research.In the second section we explain the method used for our bibliometric study of current research on entrepreneurship.The multidisciplinary approaches that have been taken in the extant research to the study of entrepreneurship warrant that we summarize some of the main themes and approaches.We proceed with the analysis and results of the data.We conclude with a broad discussion, clarifying some limitations and avenues for additional research.

Literature review
The extant research on entrepreneurship comprises different objects and theories but may be tentatively classified in two groups, one focusing on the individuals and other on the structure (THORNTON, 1999).Ucbasaran, Westhead and Wright (2001) classified the extant research in two groups, contextual and process issues.The stream on individuals deals with the entrepreneur, his psychological traits and his immediate surroundings, such as the social groups or networks he is embedded in.Some of the core works on this stream include McClelland (1961) 'The achieving society' where he notes the cultural practices, and De Vries' (1977) arguments on the impact of the upbringing for shaping the entrepreneurs' personality.Other studies focus on specific characteristics, such as risk taking, uncertainty avoidance, overconfidence, need for achievement, locus of control and several other individual traits (see, for instance, BEGLEY; BOYD, 1987;DELMAR;DAVIDSSON, 2000).
The second group identifiable in the extant research, deals with the understanding of how social and cultural structures encourages entrepreneurship, namely by providing information on market opportunities.This stream does not seek to understand who is entrepreneur but rather how social, cultural and institutional aspects induce entrepreneurship (REYNOLDS, 1991).In this stream, some scholars delve into specific issues, such as how the entrepreneur's social network eases access to needed resources (AUDIA; RIDER, 2006;LI;FERREIRA, 2006).
Currently there are many other approaches to the study of entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial action emerging.For instance, it has been notable the interest on understanding the role and impact of entrepreneurial education (HINDLE, 2006), gender, ethnicity and minority groups (CHAGANTI; GREENE, 2002;WALDINGER;ALDRICH;WARD, 1990), and the role of social networks on fostering successful entrepreneurs (BIRLEY, 1985;MUELLER, 2006) and we observe some attempts on using mainstream theories such as the resource-based view to examine entrepreneurship (CHANDLER; HANKS, 1994;HART;GREENE;BRUSH, 1997).Other themes that have been gradually receiving increased attention include the social entrepreneurship, and the trend towards examining heterogeneity in contrast to the more traditional search for universal traits and contexts that may raise the propensity to become entrepreneur and for successful entrepreneurial endeavors (BLANCHFLOWER; OSWALD, 1998;MCCLELLAND, 1987).In fact, it seems important to examine the individuals, in their context-specific environment and situation.That is, researchers look at individual heterogeneity studying individual's knowledge, preferences, abilities, behaviors, family background, education, etc., rather than seek to identify personality traits and broad contextual factors (GARTNER;BIRD;STARR, 1992;THORNTON, 1999;DAVIDSSON, 2003) that may be universally generalizable.
Although it would not be feasible to review extensively the many lenses and objects that fall under the broad umbrella of entrepreneurship research, in this section we focus only a few of the main, or core, themes, in a rather parsimonious manner.It is well accepted in academia that entrepreneurship research is a flourishing domain of study as proved by an increasing wealth of papers published in the mainstream management/business journals.

What is entrepreneurship?
Despite a long tradition in entrepreneurship research there is no clear cut definition of what is entrepreneurship.Arguably more traditional, or earlier, definitions expressed the risks of buying and selling, or the putting together the factors of production as the function of the entrepreneur.Morris (1998), for instance, in a review of journal articles, found 77 different definitions of entrepreneurship.Nonetheless, despite the absence of a definition, we may identify a set of common elements to prior research.Peter Drucker (1985) defined entrepreneurship as an act of innovation involving using the existing resources in novel ways.Bygrave and Hofer (1991) focused on the entrepreneurial process as that entailing the entire chain from the identification of opportunities for entrepreneurial action to the actual founding of a start-up firm.Stevenson (1985) referred to the process of exploiting emerging opportunities regardless of the resources that the entrepreneur controls, and Gartner (1988) simplified it to the creation of a new firm.Other definitions comprise how new opportunities are discovered, created and exploited and by whom (VENKATARAMAN, 1997).
An often found connection is that linking entrepreneurship to innovation.Innovation, in a broad sense, may include a process innovation, a market innovation, a product innovation, a factor innovation, and even an organizational innovation.Schumpeter's (1934) work, particularly his 1934 book, on the Theory of economic development, described the entrepreneur as the founder of a new firm and as the innovator.The idea that entrepreneurship and innovation are engines of economic growth remained to today (REYNOLDS et al., 2001) even though we accept that entrepreneurial action may not be based on at least a radical, or path breaking, innovation.

