A commentary on the impacts of ‘Great Lockdown’ and its aftermath on scaling firms: What are the implications for entrepreneurial research?

Abstract

This commentary argues that scaling fast growth firms drive economic development, even in recessionary periods. While the coronavirus induced ‘Great Lockdown’ and its aftermath poses particular challenges, we argue that the crisis presents the entrepreneurial scholarly community with an opportunity to re-orientate our research. Rather than more narratives of business success in the face of adversity, the Great Lockdown presents us with a fresh opportunity to examine how scaling is affected by context, by luck and by the porous nature of business growth. In so doing, our hope is that it will encourage our community to adopt a more proactive agenda to support policy makers and entrepreneurs.

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This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access page (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).

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DOI

https://doi.org/10.1177/0266242620961912

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https://www.research.ed.ac.uk/portal/en/publications/a-commentary-on-the-impacts-of-great-lockdown-and-its-aftermath-on-scaling-firms(bf5fd735-9d00-4b71-a65f-8d756a9261f3).html