Abstract/Summary

While the disruptive potential of knowledge has been receiving growing attention in small business economics and entrepreneurship research and application over the last decade, its boundaries and frontiers, including technological, spatial, institutional, cognitive, and cultural has not been fully explored. Here we present some reflections and a collection of papers on the role of knowledge investment across different cultural, institutional, geographical, and industrial contexts for this emerging area in entrepreneurship and management research. While being careful of the swift changes in knowledge creation, dissemination, and testing in a digital age, geography of knowledge diffusion, knowledge embeddedness into industries and places, skills, and strategies continue to change the way firms assimilate, absorb, create, and transfer knowledge. In this special issue, we extend our knowledge boundaries through knowledge collaboration theory, resource theory, open innovation theory, knowledge and creativity spillover of entrepreneurship theory, economic geography, and creative class and institutional theories. We give researchers and practitioners future directions for a very relevant and fast-growing area of entrepreneurship and small business research.