Reaching for scalable entrepreneurship: Implications for growth and job creation

This paper asks whether or not there is a hierarchy of entrepreneurship that goes beyond life cycle models of organizations to indicate a path to scalability. We posit a model illustrating a hierarchy that incorporates five progressive levels: solo, small, stable, salient and scalable. Embracing critical elements of any entrepreneurial venture -- the entrepreneur, the opportunity and available resources -- the model incorporates the key external variables: cultural, societal, legal and financial as well as internal attributes: confidence, skills, vision and leadership. We assume that global competitiveness motivates theentrepreneur to develop strategies to climb the hierarchy in order to achieve salience and scalability. The robustness of the model is then tested against recent entrepreneurship literature. Finally, we discuss the hypothesis the greater the scalability of a venture, the greater the job creation, which has significant policy implications.