
Heiko BergmannUniversity of St. Gallen · Swiss Research Institute of Small Business and Entrepreneurship
Heiko Bergmann
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Publications (104)
Student entrepreneurship can take the form of solo or team efforts. While a positive and support-ive university context is likely to increase entrepreneurial activities in general, it is unclear whether this effect is equally strong on both forms of entrepreneurship and for all types of students. Fo-cusing on students embedded in universities, we s...
It is the actions of entrepreneurs that give rise to new organizations. However, a comprehensive understanding of what entrepreneurs do and what actually leads to venture success is currently lacking. To summarize existing research, we conduct a structured literature review including 59 empirical articles linking entrepreneurs’ behavior to venture...
This open access book focuses on Switzerland-based medium-sized companies with a longstanding export tradition and a proven dominance in global niche markets. Based upon in-depth documentation and analysis of 36 SMEs over their entire history, an expert team of authors presents several parallels in the pathways and success factors which allowed the...
This final chapter, containing the full-length profiles of each of the 36 companies representing the base of this research project, plays an integral role in Masterpieces of Swiss Entrepreneurship. Although the various profiles have been quoted extensively as part of the analysis in the previous chapters, those excerpts were used to illustrate a pa...
This chapter examines the many different pathways company founders and successors pursued to finance their businesses, as well as the financial practices adopted to assure the longevity of the companies. Describing frugal beginnings such as setting up in garages and old factory buildings to start, the chapter deals with the bootstrapping mentality...
The extensive examination of the defining innovations, which were gleaned from the documented companies, was driven by the importance those early decisions had in shaping the companies. Most of these ideas were product innovations. The separation of the defining ideas from ongoing product innovations was based upon the need to show that following a...
Not different from many other, larger companies, marketing and sales processes at SMEs have undergone constant changes. The chapter details how SMEs dealt with the tension between marketing and sales, how they differentiated in B2B vs. B2C environments. For B2C companies, global brand building becomes important. All firms, regardless of industry en...
This chapter introduces the reader to the principal actors of these stories, namely the founders, organized along major periods, and their backgrounds. Listed are early period founders, those from the interwar period, during World War II period, the Post WW II “Baby Boomer” generation, and founders from the most recent period. Separately listed fro...
This chapter will strike the reader as being quite different than the previous chapters and analyses. This is deliberate and placed toward the end of the book in order to provide some additional perspective to the previous analysis. Describing the background of the founders and entrepreneurs behind the 36 researched companies, pulling together deta...
Stability of ownership is a big issue among SME owners. This chapter deals with strategies to preserve and guarantee ownership stability. The experience of founders and owners in applying foundation structures are described. Approaches to provide ownership stability as a public company are described. Special situations covered are employee ownershi...
This chapter centers around the concept of the customer franchise defined as a distinct group of users for whom a company offers a central element or product. Explanations are offered how companies attach such groups to their products and create loyalty. Examples are cited of companies that manage to create a single customer franchise around a dist...
This chapter covers the history of the international market development of the researched firms and in addition how these companies established agent networks, built sales subsidiaries worldwide, or enlisted partnerships, and how they reacted to constantly changing market developments requiring adjustments in their distribution networks. The early...
This chapter will highlight the fact that “Focus” is not just “Focus” by identifying five different types of focus choices. Older companies began in a given industry sector and remained loyal to that sector, adopting an industry focus. Past experience in a given sector can lead to business focus. For many firms, core competence served as the basis...
How did the founders come upon their central, defining business idea that went on to shape the destiny of their companies? Although many of the firms profiled in this book are known for their products as of today, it is rarely known how they arrived at these ideas. Some left an unresponsive employer, some capitalized on personal experience, and oth...
Specific managerial practices adopted by the SMEs have been detailed in previous chapters. This chapter takes a step back and reviews the growth trajectories of the documented firms over their histories. Plotting growth (expressed in sales) over time (expressed in years) resulted in a scatter diagram that demonstrates substantial differences across...
Given that innovative ideas are expected to be generated on a permanent basis, it is interesting to observe that among the documented firms, there were special practices in place to assure that ideas and improvements would roll off the assembly line of innovation. Such organizational practices were particularly prevalent in firms which could be cla...
How SMEs decided on how to arrange their production footprint, trading-off production in Switzerland vs. offshoring, and how they decided on component sourcing, as well as how they dealt with asset plays related to production, is reviewed in this chapter. Starting as exporters, some firms have retained an exclusively Swiss-based production footprin...
