Business angels as a research field

Abstract

This is the third volume of the Edward Elgar Publishing book series 'Handbooks in Venture Capital'. 1 This volume focuses on Business Angels (BAs), that is, 'high net worth individuals, acting alone or in a formal or informal syndicate, who invests his or her own money directly in an unquoted business in which there is no family connection and who, after making the investment, generally takes an active involvement in the business, for example, as an advisor or member of the board of directors' (Mason and Harrison, 2008, p. 309).Our knowledge of BAs is now more than three decades old and our understanding of the phenomenon has gradually increased over this time (Landström, 2007; Landström and Mason, 2012).Nevertheless, some researchers have pointed out that this knowledge and understanding is highly fragmented -the field seems to have moved from providing 'no answers' to presenting 'a flora of answers' about the nature and activity of BAs (Shane, 2009).It is therefore important to take stock and synthesize our knowledge about BAs.This is the purpose of this volume of the Handbook of Research on Business Angels.A further need for this Handbook arises from the expectations that politicians and policy-makers have been directed to the BA market over the past two decades as a solution to the financial gaps that have been identified among new and entrepreneurial ventures around the world.Consequently, the BA market has, and continues to attract, considerable interventions by policy-makers.However, most of these policy initiatives have been made without being anchored in the knowledge that has been developed about the market.Thus, a further objective of this Handbook is to compile and synthesize our knowledge in a way that is helpful to policy-makers. THE IMPORTANCE OF BUSINESS ANGELSAs a phenomenon, private individuals who invest in high-risk projects have existed since the origin of economic activity in society.For example,

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