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1. Introduction
The purpose of this paper is to address the question of the relationship between entrepreneurship and innovation in emerging economies. The rationale for this study is the following. First, considering the growing weight of emerging economies in the current world situation, and the growing innovative capability of some of these economies ([81] The Economist , 2010; [65] Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), 2010), it appears important to define and measure the multifaceted aspects of entrepreneurship and innovation in the context of economic emergence, more carefully. This topic is under-examined, as [14] Bruton et al. (2008) reported. To define and measure entrepreneurship at the country level, the Schumpeterian and Kirznerian views, with their respective emphasis on innovation and opportunity alertness, are particularly useful. Although numerous conceptual papers have compared the Schumpeterian and Kirznerian approaches, as well as the more recent creation and discovery views, few empirical studies have examined the presence of these two broad types of entrepreneurial activity at the country level. Moreover, some researchers have hypothesized that context is determinant for the actualization of various types of entrepreneurial activity ([93] Zahra, 2008), without further assessing empirically which contextual dimensions may contribute to this actualization process.
The Schumpeterian and Kirznerian approaches are measured in this paper, using cluster analysis instead of country ranking as is commonly done in comparative entrepreneurship research. Cluster analysis allows for the assessment of the interrelationships between the economic and institutional contexts of emerging economies, and their entrepreneurial and innovative activity. Instead of conceiving emerging countries as one homogenous group, we propose to see them as being composed of different sub-groups having similar entrepreneurship and innovation profiles. By using an integrative and contextualized approach, we aim to shed more light on the economic and institutional correlates of entrepreneurship and innovation in emerging economies.
The second part of our rationale is that, historically, the conceptual relationship between entrepreneurship and innovation has been an ambiguous one. In his pioneering work, [76] Schumpeter (1934) equated entrepreneurship with innovative activity. Later on, [45], [46] Kirzner (1973, 1979) amended this view by lessening the role of innovation and proposing a complementary notion of opportunity alertness as a key attribute of entrepreneurs. While some scholars such as [97] Shane and Venkataraman (2000) extended...