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Even winners need to learn: How government entrepreneurship programs can support innovative ventures
Abstract
Given the investment of public resources for supporting entrepreneurial growth, it is important to know whether such programs truly benefit innovative ventures. While prior research has indicated some benefits for growth outcomes, there is no clear consensus about the conditions for program effectiveness. We attribute this to the complex set of selection and treatment mechanisms associated with how programs navigate interlocking tradeoffs to maximize outcomes with their limited resources. To circumvent these challenges, policymakers often default to a “picking winners” approach based on past performance indicators. We develop and implement a carefully designed empirical strategy to determine whether this approach leads innovative ventures to achieve growth milestones and properly accounts for various observed and unobserved selection issues. We analyze data from the Small Business Development Center (SBDC), a government-sponsored program in the United States. Using a potential outcomes framework to investigate over 1,700 ventures that enrolled in SBDC advisory services from 2011 to 2016, we observe that treatment design is more crucial than selection for innovative firms to achieve growth. We found that treatment time and a client's willingness to learn collaboratively from their advisors are vital indicators of growth. Since treatment effectiveness is driven by support allocation, programs that desire to boost innovation outcomes must at a minimum formally prioritize innovation criteria to ensure these businesses receive sufficient support to address their growth objectives. Beyond this, we demonstrate that support effectiveness additionally depends on a willingness of participants to learn collaboratively by socializing their growth objectives with their advisors. Since even winners need to learn, programs must wrestle with the selection tradeoffs more acutely early on to ensure that the most promising clients can receive lengthier learning opportunities for growth.
... In fact, as the specific executor of the regional innovation and entrepreneurship-driven development strategy, local governments have played an important role in the development of regional innovation and entrepreneurship (Autio & Rannikko, 2016;Buffart et al., 2020;Darnihamedani et al., 2018;Nystro¨m, 2008). This is because innovation and entrepreneurship require a lot of capital investment. ...
... Previous studies have highlighted the significant role of government in the innovation and entrepreneurship process (Michael & Pearce, 2009;Yoon et al., 2018). Factors such as government size, policies, regulations, and actions have been identified as crucial in affecting the quality of regional innovation and entrepreneurship (Autio & Rannikko, 2016;Buffart et al., 2020;Darnihamedani et al., 2018;Nystro¨m, 2008). However, this paper takes a unique approach by exploring the impact of local government debt on regional innovation and entrepreneurship, providing valuable insights from the perspective of local government debt. ...
... As the principal implementers of regional innovation and entrepreneurship-driven development strategies, governments play a crucial role (Bozhikin et al., 2019;Michael & Pearce, 2009;Stephan et al., 2015;Yoon et al., 2018). Various factors, including government size, policies, regulations, and actions, influence innovation and entrepreneurship (Autio & Rannikko, 2016;Buffart et al., 2020;Darnihamedani et al., 2018;Nystro¨m, 2008). Notably, Nystro¨m (2008) found that smaller government sectors cultivate a more conducive environment for entrepreneurship. ...
Local government debt serves as a crucial source of funding for local governments to provide public services and steer regional economic development. Exploring the impact of local government debt on regional innovation and entrepreneurship holds significant practical importance. This paper uses the data of 295 cities in China from 2015 to 2020 and uses the fixed effect model for empirical analysis. Our findings reveal a positive association between local government debt and regional innovation and entrepreneurship. This positive effect is attributed to the amplification of both the venture capital agglomeration effect and the technology agglomeration effect. Moreover, this relationship is particularly pronounced in cities characterized by high fiscal transparency, officials’ promotion pressure, and poor business environment. Ultimately, this paper enriches the existing literature by enhancing our comprehension of the economic implications of local government debt and the factors influencing regional innovation and entrepreneurship. Furthermore, it furnishes empirical evidence regarding the effectiveness of local government debt management in China.