Characteristics of entrepreneurs
A considerable wealth of effort has been put on understanding the psychological and sociological aspects of entrepreneurship and the specific traits, or characteristics, of the entrepreneurs (LOUW et al., 2003).These studies are set to identify a set of common traits among entrepreneurs.For instance, the need for achievement (BEGLEY;BOYD, 1987;MCCLELLAND, 1961), autonomy, trend towards creativity, propensity to take risks (BROCKAUS, 1982), self confidence (LONGENECKER; SCAZZERO; STANSFIELD, 1994), locus of control (BROCKAUS, 1982) and self-efficacy (DE NOBLE;JUNG;EHRLICH, 1999).Moreover, the entrepreneur needs to be persistent and able to deal with the anxieties surfacing during the start-up (DE NOBLE;JUNG;EHRLICH, 1999).
Traditionally, the extant research has often referred to entrepreneurship as the product of the surrounding environments or of personal attributes.Individuals are heterogeneously endowed with skills, knowledge, attitudes, values and preferences that drive their motives and behavior (MCFADDEN, 2001).In the same manner, also the environments hold different pools of knowledge, individuals, culture and institutions.
In sum, researchers seek to better understand the individual traits, the set of attitudes and behaviors driving entrepreneurial behaviors.For instance, the attitude towards the continuous search for business opportunities and behaviors that express the individuals' characteristics regarding the recognition of opportunities, idea generation, effort to pool together the resources required (COVIN; SLEVIN, 1989;LI;FERREIRA, 2006).And how these characteristics are molded in the surrounding milieu.

Behavioral aspects
The behavioral approaches to the study of entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship have gained momentum (GARTNER; BIRD; STARR, 1992).Research on entrepreneurial behaviors deal with what entrepreneurs do, how they do it and why (GARTNER, 1988).To describe and identify entrepreneurs, extant research has focused on entrepreneurs' experiences, personality and background, although many of the usually referred traits are not consensual (GARTNER, 1990;LOW;MCMILLAN, 1988).Others scholars focused on the decision making processes (BARON, 1998), how entrepreneurs think and their heuristics (BARON, 1998), the level of uncertainty faced in decision making (BUSENITZ; BARNEY, 1997), namely regarding specific market information on the probable success of new product offerings.
The behavioral approaches aim at overcoming general prescriptions of the entrepreneurial traits and attitudes that seek these broad generalizations downplaying the importance of the individual.Nevertheless, many scholars still posit that some behaviors are common to successful entrepreneurs (MCCLELLAND, 1987).Within the behavioral approaches several specific traits and characteristics have been explored, such as the how the behaviors of novice, serial, and portfolio entrepreneurs differ (ALSOS; KOLVEREID, 1999), signaling legitimacy and survival, the planning of the startup, namely concerning the gathering and analyzing information, identifying risks and defining a business-level strategy (DELMAR; SHANE, 2003), speed in exploring the opportunities, among others.

