Book Review: The Evolution of a New Industry: A Genealogical Approach

Israel Drori, Shmuel Ellis, Zur Shapira : The Evolution of a New Industry: A Genealogical Approach. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2013. 190 pp.$45.00, cloth.

Wesley Sine of Cornell University recently published a book review for The Evolution of a New Industry: A Genealogical Approach in Administrative Science Quarterly. An excerpt from the review:

The Evolution of a New Industry is a fascinating look at the emergence of a technology cluster in Israel. The authors take the reader from the first few technology ventures during the early years after the establishment of the country of Israel, when the culture was heavily Zionist, collectivist, and quasi-socialist, through the maturation of the Israeli economy and movement toward a more Western, capitalistic, competitive culture. They examine the impact of the evolving institutional context on new ventures and the emerging technology cluster.

Unlike some other research in this area, this book takes the institutional context seriously, examining culture and governmental policy and how they constitute the institutional environment and shape entrepreneurial outcomes. Drori, Ellis, and Shapira look not only at foundings but also at entrepreneurial processes such as how the institutional context affects the spawning processes of incumbents and how institutions affect spin-offs from existing mature organizations. They draw heavily from the population ecology literature and the research on institutions and entrepreneurship (e.g., Tolbert, David, and Sine, 2011).

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