... The tangible resource and officespace focused nature of business incubators offers an appropriate setting for comparison. I predict that mentoring, an intangible support service, results in stronger firm finance and survival outcomes compared to non-mentorship and compared to incubation, advancing the literature on ESO service mechanisms (Buffart et al., 2020;Hallen et al., 2020). ...
... While the services ESOs provide are visibly discernable offerings such as shared office space and administrative support at an incubator, or mentor matching and interaction at a mentoring organization, the mechanisms that distinguish how different ESO types work are less visible and have less consensus. ESO mechanisms have been defined in varying ways, but common to all is a distinction between ESO service and non-service mechanisms (Buffart et al., 2020;Hallen et al., 2020). Non-service mechanisms occur through sorting and signaling processes. ...
... Non-service mechanisms occur through sorting and signaling processes. Sorting because of self-or ESO-selection (Buffart et al., 2020;Hackett and Dilts, 2008;Hallen et al., 2020) and legitimacy signaling based on ESO affiliation (Ko and McKelvie, 2018;Spence, 1973;Stuart et al., 1999;Zimmerman and Zeitz, 2002) may help firms achieve their goals, but not because of the effect of ESO services. ...
This paper asks how start-ups' participation in a mentoring program relates to finance and survival outcomes and how these outcomes differ for mentored firms compared to non-mentored and incubated firms in the same region. Drawing on the entrepreneurial support organization, mentoring, and innovation literatures, I posit that mentored firms will perform better than non-mentored firms, and that the specific micro-mechanisms of mentoring will lead to varied finance and survival outcomes for mentored as compared to incubated start-ups. Exploiting detailed data on the universe of entrepreneurial life sciences firms in the Research Triangle region of North Carolina over a 25-year time period and matching methods, results indicate that mentored firms perform better in terms of finance than non-mentored firms. Exploratory empirical extensions reveal mentored firms receive greater private and federal public funding than incubated firms, but not local public funding. Neither mentoring nor incubation services relate to survival outcomes. The paper concludes with practical implications for entrepreneurial support organization managers and economic development.
... It aims at fueling firm development, directing industrial upgrading, and stimulating economic growth [20,21], as well as absorbing shocks and disruptions when unexpected events in the areas of public health, economic systems, and national security occur [1,4,44]. Traditional government support research has investigated its positive effects on firm-level outcomes (e.g., performance, innovation [45], internationalization [46], entrepreneurial orientation [47], and capability building [48]). ...
... Recent advances in this field have begun to explore the potential benefits that government support may bring in fueling the digital transformation-related outcomes of firms. Specifically, financial supports (e.g., tax reduction, subsidies, low interest loans, etc.) would ease the financial burden of firms, and facilitate the purchasing of the digital infrastructure and devices of firms [21]; the operation supports (e.g., government contracts, permissions of market entry and land use; licenses for export and import) improve the competitive position of firms, shelter firms against external uncertainties and secure the revenue of firms [21]; the intellectual supports (e.g., training programs, technical assistance, etc.) increase the technological expertise and talents of firms in digital-related fields [49]; the policy supports (e.g., IP protection, market transaction governance, industrial and national policies, rules and plans, etc.) would create a competition-friendly market that reduce the bureaucratic and transaction costs of firms [47], secure the return of the digital innovation of firms [4], and establish a sense of necessity for 'being-digital' [1]. They also have irre-placeable roles in constructing the prerequisite of the digitalization of firms, for instance, the formulating of rules and laws to protect individual privacy and ownership of digital resources [43,50]. ...
... In terms of IGS, firstly, the enforcement of business-transaction law would help to create a relatively competition-friendly market environment to reduce the transaction costs of firms [47]. Secondly, the provision of regulation and policy-related information would increase the transparency of regulatory institutions, which would mitigate the regulatory uncertainties and associated bureaucratic costs experienced by firms and spare the managerial attentions and resources needed for firm to comprehend such uncertainty [18]. ...