Social context and social networks
How entrepreneurs discover and select market opportunities and the importance of their social ties to other external agents has deserved its own line of research (ALDRICH;ZIMMER, 1986;REYNOLDS, 1991;SHANE;VENKATARAMAN, 2000).For instance, the studies by Birley (1985) and Low and MacMillan (1988) pioneered in advancing how networks are important for entrepreneurship, especially in discussing how the network may be important in obtaining advice and feedback on a new business plan and on the types of ties for several types of resources (e.g., FLOYD; WOOLDRIDGE, 1999).Aldrich and Zimmer (1986) delved into how the networks help in providing new information on diverse issues that may underlie the identification of new business opportunities.They specifically distinguished the role of strong and weak ties networks.Perhaps most important, the social networks may be a primary referral for legitimacy -essential for new ventures that lack a track record of past successes (STINCHCOMBE, 1965).New ventures formed by a team, instead of a single owner, will thus likely have a wider social and business network on which to draw upon (COOPER; GIMENO-GASCON; WOO, 1994) and a diversified pool of competences (SLEVIN; COVIN, 1992).
The entrepreneurs' networks comprise multiple types of agents -such as with government agencies, clients, suppliers, a previous employer, friends and family, business associates, and others -that facilitate accessing resources, gaining legitimacy and finding new business opportunities (ALDRICH; ZIMMER, 1986; VAN DE VEN, 1993).And, because the entrepreneurs' networks are localized in a specific region, the founding of new firms will occur in proximity to the entrepreneurs' home or prior employer (STAM, 2007).

Entrepreneurship research and education
A large body of research delves into the teachability of entrepreneurship in contrast to the traditional view that entrepreneurs are born, not made.As Peter Drucker (1985) put it, entrepreneurship has nothing to do with genes, it is a discipline and as such it may be learned (see GORMAN;HANLON;KING, 1997).Ronstadt (1987) argued that more important is to understand what to teach and how.
In fact, we may identify a set of issues in the curricula of entrepreneurship courses and that are part of entrepreneurship research.Some of the issues that found their way to entrepreneurship curricula include the economic and social contribution of entrepreneurial firms and innovation (UPTON; TEAL; FELAN, 2001).The financing of new firms, including angel investors and venture capital (DIMOV; SHEPHERD, 2005).Also, the importance of corporate entrepreneurship, and intrapreneurship, and its focus on the internal efforts and dynamics of employees in existing firms (KURATKO et al., 2005;ZAHRA;KURATKO;JENNINGS, 1999).
The entrepreneurship by women and minority groups has also germinated (CHAGANTI; GREENE, 2002).So, as the ethical concerns, namely in the wake of the recent corporate scandals (KURATKO; GOLDSBY, 2004).

How entrepreneurs establish their firms
The manner in which entrepreneurs start their firms is a recurring facet in research.There are several forms that may be chosen, perhaps the most often are: spin-offs, corporate entrepreneurship, acquisition of an existing firm, acquiring a franchise and inheriting a family firm.
Entrepreneurial firms are often the outcome of employees exiting their employer to start their businesses.The entrepreneurs that spin-off from a prior employer (AUDIA; RIDER, 2006) tend to establish their new firms in the same or a similar industry of their professional experience (STAM, 2007).And, if in some instances the new firm is set to exploit an opportunity in the market, in other instances the employee exits disgruntled with the employer (KLEPPER, 2007).The spin-offs from established firms may help explain the spatial clustering in some industries (GARNSEY; HEFFERNAN, 2005;KLEPPER, 2007).
Corporate entrepreneurship consists of creating a new business, a product or process innovation, market expansion (ZAHRA; KURATKO;JENNINGS, 1999) or the redesign of the business model.Large corporations are more rigid to changes even in the face of opportunities (GREENE; BRUSH; HART, 1999).
The acquisition of an existing firm occurs when the employee, often a manager, acquires the firm in which he works or some other firm.An acquisition may be accompanied by a turnaround in firm's operations (MALONE, 1989).The motives for management buy-ins or buy-outs may be found in an employee being frustrated with the firm not exploring emerging opportunities, technologies, rejecting investment possibilities, and generally carrying out projects that the previous owners rejected (ROBBIE; WRIGHT; ALBRIGHTON, 1999).In other instances, it is just the will to control their own destiny (BARUCH; GEBBIE, 1998) and life path.Some individuals may prefer to set their new firm franchising an existing concept or business model.Franchising is a manner to minimize uncertainty and risk (SPINELLI JUNIOR; BIRLEY; LELEUX, 2003).The issues involving franchising, namely the governance form, the contract, the influence of the franchisor over the local franchisee, the characteristics of the entrepreneur that prefers a franchise, how they search and identify the best franchises and even the evaluation of the commercial value, are just some topics that still warrant additional research.
Some entrepreneurs inherit a business.These are family businesses.There is a wealth of research on family businesses and how these differ from other firms, especially due to the influence of the family in running the business, succession in the family, professionalization of management (ROBBIE; WRIGHT; ALBRIGHTON, 1999), and so forth (CHUA; CHRISMAN;SHARMA, 1999;DAVIS;HARVESTON, 1998).In its core, inheriting a family business is arguably an entrepreneurial action.