Success in global markets is not only dependent on the quality and effectiveness of a single product. For many firms, even as they focus on narrow niches, the number of product variations they can cram into a narrow market space becomes a competitive advantage. How SMEs dealt with requirements for product line depth vs. breadth and, in particular,...
This chapter puts the spotlight on the various forms of owner-management models adopted by the researched companies, and how they evolved over time as ownership passed on to the next generation. At first, a comparison between owner-manager and professional manager models is offered. Tracking the various changes as a company evolves, the chapter sho...
How SMEs arranged their factory floor and the kind of processes, proprietary, or other, they employed, including the extent of automation in use, are all important aspects of the process practices. Swiss SMEs have realized that reliance on product feature advantages alone, even if protected by patents, is not sufficient to guarantee a lasting compe...
At the outset of this chapter, the need to treat segmentation as distinct from focusing is explained. Both are important, and both have to be addressed separately. Successful segmentation implies choices, and carving out a segment from a market space is something that requires both skill and attention. Description of how to define segments is offer...
Company boards play a big role in the governance of SMEs and different models were traced from family boards to foundations, as well as the impact of dual board structures frequently adopted. Covering governing arrangements, the chapter reports how SMEs dealt with board roles at public, family-owned, and foundation-owned companies. Discussion of th...
To what extent did SMEs consider active involvement in production as a necessary element of their strategy and how they approached value chain integration to enhance their efficiency are the focus of this chapter. Driven by the necessity of economics and efficiency, SMEs have taken different directions on the integration of their supply chains, ran...
Describing the achieved focus of a company is one thing, but finding how companies arrived at their given focus through an analysis of their focus journey offers an important aspect of understanding the practices adopted by the researched companies. Without that understanding, the experience does not become transferable to other settings. Many of t...
What then are the implications of these research findings reported in Masterpieces of Swiss Entrepreneurship? And for which communities might they be relevant?
This chapter details how ownership structures evolved, starting from the early stages of a company to unfolding over time as ownership invariably passed on from one generation to another. Examples are offered on how and under what circumstances companies go public and how founders recruit new owners when ready to pass on the company. Specifically c...
How SMEs dealt with the trade-offs between functionality, design, and ergonomics to compensate for a high-cost production basis and offering customers a competitive in-use price is key to their overall competitiveness. Design for durability is an important practice as it decreases in-use costs over time and offsets higher acquisition costs. For mar...
How do SMEs, competing for global export markets, remain competitive when operating, to a large extent, from Switzerland, one of the world’s most expensive countries? Data compiled annually by the IMD World Competitive Report document that the cost of a single hour of labor in Switzerland is one of the highest in the world, while at the same time p...
This open access book focuses on Switzerland-based medium-sized companies with a longstanding export tradition and a proven dominance in global niche markets. Based upon in-depth documentation and analysis of 36 Swiss companies over their entire history, an expert team of authors presents several parallels in the pathways and success factors which...
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to show how self-regulation influences the relationship between nascent entrepreneurial exploitation activities, firm birth and firm abandonment.
Design/methodology/approach
This study draws from a unique longitudinal dataset of 181 nascent entrepreneurs from Switzerland who have been interviewed by phone in 20...
We examine the role of regional formal and informal institutions in the intention-behavior link in entrepreneurship. Using multilevel regression analyses on a longitudinal sample of university students embedded in 40 European regions, we find evidence that regional formal and informal institutions have distinct and unique influences on the entrepre...
While the importance of a supportive context for entrepreneurship is widely acknowledged, its antecedents are rarely investigated. We apply the concept of organizational climate to higher education institutions and examine the drivers of students' perceptions of the entrepreneurial climate in their university. Combining data from two unique dataset...
Opportunity beliefs, in other words the beliefs of a potential entrepreneur about the feasibility and market fit of a venture idea, are considered as a key driver of entrepreneurial action. The entrepreneur’s existing knowledge plays an important role in reducing the uncertainty surrounding a venture idea, thereby contributing to the formation of s...
Fieldstudy on Student’s entrepreneurial attitude (n>15.000).
Student start-ups are a significant part of overall university entrepreneurship. Yet, we know little about the determinants of this type of start-ups and, specifically, the relevance of context effects. Drawing on organizational and regional context literature, we develop and test a model that aims to explain student entrepreneurship in a contextua...
Questioning the validity of scholarly work is not a typical path to publication in the management field. However, although considerable scholarship assesses entrepreneurial attitudes and intentions models of behaviour, methodological weaknesses in scale development have hampered scholars’ ability to rigorously interpret and build upon their researc...
