1This special issue is the result of a partnership between Entreprendre & Innover and AMWAY, an American entrepreneurial company, which distributes a range of products worldwide through an entrepreneur-based network.
2While Entreprendre & Innover is a journal that is usually published in French, this special issue is published in English in order to address an international audience. The issue topic, Hybrid Entrepreneurship, logically came from the nature of AMWAY’s activities and its main objective is to provide self-employed, (auto) entrepreneurs, managers and policy-makers with interesting and relevant research results and insights.
3Over the last decades, entrepreneurship has become a very popular topic in most developed countries. Despite this success, academics still fail to reach a consensus about the definitions of Entrepreneurship and Entrepreneurs. For example, questions such as: “Are Intrapreneurs, Entrepreneurs?” or “Are Franchisees real Entrepreneurs?” are still debated among many researchers. Over the last few years the emergence of new phenomena have blurred the frontiers of entrepreneurship even further. The number of part-time entrepreneurs and freelancers has surged all over the world. In many developed countries the legal framework of social status is evolving in such a way that the frontier between the employee status and the self-employed status is fading away, not to mention, the consequences of the booming phenomenon of the so-called “sharing economy”. The “Ubers” and “Airbnbs” of this world are contributing to the emergence of new forms of “self-employment”, micro-entrepreneurs and business models that are challenging most industry incumbents and policy makers. Finally, students and retired persons tend to be more and more engaged in jobs that could be characterized as entrepreneurial or, at least, self-employed. All these emerging phenomena could be labeled under the umbrella of “Hybrid Entrepreneurship”.
4This special issue includes seven peer-reviewed articles from international researchers, an interview with Leszek Krecielewski, Managing Director Amway Europe and a summary of the 2018 AGER (Amway Global Entrepreneurship Report) survey.
5The first articles from Lidia Kritskaya, Lars Kolvereid, and Espen J. Isaksen (first article) and Gabriel M. Chirita (second article) attempt both to clarify the concept of ‘Hybrid Entrepreneurship’, offering useful perspectives and typologies to gain a better understanding of the frontiers between ‘Hybrid Entrepreneurship’ and ‘Entrepreneurship’. The third article, proposed by Terrence E. Brown and Mana Farshid, question the possibility of growth for such micro or auto enterprises. In the fourth article, Carmen Paunescu and Razvan Rosu present and discuss the implications of a survey centered on female hybrid entrepreneurs. The fifth by Saulo Dubard Barbosa, Catherine Laffineur, and Alain Fayolle and the sixth by Fernanda Arreola, Andrès Davila, Cindy Felio, Jean-Yves Ottmann articles raise severe concerns about the impact and appropriatness of public policies towards (auto) entrepreneurship and self-employment. Finally, in the last (seventh) article, Duncan R. Pelly offers a study, based on two cases, Airbnb and Uber, examining the relationship between the rise of the sharing economy and Russian illegal immigrants’ ability to secure employment in the United States.
6The issue also benefits from an interview of Leszek Krecielewski, Managing Director Amway Europe, by Imelda Vital, highlighting the pioneer role of direct selling towards the concept of sharing economy. The final contribution comes from Marcus A. Drescher, Scientific advisor to the Amway Global Entrepreneurship Report, who presents and discusses the main results of the 2018 AGER survey, based on data from 44 countries around the world.