This paper provides an investigation into how different types of government supports can be used to enhance organizational resilience capacity during the COVID-19 pandemic. Based on resource orchestration theory, this study examines the effects of direct government support and indirect government support on organizational resilience capacity, the mediation role of digital capability, and the moderation effects of organizational unlearning. The empirical results from 205 Chinese firms show that direct government support and indirect government support have positive effects on organizational resilience capacity, which were mediated by digital capability. In addition, organizational unlearning positively and negatively moderates the positive relationship between direct government support, indirect government support and digital capability. Our theoretical discussion and empirical results contribute to the literature related to organizational resilience, digital capability, government support, and organizational unlearning.
... Moreover, connecting individuals to social sources of learning, resources and experiences attained through networks, mentoring, and professional associations have also been found to be beneficial (Buffart, Croidieu, Kim & Bowman, 2020;Donnellon et al., 2014;Ozgen & Baron, 2007;Rigg & O'Dwyer, 2012;Nabi et al., 2017). Exposure to role models is positively related with venture creation (De Clercq et al., 2013). ...
... Much of the impetuous for entrepreneurship policy stems from the expectation that it will provide some solution to Europe's structural unemployment problem and in turn, benefit economic growth (European Commission, 2013;European Commission, 2015). One significant and popular intervention is tied to active labour market reforms (Buffart et al., 2020;Mühlböck et al., 2018). These reforms change labour institutions on the premise that it will encourage unemployed individuals to find work and/or allow businesses to meet their resource needs (see discussion in section 4.4.2, ...
... There is increasing recognition of the unintended consequences arising from institutional change (e.g. economic freedom), including a bias towards necessity and solo entrepreneurship. Reforms which encourage entrepreneurship for unemployed individuals are increasingly receiving criticism (Buffart et al., 2020). Part of the challenge is the conceptualisation of the "entrepreneur" and the classification of individuals outside standard employment contracts as entrepreneurs. ...
Entrepreneurship has the potential to drive economic development and social
advancement. The European Commission implemented entrepreneurship policy as a
pragmatic response to its economic and social challenges, especially after the 2008
financial crisis. Institutional changes to promote entrepreneurship and enable
individuals to directly contribute to economic growth, job creation and society were
introduced to create an entrepreneurial Europe.
This study undertakes a systematic review to examine the implications of
entrepreneurship policy within Europe. Examining and understanding the impacts of
entrepreneurship policy and institutional changes are particularly relevant because of
the billions of Euros invested and the impacts on the working lives of European citizens.
By examining a broad range of existing literature, the study finds that the
entrepreneurial Europe envisioned by policymakers has not been fully realised. Instead,
entrepreneurship activity has skewed towards poor quality, necessity entrepreneurship.
The European institutional context has also shifted away from the social model on which
it was founded, increasing the exposure of European workers to social risks. To promote
sustainable growth, wellbeing and well-functioning labour markets, researchers and
policymakers are reconsidering the role of social protection. Social protection also has
the potential to promote quality entrepreneurship. Based on the review of literature,
seven testable propositions about how social protection can promote quality
entrepreneurship have been developed for future empirical testing.
This study advances knowledge in entrepreneurship research and contributes to debates
in policymaking and practice. It also provides a sound basis for subsequent empirical
research.
https://jyx.jyu.fi/handle/123456789/75105
... For the growth of nascent firms, the government may provide counselling, advice, resources, and networks. Buffart et al. (2020) analyse data from the U.S. Small Business Development Center (SBDC) programme and find that participation in such programmes helps innovative ventures achieve significant growth milestones. Started in 1979, the programme has expanded to include over 1,000 service centres nationwide and now provides technical and managerial support to more than 1.2 million businesses annually, serving as the primary resource for small business assistance in the United States (Buffart et al. 2020). ...
... Buffart et al. (2020) analyse data from the U.S. Small Business Development Center (SBDC) programme and find that participation in such programmes helps innovative ventures achieve significant growth milestones. Started in 1979, the programme has expanded to include over 1,000 service centres nationwide and now provides technical and managerial support to more than 1.2 million businesses annually, serving as the primary resource for small business assistance in the United States (Buffart et al. 2020). Government spending on physical infrastructure development may indirectly boost the demand for goods and services, creating opportunities for new enterprise formation (Audretsch et al. 2022). ...
