Creating the future together : toward a framework for research synthesis in entrepreneurship

To develop a body of evidence-based knowledge on entrepreneurship, findings and contributions from the positivist, narrative and design research traditions in this area need to be combined. Therefore, a framework for research synthesis in terms of social mechanisms, contextual conditions and outcome patterns is developed in this paper. Subsequently, a synthesis of the existing body of research findings on entrepreneurial opportunities serves to illustrate how this framework can be applied and provides results that inform entrepreneurial action. Finally, we discuss how this synthetic approach serves to systematically connect the fragmented landscape of entrepreneurship research, and thus gradually build a cumulative and evidence-based body of knowledge on entrepreneurship.