Startups by students and recent graduates are increasingly considered as an important part of university entrepreneurship which contribute to the knowledge transfer from research to the market. In this paper we analyse students’ entrepreneurial activities at 61 European universities. Using a multilevel approach we are able to show that individual a...
This paper investigates contextual influences on career choice intentions of students with a social or environmental mission. We define social entrepreneurship; discuss whether a mission is favorable for entrepreneurial intentions; and test for the influence of formal and informal institutional circumstances using data from 18 different countries....
Der Global University Entrepreneurial Spirit Students‘ Survey (GUESSS) ist ein internationales Forschungsprojekt, das die unternehmerischen Absichten und Aktivitäten von Studierenden untersucht. Weltweit haben 109.000 Studierende in 34 Ländern an der Befragung 2013/14 teilgenommen. Der vorliegende Bericht stellt die Ergebnisse für Deutschland vor....
Although much of the work assessing the impact of entrepreneurship education is conducted using intentional models of behavior, weaknesses in scale development have hampered scholars’ ability to rigorously interpret the research. We review the literature and discover that the most commonly cited entrepreneurial attitudes measure (Kolvereid, 1996a;...
We systematically review all 109 empirical, peer-reviewed journal articles which are based on the global entrepreneurship monitor's (GEM) adult population survey data. GEM has become a major database for internationally comparative entrepreneurship research because it is unique and allows investigating research questions that could not have been ad...
Nascent entrepreneurship and new business ownership are subsequent stages in the entrepreneurial
process. We illustrate how information from the largest internationally harmonized database on entrepreneurship, the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor project, can be used to approximate the entrepreneurial process. We make a methodological contribution b...
Der Global University Entrepreneurial Spirit Students‘ Survey (GUESSS) ist ein internationales
Forschungsprojekt, das die unternehmerischen Einstellungen, Absichten und Aktivitäten
von Studierenden untersucht.
In Deutschland haben 12.463 Studierende von 45 Hochschulen an der Befragung 2011 teilgenommen,
weltweit mehr als 93.000 Studierende in 26 Lä...
Because of its unique political institutions and its good economic track record Switzerland used to be called a special case. This paper investigates start-up propensities in this country based on the individual data of the adult population survey of the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor. The focus is on factors that are distinctive for Switzerland:...
This contribution deals with entrepreneurial activities in urban and rural areas in Switzerland. It is the aim to identify differences in the entrepreneurial process between urban and rural regions of the country. The paper builds on a conceptual framework that identifies three stages in the entrepreneurial process. Differences between urban and ru...
Im Kontext des vorliegenden Kapitels wird die Produktpolitik nicht nur für das phy sisch fassbare Produkt erörtert, sondern
auch für Dienstleistungen ergänzt. Die klare Trennung zwischen Produkten und Dienstleistungen ist gerade bei Gründungsunter
nehmen oft nicht möglich. Deshalb wird in der Folge der Produktbegriff weit gefasst. Die Beschäftigung...
Das Forschungsprojekt "Global Entrepreneurship Monitor" (GEM) vergleicht jedes Jahr Gründungsaktivitäten in 42 Ländern. Seit 2001 arbeitet Heiko Bergmann vom Schweizerischen Institut für Klein- und Mittelunternehmen an der Universität St. Gallen mit an der Studie und kennt die Unterschiede zwischen Deutschland und der Schweiz
This paper explains individual start-up activities on the basis of both person-related characteristics and the regional context. The analysis is based upon micro data from the GEM adult population survey. Both individual and regional variables have an influence on the decision to become self-employed. There are considerable differences between nasc...
Angesichts des andauernden Strukturwandels im Ruhrgebiet sind Unternehmensgründungen mehr denn je gefragt, werden sie doch gemeinhin als Antriebskraft für wirtschaftliche Dynamik und Strukturwandel gesehen. Das Ruhrgebiet wird jedoch seiner Gründungsbilanz nicht recht froh: Insgesamt folgt das Gründungsgeschehen in Nordrhein-Westfalen (NRW) leicht...
The paper takes stock of structures, actors, themes and results of entrepreneurship research in the Ruhr region. Our analysis demonstrates a broad variety of actors, but little contact amongst them. Selected research results indicate low venture creation rates and more necessity-based enterprises compared to Germany. In general, entrepreneurship re...
Previous studies have shown that attitudes towards entrepreneurship have an impact on the decision start a new business. People with positive attitudes have a higher propensity to become entrepreneurs than people with negative attitudes. In the light of these results this article analyses the determinants of positive entrepreneurial attitudes. Indi...