The entrepreneurial process
A stream of research has been devoted to understanding the different stages of the entrepreneurial process.The entrepreneurial process comprises several activities, from the discovery of the problem, finding a solution, putting together the resources needed, molding the organization, manufacturing, marketing the product and selling (BYGRAVE; HOFER, 1991; SLOTTE-KOCK; COVIELLO, 2010).
The recognition of an opportunity and the searching for relevant information is the initial stage in the entrepreneurial process (SHANE; VENKATARAMAN, 2000).Some research has thus sought to understand how opportunities are searched, identified and evaluated (VENKATARAMAN, 1997) and how they are exploited (SHANE; VENKATARAMAN, 2000).
A crucial ingredient to successful entrepreneurial firms is the resources the entrepreneur brings in.Some studies delve into the social networks and the human capital of entrepreneurs as a predictor of success (GIMENO et al., 1997;LI;FERREIRA, 2006).The entrepreneur himself is a key resource (BATES, 1998).In fact, new firms with more and more varied resources seem to grow faster (CHANDLER; HANKS, 1994).

Bibliometric study of EnANPAD
It is patent in our brief albeit broad review that entrepreneurship research has evolved in multiple directions.We now examine what is the current state of the art of entrepreneurship research in the Brazilian academia.For this endeavor we carry out a bibliometric study of the papers presented at the EnANPAD in the period 1997 to 2008.

Method
Bibliometric studies use extant published research to assess tendencies, observe focus, and eventually define patterns, thus helping explore, organize and make some sense of the work that has been done in a certain discipline (DAIM et al., 2006;DIODATO, 1994).It is thus possible to observe shifts in the content of the discipline, theories adopted, co-authorship patterns and may reveal directions for future research.It is worth noting that a bibliometric study may resort to different sources, such as published papers in refereed journals, dissertations and theses, books, papers presented at conferences, and so forth.Hence, by looking only at EnANPAD we do not have the aim at exhaustiveness, albeit this conference is representative of the research being carried out by Brazilian scholars.
Several authors have conducted bibliometric studies to understand the state of the art in different disciplines and sub-disciplines.In some instances, these studies evolve to examine journals and the content of the papers published over a period of time (FERREIRA et al., 2009), in others to uncover emerging or under-explored areas of study (MERINO; CARMO; ÁLVAREZ, 2006), the types of papers published and hazards in publishing in a specific journal (PHELAN; FERREIRA; SALVADOR, 2002), the main authors in a discipline or using a theory (WILLETT, 2007), the relative "quality" (or importance) of the journals (BAUMGARTNER; PIETERS, 2003) and the recent developments (WERNER, 2002).

Sample
The data collection procedure involved only the papers presented at the EnANPAD -Encontro da Associação Nacional de Pos-graduação e Pesquisa em Administração -, the major Brazilian meetings that includes a variety of business disciplines, from strategy to organization behavior, finance, logistics, human resources, technology and entrepreneurship, among others.We further restricted our survey to the period from 1997 to 2008, a twelve years period.An exhaustive search of the papers presented at the meetings (available in the website) permitted us to identify 156 papers that were entrepreneurship related, for further examination.Table 1 depicts its distribution over the time period.It is interesting to note that the majority of the papers are either empirical or case studies.

