“External enabler” (EE) denotes nontrivial changes to the business environment—such as new technology, regulatory change, demographic and sociocultural trends, macroeconomic swings, and changes to the natural environment—that enable entrepreneurial pursuits.
(Davidsson, Recker & von Briel, 2022, p. 1)
This website features research-based insights and artifacts about external enablement of entrepreneurship for all with an interest in entrepreneurship research, teaching, or practice.
External Enablement (EE) refers to the benefits entrepreneurs can get from changes in the business environmental, such as new technologies, regulatory changes, demographic and sociocultural trends, macroeconomic swings, and changes to the natural environment. We developed the EE framework to increase knowledge accumulation in entrepreneurship and strategy research by providing structure and carefully defined terminology to describe, analyze, and explain fortuitous as well as strategically leveraged effects of environmental changes on entrepreneurial action and outcomes.
A fundamental assumption of the EE framework is that every change in the business environment—regardless of the direction and magnitude of its total societal influence—will benefit some (potential) entrepreneurial pursuits. Another fundamental assumption is that seemingly very different types of environmental change can have similar attributes and provide similar benefits. These assumptions provide a basis for broad accumulation of evidence-based knowledge on how entrepreneurs can benefit from environmental change.
The EE framework has been well received and is increasingly applied and extended by a growing number of researchers, educators, business practitioners and policy-makers within and beyond entrepreneurship.
THEORETICAL MOTIVATION
Three motivations underpinned the development of the external enablement concept (EE) and framework (EEF). First, due to criticism and confusion surrounding Shane and Venkataraman’s (2000) ‘objective, agent-independent opportunities’, we sought a more workable alternative for capturing the influence of environmental factors in entrepreneurial action and success. Hence, Davidsson (2015) suggested separating the key elements associated with ‘entrepreneurial opportunities’ into three constructs, where External Enablers represent favorable (to some agents and purposes) environmental conditions.
Second, empirical realities such globalization; climate change and its associated quest for sustainability; the digital technology revolution; the Global Financial Crisis; the COVID-19 pandemic; and significant sociocultural changes pertaining to attitudes to human-animal relationships and matters of race, gender, and sexual orientation call for increased attention to the influence of external factors that have been neglected in recent decades not just in entrepreneurship, but also in strategy, management and organizational research.
Third, a thorough review of past research on entrepreneurship in response to environmental change supported that (a) the research stream is smaller than it ought to be; (b) the EEF’s vocabulary captures much of what has been studied scattered across disciplines and terminologies; (c) variance in what the EEF calls EE characteristics, mechanisms and roles apply to a broad range environmental changes, and (e) putting the emphasis on enablement rather that single enablers probably leads to better theory and explanations by considering how enablers combine and evolve over time. These findings inspired us to invest in further development of EE scholarship with the EEF as conceptual glue.
Further details on the process leading to the EE concept and framework are given in under the “The Framework” tab on this website (choose History from the drop-down list).
(Based on Davidsson, Recker & von Briel, 2025, pp. 306-7)
TEACHING
THE EXTERNAL ENABLER FRAMEWORK SHIFTS ENTREPRENEURSHIP EDUCATION
Many principles of entrepreneurship education focus on the role of actors in new venture creation. The external enabler framework shows, indeed, that it is also crucial to teach how actors can interact with environmental changes.