... The existing evidence generally highlights that the relationship between both business advisory services and grants and firm performance is positive (e.g., Dvoulety et al., 2021a;Mole, 2023). However, this research indicates that how this support is delivered is crucial for its effectiveness, with length and intensity of support key (Buffart et al., 2020;Mole et al., 2011;Srhoj, 2021a). ...
... Impact was found to be higher when more intensive support was given to a smaller cohort of firms. Likewise, Buffart et al., (2020) find that for Small Business Development Centers (SBDC) advisory services in the US, growth outcomes were achieved with fewer advising hours when the treatment design had a higher duration of interaction with intensive engagement. This was found to be more effective than 'picking winners'. ...
Governments have long favoured business advisory services and grants as key tools for supporting firms. While existing research generally underscores their positive impact on firm performance, there is less clarity on how this support influences specific managerial practices. These practices, which encompass a firm's strategies and activities, are thought to be first shaped by business support, which then in turn more directly impact firm performance. In this research paper, we analyse data from the Longitudinal Small Business Survey (LSBS) between 2018 and 2022 to examine the links between receiving business support in 2018, the managerial practices implemented in 2019, and firm performance (turnover growth and employee growth). Our study reveals that although business advice and government grants enhance the likelihood of adopting managerial practices, their individual and combined direct and indirect effects on firm performance are marginal. Additionally, the impact of business support on performance seems lagged, as SMEs require time to implement the support before observing any noticeable improvements. We discuss the implications of these findings and highlight the need for further research to explore these results in greater detail.
... Technology commercialization takes time and requires in-depth exploration to experiment with possible market, technology and business model solutions (Buffart et al., 2020). As SBV founders may only partially understand the full breadth of issues, they may turn to advisors (Chrisman et al., 2005). ...
... The difficulty in studying early technology commercialization stems partly from the lack of clarity in metrics prior to typical milestones such as raising capital, creating jobs, or sales (Buffart et al., 2020;Lanahan et al., 2021;Lerner, 1999). We propose application readiness as a measure of progress in both technical capabilities and market analysis. ...
Early-stage science-based ventures (SBVs) require a wide range of intellectual resources and practical know-how to successfully commercialize their technologies. Often SBV founders actively gain this knowledge through advisory relationships providing business and technology guidance. We explore the effects of both business and technology advisors in combination with the founder’s entrepreneurial and technology experience. We measure early-stage success in an SBV using application readiness, a novel concept that encompasses progress in both technology discovery and validation as well as market identification and application. Using hand-collected longitudinal data from 112 emerging science-based ventures associated with American universities, we find that business advisors have a positive impact on application readiness, while technology advisors delay it; and these effects are moderated by the founder’s experience. Remarkably, a small number of advisors can have the same impact as decades of experience. Our article unpacks underexplored mechanisms through which advisors—an often-used policy tool supporting entrepreneurship—are implemented in emerging science-based ventures and makes academic contributions to the literatures on technology commercialization, advisors and human capital.
... Hence, the provision of entrepreneurship education and the development of efficient entrepreneurial support infrastructures have become a top priority in the agenda of many countries, in particular for the innovation-driven economies (Buffart et al., 2020). ...
... Despite the recognised need of governments to understand how to support the innovation processes of new ventures (Buffart et al., 2020), surprisingly little phenomenological research has been conducted to understand the problems faced by the entrepreneur during the innovation process. As argued in the literature review, this is the result of both ontological as well as methodological gaps underlying the field of entrepreneurship studies, as most new venture creation process models do not take into account the specific organisational context in which nascent firms develop (Wallin et al., 2015). ...
