This fourth edition Entrepreneurship and Small Firms continues our policy with this text of using the new editions as an opportunity to revise all the chapters and to introduce new material, reflecting current issues, research and academic debate on entrepreneurship and small firms. For example, in this edition, the reader will find new chapters on ‘Diversity in Entrepreneurship’ and ‘Family Businesses’, reflecting the increased importance that has been given to these areas in research, academic study and policy. In addition, a number of chapters have either been re-written or extensively revised, such as the chapter entitled ‘Entrepreneurial Activity, the Economy and the Importance of Small Firms’, which has been rewritten to take a more European and international approach to this material. Other changes include the removal of a specific chapter on enterprise support; following reviews and feedback on the third edition, it was felt that this could be accommodated in other chapters, where appropriate. Thus a section in Chapter 3, for example, examines the role of support agencies in supporting women and ethnic minority entrepreneurs and supporting diversity in entrepreneurship. A further section, in Chapter 11, focuses on the role of support agencies in assisting business creation.
Readers familiar with previous editions will also find that the chapters have been restructured with some changes in sequence, but of course the overall style has been retained, with many of the features introduced in the third edition, such as ‘Entrepreneurship in Action’ boxes, case studies and suggested assignments. In order to accommodate some of the new material for this edition, some of the in-depth case material has been moved to the online student resource centre. To get the most benefit from this edition, students should consult this online resource material, which now contains a significant amount of additional material to supplement the case material. We have, of course, retained and revised the tutors’ online resource material, which contains lecture slides and additional material not available to students.
The introduction to the third edition discussed the policy commitment of the UK Government as expressed in the following statement:⁽¹⁾

Government is committed to making the UK the best place in the world to start and grow a business. (p. 4)

Taken from the Small Business Service’s (SBS’s) recent publication of A Government Action Plan, it represents a continuing emphasis for government policy on the importance of entrepreneurship and small firms for the vitality of the UK economy. As discussed in Chapter 2, this is something that has become a characteristic of policy for the EU member nations, embodied in the publication of the EU Green Paper on entrepreneurship.⁽²⁾ This paper focuses on creating the right conditions and environment for entrepreneurship to flourish. Of course, placing the importance of entrepreneurship and small firms at the ‘heart of policy’⁽³⁾ is one thing, creating an environment in which entrepreneurship can thrive is another matter. The publication of the SBS’s Action Plan⁽¹⁾ is a welcome attempt to identify some of the barriers to increased entrepreneurial activity in the UK, and the role that support bodies (such as the SBS) and the network of support agencies can take in encouraging entrepreneurial activity and improving the environment, especially in deprived areas, where entrepreneurial activity is more difficult.
Having an integrated approach is something that will be important at all levels in society, hence we have seen the development of enterprise initiatives in education, in deprived areas and with targeted groups, such as women and ethnic minorities, and related policy measures such as changes in taxation, incentives and regulation. Some of these initiatives are discussed in the text, especially in Chapters 3 and 11. However,as mentioned in our Introduction to the previous edition, such initiatives eventually affect us. For example, the government has stated previously that:⁽³⁾

The Government’s direct interactions with SMEs form part of the overall picture but they are by no means the whole story. People may be put off starting a business if the environment in schools, further and higher education is discouraging and there are no effective role models available . . . Media stereotypes of business may cumulatively be discouraging. (p. 7)

The increased attention given to education, through a number of enterprise initiatives is something that is taken up in Chapter 11. The discussion of the importance of the financial environment is taken up in Chapters 4 and 5, technology, innovation and ebusiness is covered in Chapters 6 and 7, and Chapters 8 and 9 focus on growth and international entrepreneurship. All these topics reflect the importance of creating an appropriate infrastructure at all levels of society if the government is eventually going to achieve the aim of making the UK the best place in the world for entrepreneurship and small firms.

As mentioned, this fourth edition has retained the learning and pedagogical features that were introduced with the previous edition. Learning outcomes are given at the start of each chapter; boxed examples, titled ‘Entrepreneurship in Action’, are provided throughout the text, and Review Questions are also incorporated to review the material and to allow the reader to reflect upon the material and develop alternative concepts. However, the reader familiar with the previous edition will notice that the sets of review questions are now grouped at the end of each chapter. Suggested Assignments are given for each chapter; some of these incorporate or draw upon the additional material available in the student online material. Finally, the reader should find that the references have been completely updated, reflecting recent changes and the policy agenda discussed briefly above, and also that the Recommended Reading sections have been updated and are included at the end of each chapter.