| There is strong empirical support behind the notion that entrepreneurs---especially high-growth entrepreneurs---are disproportionately drawn to well-diversified metropolitan areas and areas containing institutions of higher learning and government research. This diagnosis is disappointing news for "lagging regions," frequently rural areas once engaged in manufacturing and extraction, seeking to develop and diversity their small business sector. With little hope of offering big city amenities, spatial analyses of self employment data in the United States reveal that the share of self employed individuals---and the amount of income they make---is not unilaterally low, and varies widely and almost unpredictably across rural America. Using a collective case study methodology, this research examines behavioral, institutional, and cultural differences between areas of high and low entrepreneurship among entrepreneurs and local institutional leaders (related to small business development) in three U.S. states: Maine, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Qualitative and quantitative results are compared to understand, from the perspective of local entrepreneurs and institutional leaders themselves, how local society and strategic interactions have structured the development of entrepreneurial opportunity (or lack thereof) in areas commonly affiliated with economic decline. Areas of high and low entrepreneurship are compared, as well as differences in responses between regions and between entrepreneurs and institutional leaders, to understand more about differences in everyday interaction that may either facilitate or inhibit the cultivation of a robust small business sector. |