This thesis contributes to sharpening process theories of organisational emergence. It studies the co-evolution of new product development (NPD) and new venture creation (NVC) activities for nascent entrepreneurs in the process of commercialising their idea. The empirical context selected for studying this process is that of entrepreneurs in Fabrication Spaces, open design and fabrication workshops. This thesis unpacks and analyses the process of entrepreneurial innovation in its defining components, providing empirical evidence for its challenges and associated key resources from the perspective of entrepreneurs. By focusing on the very initial stages of such process, I identify some of the key antecedents of entrepreneurial innovation behaviour and how they are harvested through Fabrication Spaces as example of entrepreneurial support systems. The outcome of the study is the introduction of a revised view on the contemporary process, resources and context of entrepreneurial innovation, a phenomenon that is gaining particular relevance in digital, crowd-sourced, and collaborative economies. First the exploratory research draws upon a review of the literature on the venture creation process for nascent entrepreneurs. This review highlights one major knowledge gap, concerning how the development of technical products and production capabilities in a new venture intertwine with the development and launch of the business. To address this gap, an initial theoretical model is outlined and used to structure the analysis of data captured from 19 in-depth and cross-sectional case studies. Then, the social and technical resources employed by entrepreneurs to navigate the entrepreneurial innovation journey are mapped onto the corresponding stages and events of the process described by the theoretical model. This mapping uncovers new contextual influences for the process of entrepreneurial innovation, in particular for what concerns the role of acquired psychological and technical capital in the early stages of the process. Acquiring such capital through community embeddedness and resource sharing in Fabrication Spaces allowed nascent entrepreneurs to refine and perfect their venture ideas through rapid cycles of learning in line with the lean entrepreneurship approach and create venture prototypes through dispersed entrepreneurial agency. To strengthen these results, I run a cluster analysis of the current landscape of Fabrication Spaces available in the UK and confirm that, despite not addressing entrepreneurship directly in their agenda, these spaces are adapting their offering to increasingly accommodate entrepreneurial needs. The theoretical contributions help to sharpen and expand entrepreneurship process theories and suggest how Fabrication Spaces can complement the current available landscape of support systems available to start-ups by increasing the robustness of entrepreneurs’ propositions very early on and improving their chances to be later appreciated by entrepreneurship programmes and investors.
... Companies were informed that they could apply for an additional £50,000 for further production if the project was deemed "commercially viable," a term never explicitly defined. The nebulousness may have provided flexibility for Kyrios in awarding funding (Buffart, Croidieu, Kim, & Bowman, 2020). The teams presented their games, with or without visual slides or playable demos, at approximately 3:30 every Friday afternoon. ...
... Our final time scale was 12 months, responding to calls for longitudinal research (Goswami et al., 2018). Whereas other studies have used funding as a proxy for success (Buffart et al., 2020;Hallen et al., 2020), we concentrated on released games since this was the goal set out by the RPI (see also Barbero et al., 2012). ...