Results
Of the 156 articles identified, 26 are theoretical, 84 empirical and 46 were case studies (see Table 1).In 2008, for example, of the 21 articles identified, 10 were empirical, 8 case studies and only 3 were theoretical.Also interesting to note is that research in entrepreneurship seems to be largely, perhaps increasingly, collaborative -the average number of authors is consistently around two and in an upward trend, since in 2008 is was close to an average of 3 authors per paper (2,85).It is interesting to note Phelan, Ferreira and Salvador's (2002) conclusions that the papers published in the Strategic Management Journal have been increasing in length, are more often empirical and employed larger samples, used more references  and were co-authored by more authors.The same broad trends are visible in our analysis.
Each paper was classified as to its type.For instance, an empirical paper was one that dealt with statistics, either using data from primary or secondary sources.In any instance, these papers were quantitative in nature.Some examples of empirical studies are shown in Table 2, below, where we may also observe that the samples used vary substantially.In fact, some of the studies report firms, other incubators, other entrepreneurs (GIMENEZ; EDMUNDO JÚNIOR, 2002), owners (GUMERSINDO JÚNIOR;SOUZA, 2006), students (BOHNENBERGER;SCHMIDT;FREITAS, 2007) or managers (e.g., CHAGAS;FREITAS, 2001).It is also worth noting that some papers employ large scale samples, permitting broad and more generalizable results and conclusions.This is the case with Bohnenberger, Schmidt and Freitas's (2007) paper that included a sample of 1.122 students, Guimarães and Liliane (2002) analysis of 319 courses and Lima, Santos and Dantas ( 2006) 400 surveys to schools.
The paper was considered a case study if it delved into one or a limited number of cases.These could be cases of firms, new ventures or notable individual entrepreneurs whose biography warranted focus.For instance, Tondolo, Bitencourt and Tondolo (2008) examined the firm 'Vinícola Miolo ', Rosas, Froehner and Sbragia (2007) studied intellectual property protection in the case of 'empresa Alfa ' and Tschá, Tabosa and Cabral (2007) used 'O Imaginário Pernambucano' to show collective entrepreneurship.Chieh and Andreassi's (2007) intra-entrepreneurship study used 'Unibanco', while on the same subject of corporate intrapreneurship Garcez and Sbragia (2006)

Kátia Ayres 2003
Incidência de stress e características de empreendedorismo: contribuições e ameaças ao desempenho dos empreendedores de empresas incubadas Level of performance of the entrepreneur and the stress levels.

entrepreneurs incubated -EBTs
Incubators, stress of the entrepreneurs, characteristics of entrepreneurs.

Rosane Cruz 2004
Os valores motivacionais dos empreendedores de pequenas empresas de software do RS Whether the entrepreneur has a significant influence on the performance of the new firm and the direction taken for the firms.

firms
Values and motivations of the entrepreneur, who is the entrepreneur.

Ivan Dutra 2004
Ambiente empreendedor e a mortalidade empresarial: estudo do perfil do empreendedor da micro e pequena empresa no norte do Paraná Factors that influence the mortality rates of micro and small enterprises and the profile of the entrepreneur.