Der Artikel untersucht die Rolle gründungsbezogener Einstellungen und Fähigkeiten im Gründungsprozess. Aus verschiedenen Untersuchungen ist bekannt, dass die Einstellungen zu den Themen Entrepreneurship und Selbständigkeit nicht nur international sondern auch innerhalb einzelner Länder deutlich variieren. Die Ursachen und Folgen dieser regionalen U...
Gründungen sind wichtig für die wirtschaftliche Entwicklung von Regionen und Nationen, weswegen auch die Frage nach den Einflussfaktoren auf Gründungsaktivitäten von großem Interesse ist. Der vorliegende Beitrag untersucht die Determinanten von Unternehmens-gründungen in zehn deutschen Regionen auf der Basis von Individualdaten. Hierbei werden sozi...
Der Beitrag diskutiert Grüdnungspotenzial und Gründungsprozess in Deutschland konzeptionell und empirisch auf Basis eigener Studien sowie der Daten des Sozioökonomischen Panel. Die bisherigen Ergebnisse stellen den für Deutschland erstmaligen Versuch einer konzeptionellen wie empirischen Strukturierung des Vorgründungsgeschehens dar. Der Gründungsp...
Schriften und Materialien zu Handwerk und Mittelstand: Heft 8 Gründungspotenzial und Gründungsengagement im Spiegel des Sozioökonomischen Panels von Heiko Bergmann Essen 2000, 90 S., 10,- Euro, ISBN 3-928739-63-8 VOLLTEXT ALS PDF VORHANDEN! (siehe unten) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Inhalt 1. Grün...
In 1998 Babson College and London Business School initiated the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) program to increase our understanding of the role of entrepreneurship in national economic growth. GEM is now the largest single study of entrepreneurial activity in the world. In view of the 10th anniversary of the GEM project we seek to understan...
This paper investigates how nascent entrepreneurs change their growth expectations during the start-up process, a topic that has not yet been fully investigated in extant literature. This paper is inspired by Dutta and Thornhill’s (2008) ideas. They describe a model on the evolution of growth intentions over time and distinguish between two cogniti...
Les créations d’entreprises jouent un rôle important dans les mutations structurelles et la création de nouveaux postes de travail. Même si leurs effets directs sur l’emploi sont limités, diverses enquêtes montrent que les régions qui connaissent un taux de création d’entreprises élevé croissent davantage, à long terme, que les autres. La fondation...
Unternehmensgründungen sind wichtig für den Strukturwandel und die Schaffung neuer Arbeitsplätze. Auch wenn die direkten Beschäftigungseffekte von Unternehmensgründungen begrenzt sind, zeigen verschiedene Untersuchungen, dass Regionen mit einer hohen Gründungsrate langfristig stärker wachsen. Unternehmensgründungen stärken nämlich den Wettbewerb un...
Le projet GEM GEM est un projet de recherche unique en son genre qui mesure annuellement lactivité entrepreneuriale dans un grand nombre de pays. Ce projet se propose également détudier de façon ystématique les liens entre lentrepreneuriat et la croissance économique. Trente cinq pays ont participé à la sixième édition de GEM en 2005. La Suisse...
Das GEM-Projekt Der Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) ist ein internationales Forschungsprojekt, das 1997 von der London Business School (UK) und dem Babson College (USA) ins Leben gerufen wurde. Das GEM-Projekt untersucht Gründungsaktivitäten in 35 Ländern weltweit. Die Schweiz hat im Jahr 2005 zum dritten Mal am GEM-Projekt teilgenommen. In d...
Unternehmensgründungen sind wichtig für die wirtschaftliche Entwicklung von Regionen und Nationen. Diese Arbeit geht der Frage nach, welche Faktoren den Umfang an Gründungsaktivitäten in deutschen Regionen bestimmen. Die empirischen Analysen erfolgen beispielhaft anhand von zehn Regionen und basieren auf Daten aus dem DFG-Forschungsprojekt "Regiona...
Dieser Bericht untersucht, welche Auswirkungen ein Agrarfreihandelsabkommen CH-EU auf die Produzenten und Grosshändler von Tafeläpfeln, Lagerkarotten und Rispentomaten in der Schweiz hätte. Es handelt sich hierbei um die wichtigsten in der Schweiz angebauten Obst- und Gemüsesorten. Untersucht wird sowohl die Produktions- als auch die Grosshandelsse...