Objective of the study: We seek to understand two aspects of a business accelerator: first, how an accelerator influences early product development, and second, how an accelerator impacts participants during and after acceleration. _____
Methodology/approach: We conducted an ethnography of a rapid prototyping program in video game development. Methods included 810 hours of participant observation, 58 interviews, and hundreds of analyzed material artifacts. ____
Originality/Relevance: We add insight into the impact and outcomes of an accelerator program across multiple scales: spatial, temporal, and product. Our study is one of the first to examine a formal video game development accelerator. ____
Main Results: Accelerator participants created 42 prototype games, two companies received additional funding, but no games were released within one year of the program. Product scales changed over time from expectations, to prototypes, to final games. The spatial-temporal scale of the accelerator was open to interpretation. Participants and observers held two main spatial-temporal perspectives (present-local and future-global) that changed over a one year time period. _____
Theoretical/methodological contributions: First, we conceptualize an accelerator as a dual competitive place where participants and observers engage in dueling and evolving spatial-temporal perspectives over time. Second, we develop the concept of an accelerated digital product scale to explain the process of evolvement from an accelerator product to a potential final product. ____
Social/Management contributions: We conclude the impact of an accelerator is more complex than the structure or the output. The accelerator may rapidly generate ideas or prototypes, but this does not guarantee a quicker final product release. _____
Resumo Objetivo do estudo: Buscamos entender dois aspectos de um acelerador de negócios: primeiro, como um acelerador influencia o desenvolvimento inicial do produto e, segundo, como um acelerador impacta os participantes durante e após a aceleração. Relevância/originalidade: Adicionamos insights sobre o impacto e os resultados de um programa de aceleração em várias escalas: espacial, temporal e de produto. Nosso estudo é um dos primeiros a examinar um acelerador formal de desenvolvimento de videogames. Metodologia/abordagem: Realizamos uma etnografia de um programa de prototipagem rápida no desenvolvimento de videogames. Os métodos incluíram 810 horas de observação participante, 58 entrevistas e centenas de artefatos materiais analisados. Principais resultados: Os participantes do Accelerator criaram 42 protótipos de jogos, duas empresas receberam financiamento adicional, mas nenhum jogo foi lançado dentro de um ano do programa. As escalas de produtos mudaram ao longo do tempo de expectativas para protótipos e jogos finais. A escala espaço-temporal do acelerador estava aberta à interpretação. Participantes e observadores tinham duas perspectivas espaço-temporais principais (presente-local e futuro-global) que mudaram ao longo do período de um ano. Contribuições teóricas/metodológicas: Primeiro, conceituamos um acelerador como um lugar competitivo duplo onde participantes e observadores se envolvem em duelos e perspectivas espaço-temporais em evolução ao longo do tempo. Em segundo lugar, desenvolvemos o conceito de uma escala de produto digital acelerada para explicar o processo de passar de um produto acelerador para um produto final potencial. Contribuições sociais/para a gestão: Concluímos que o impacto de um acelerador é mais complexo do que a estrutura ou a saída. O acelerador pode gerar ideias ou protótipos rapidamente, mas isso não garante uma liberação mais rápida do produto final. Palavras-chave: Aceleradora. Indústria de videogames. Etnografia. Incubadoras. Indústrias criativas. Resumen Objetivo del studio: Buscamos comprender dos aspectos de un acelerador de negocios: primero, cómo un acelerador influye en el desarrollo temprano del producto, y segundo, cómo un acelerador impacta a los participantes durante y después de la aceleración. Originalidad/Relevancia: Agregamos información sobre el impacto y los resultados de un programa acelerador en múltiples escalas: espacial, temporal y de producto. Nuestro estudio es uno de los primeros en examinar un acelerador formal de desarrollo de videojuegos. Metodología/enfoque: Realizamos una etnografía de un programa de creación rápida de prototipos en el desarrollo de videojuegos. Los métodos incluyeron 810 horas de observación participante, 58 entrevistas y cientos de artefactos materiales analizados. Principales resultados: Los participantes de Accelerator crearon 42 prototipos de juegos, dos empresas recibieron financiamiento adicional, pero no se lanzaron juegos dentro del año del programa. Las escalas de los productos cambiaron con el tiempo, desde las expectativas hasta los prototipos y los juegos finales. La escala espacio-temporal del acelerador estaba abierta a interpretación. Los participantes y observadores tenían dos perspectivas espacio-temporales principales (presente-local y futuro-global) que cambiaron durante el período de un año. Aportes teóricos/metodológicos: Primero, conceptualizamos un acelerador como un lugar competitivo dual donde los participantes y los observadores se involucran en duelos y perspectivas espacio-temporales en evolución a lo largo del tiempo. En segundo lugar, desarrollamos el concepto de una escala acelerada de productos digitales para explicar el proceso de pasar de un producto acelerador a un producto final potencial. Contribuciones sociales/gestión: Concluimos que el impacto de un acelerador es más complejo que la estructura o la salida. El acelerador puede generar rápidamente ideas o prototipos, pero esto no garantiza un lanzamiento más rápido del producto final. Palabras clave: Aceleradora. Industria de los videojuegos. Etnografía. Incubadoras. Industrias creativas.
