The notion of process has long been overlooked by researchers in entrepreneurship. Its recognition and use in entrepreneurship research can be traced back to the early 1990s. To a certain extent, the failure of atemporal causality research has contributed to the notion of process being finally acknowledged, and has led to the reorientation of research onto the ‘how’. Moreover, the notion of process was initially closely associated to the ‘how’, one objective being to identify market strategies and penetration modes applied by entrepreneurs. This appeared particularly in Gartner's early works. Later, in the works of Van de Ven and his team (1989; 1992; 1995; 2000), the study of processes focused on the identification of phases and/or actors, the description of operating modes and configurations, and explaining variations through differences in the sequence of events.

The various ways of seeing, thinking, and applying the concept of process have evolved over time. However, one element has remained constant: the methodological and theoretical difficulties linked to the use of this concept in entrepreneurship research (Davidsson 2005). This is all the more unfortunate since our field is a recent one and still in search of its unity, as Aldrich and Baker (1997: 338) put it: ‘Judging from normal science standards, entrepreneurship research is still in a very early stage. If no single powerful paradigm exists, then there is even less evidence for multiple coherent points of view.’