interviews
Economic impact of entrepreneurship, mortality.is further a rather varied focus on the objects studied which is revealing of a broad spectrum of interests, that ranges from the entrepreneurial attitude, to the cultural characteristics of entrepreneurs, the entrepreneurial profile, leadership, creativity, decision making, incubators, and the curricula of the courses, among many others.In this respect it seems that the Brazilian scholars are moving in the same path as other international scholars.
The Brazilian research seems often rather exploratory, which is justified by the still arguably embryonic stage of development.After all, it is worth noting that the Entrepreneurship division at the ANPAD was created only in 2003.Nevertheless, it is obvious the sharp increase in entrepreneurship research in the period reported -1997 to 2008.For example, in 1997, the first year we considered, only one paper was presented at the conference, while in the last four years, from 2005 to 2008, 101 articles were presented.
A careful review of the content of the 156 paper included in our sample confirmed existing works (BUSENITZ et al., 2003;SHANE;VENKATARAMAN, 2000) that entrepreneurship research is inclusive to many disciplines and concepts.Perhaps less promising is that we failed to see clear lines of research as development of new theory goes, or even the application of existing theories of other management disciplines.It is our contention that entrepreneurship research has much to gain from using and leveraging some of the extant theories and conceptual views in its studies.For instance, from strategic management it may draw on the resource-based view of the firm and on transaction costs.The social networks ideas drawn from both sociology and strategy may be further developed beyond a casuistic examination of resource dependence arguments -namely noting how the pool of ties and the types of ties are a vehicle for legitimacy and reputational, financial and physical resources.From finance a set of concepts may be absorbed as well as from human resource management.After all a new venture requires financing and personnel.Limiting the discussion to leadership traits and other individual characteristics of the entrepreneurs leaves unattended the need to build a team that is crucial for success.The fact is that entrepreneurship, as a discipline may actually and with legitimacy capture additional lenses and robustness from other business-related disciplines.In this manner, it may be able to overcome the usual criticisms that entrepreneurship is still in a theory building phase (WISEMAN; SKILTON, 1999) or that it is a fragmented jigsaw of different areas (HARRISON;LEITCH, 1996).
This study is useful for understanding how the Brazilian academia has been evolving and in doing that it opens up directions for future research.For instance, while it became clear that there is a strong resorted to the case of the petrochemical 'Braskem' and Sequeira (2005) the 'ONG Refazer'.The use of venture capital to finance new risky businesses was dealt with the case study of FK Biotecnologia by Scherer (2006).Benedetti, Rebello and Reyes (2005) used six cases of bakeries to look into the importance of innovation efforts.The presentation of teaching case studies was under-represented with a simple paper by Guimarães and Cardoza (2004) who revealed the case 'Cosméticos contém 1g'.Finally, it is worth pointing that notable entrepreneurs warranted some, albeit minor, attention.Joaquim Fontes Filho (2003) presented the case of 'Barão de Mauá'.

Discussion
The analysis of the papers presented over the past twelve years at the EnANPAD allows us to gauge the evolution of entrepreneurship studies in the Brazilian academy.Clearly, there is a prevalence of empirical articles, with a relative growth of case studies in relation to purely theoretical, or conceptual articles, over the last twelve years.It is also notable that entrepreneurship research is increasing done in co-authorship, involving a growing number of authors.There focus on the characteristics of the entrepreneurs and the entrepreneurial process, several other areas warrant far more focus.We pointed above the need for a more theoretically driven research, one with a theory building potential, but also on the value and importance of the networks, social and business, of not only the entrepreneur and entrepreneurial team but also of other closer ties.There is room for the institutional theory to make way into entrepreneurship research, as context is a major driver of entrepreneurs.The fact is that much has been evolving in the institutional environment in Brazil and may be further delved into.As such, we may gain the ability to develop concepts and models of use to entrepreneurs in other emerging economies, for instance.
Finally, while we identified some papers that focused on the incubators, it is important to move beyond single case studies of incubators to truly understand the benefits of incubation.Moreover, research has largely failed to connect strategies and performance in multiple entrepreneurial processes.We believe that this paper has attained its objectives.First, and foremost, to understand the current state of the art of Brazilian entrepreneurship research.By examining the entire track record of the papers presented at the EnANPAD over the period from 1997 to 2008, we do not claim to encompass all the research being done, but it is undeniable that it is a representative sample of the existing research.Our endeavor is revealing of some areas that may be explored in the future.Nonetheless, a more encapsulating understanding may be obtained by extending the sample to other conferences as well as journals and even books.
Our study has unavoidable limitations that may also be explored in the future.For instance, our purpose was not to evaluate accurately the content of the papers.Such content analysis may be made and some classification may be put forward.Eventually, this research may be revealing of research gaps, connections between authors and theories.Other limitation derives from the data source.We only examined the papers presented at the EnANPAD, but there is a wealth of scholarly journals and other conferences that accept entrepreneurship research.An extension of our paper may thus be made with the benefit of gaining a richer insight.
We call for additional research.The Brazilian academy has the conditions to take the lead on this discipline, partly due to official efforts made to promote entrepreneurial action, partly for the cultural and socio-economic conditions that lead to a very high number of individuals involved in starting up firms.The progress has been remarkable but a munificent path is laid for the discipline to glow in the worldwide business academia.
a) Type of article: T-Theoretical, E-Empirical, C-Case study.Source: Research data.

Table 1 -
Description of the sample

Table 3 -
Authors with multiple presentations at the EnANPAD in entrepreneurship