... Companies were informed that they could apply for an additional £50,000 for further production if the project was deemed "commercially viable," a term never explicitly defined. The nebulousness may have provided flexibility for Kyrios in awarding funding (Buffart, Croidieu, Kim, & Bowman, 2020). The teams presented their games, with or without visual slides or playable demos, at approximately 3:30 every Friday afternoon. ...
... Our final time scale was 12 months, responding to calls for longitudinal research (Goswami et al., 2018). Whereas other studies have used funding as a proxy for success (Buffart et al., 2020;Hallen et al., 2020), we concentrated on released games since this was the goal set out by the RPI (see also Barbero et al., 2012). ...
Objective of the study: We seek to understand two aspects of a business accelerator: first, how an accelerator influences early product development, and second, how an accelerator impacts participants during and after acceleration.Methodology/approach: We conducted an ethnography of a rapid prototyping program in video game development. Methods included 810 hours of participant observation, 58 interviews, and hundreds of analyzed material artifacts.Originality/Relevance: We add insight into the impact and outcomes of an accelerator program across multiple scales: spatial, temporal, and product. Our study is one of the first to examine a formal video game development accelerator.Main Results: Accelerator participants created 42 prototype games, two companies received additional funding, but no games were released within one year of the program. Product scales changed over time from expectations, to prototypes, to final games. The spatial-temporal scale of the accelerator was open to interpretation. Participants and observers held two main spatial-temporal perspectives (present-local and future-global) that changed over a one year time period.Theoretical/methodological contributions: First, we conceptualize an accelerator as a dual competitive place where participants and observers engage in dueling and evolving spatial-temporal perspectives over time. Second, we develop the concept of an accelerated digital product scale to explain the process of evolvement from an accelerator product to a potential final product.Social/Management contributions: We conclude the impact of an accelerator is more complex than the structure or the output. The accelerator may rapidly generate ideas or prototypes, but this does not guarantee a quicker final product release.
... Accelerators like Technology Transfer Offices (TTO) use a similar approach and often enjoy comparable results (e.g., O'Shea et al., 2005). The Small Business Development Center (SBDC), however, is renowned for impactful trainings and seminars that build the types of human capital connected to new venture growth (Buffart et al., 2020). As one of the nation's leading small enterprise development organizations, the SBDC's programs don't just accelerate human capital; they also contribute to social capital development. ...
... The government can increase public trust by ensuring that the tax system is fair and that tax contributions are well managed. Openness in using tax funds and law enforcement against tax violations can create a climate in which people feel that their contributions are valued and managed properly (Buffart et al., 2020;Kwapisz, 2019). The government can also encourage tax awareness through appropriate incentives and tax exemptions. ...
Phenomenon/Issue: Local government and village head leadership play an important role in increasing public awareness of paying taxes, but work effectiveness as a mediating variable has not been widely explored. Purpose: This research aims to analyze the influence of government policy and village head leadership on public awareness of paying taxes, with work effectiveness as a mediating variable. Novelty: This research adds work effectiveness variables as mediators to deepen understanding of how government policy and village head leadership can influence people's awareness of paying taxes. Research Methods: Quantitative research using a survey approach was carried out in Karangrejo Village, Karangrejo District, Magetan Regency. Data was collected through questionnaires filled out by respondents who were residents of Karangrejo Village. Results: The results of the study show that government policy and village head leadership have a significant effect on people's awareness of paying taxes. Work effectiveness was found as a mediating variable that strengthens this influence. Research Contributions: This research provides insight into the importance of transparent government policies and responsive village head leadership to increase work effectiveness and public awareness in paying taxes, which will ultimately have a positive impact on increasing local tax revenues
... GES Student's perception of GES was measured with 3 items derived from questionnaires developed by Buffart et al. (2020), and Malebana (2017), and Park et al. (2020). This scale reflects how effective the students perceive the entrepreneurial support provided by the government. ...
This study investigates the relationship between entrepreneurial education (EE) and entrepreneurial intention (EI) among university students who have attended entrepreneurship courses. The study explores the mediating role of entrepreneurial self-efficacy (ESE) in this relationship. Additionally, the study examines the moderating impact of government-based entrepreneurial support (GES) and entrepreneurial fear of financial concerns (EFFC) on the relationship between EE and ESE. Quantitative hypothesis testing was used, and survey data were collected from 265 university students who attended entrepreneurship courses in Ankara, Turkey. The data were analyzed using the IBM SPSS 29 and SPSS AMOS 29 software programs. The study findings suggest a significant positive relationship between EE and EI. Furthermore, ESE was found to mediate the relationship between EE and EI. The study also found that GES and EFFC moderate the relationship between EE and ESE. This study contributes to the existing literature by providing new insights into the mechanisms that promote entrepreneurial intentions through educational interventions, external support (i.e., government), and entrepreneurial fears (i.e., financial concerns).
... Entrepreneurship is considered capable of being one of the activities in supporting and helping the life of the family's economy as well as being able to support economic growth in Indonesia entrepreneurs are more developed and prosperous, because entrepreneurship can grow a country's Gross Domestic Product and absorb labor (Sarfiah et al., 2019). The number of unemployment rates can be reduced by the courage to create their own jobs or entrepreneurship (Buffart et al., 2020;Marketing et al., 2019;Nowiński et al., 2019)That is why entrepreneurship is an important topic in various forums today, because of its huge role in growing the nation's economy. ...
Entrepreneurship plays a crucial role in advancing the Indonesian economy with the potential to reduce unemployment and support economic growth. Although the government intensively encourages the spirit of entrepreneurship, there are still obstacles, especially related to not daring to face business risks. Amid the pandemic, unemployment is rising, prompting some individuals to turn to self-employment as a way of surviving. However, the number of entrepreneurs in Indonesia is still below international standards, reflecting obstacles to stimulating entrepreneurial interest. Phenomenological research on the role of ambition for freedom as an entrepreneurial motivation among students and alumni of Commerce Education at State University of Malang is still limited. Further understanding of ambition for freedom in the context of entrepreneurial learning at universities is needed to inform effective educational strategies, encourage interest in entrepreneurship at the local level, and support national economic growth. This study used a descriptive qualitative approach. The subject of the study involves Students. Data was collected through observation, interviews, and documentation. Data analysis involves the reduction, display, and inference of data, with tringulation used to ensure validity. The results showed that comprehensively, the findings of the three data collection methods consistently supported the central role of Ambition for Freedom in motivating Commerce Education students to choose and succeed in entrepreneurial careers. These overall findings provide a deep understanding of the dynamics of intrinsic motivation in the context of entrepreneurial learning. This research provides a strong foundation for advanced research related to the development of entrepreneurial learning strategies that focus more on aspects of intrinsic motivation. In addition, longitudinal research can provide a clearer picture of the long-term impact of entrepreneurial learning on the careers of students and alumni.
... for the development and evaluation of entrepreneurship policy. Policymakers face difficult tradeoffs regarding how to allocate scarce public resources, and it is an ongoing debate whether and how entrepreneurship policy can contribute to fostering high-impact entrepreneurship (Acs et al., 2016a;Audretsch et al., 2020;Autio and Rannikko, 2016;Bradley et al., 2021;Buffart et al., 2020;Lerner, 2021;Shane, 2009;Wennberg and Sandström, 2022). The appropriate design of policy interventions depends on, amongst others, the status quo of countries' entrepreneurial performance and entrepreneurial ecosystem conditions; broader national policies related to, for example, education, health, and im-migration; the rationale for intervention; as well as the desired target, i.e., routine or high-impact entrepreneurship. ...
... The incentivisation of growth is typically guiding entrepreneurship policy and publicly-founded startups (cf. Buffart et al., 2020), e.g., through regulatory changes allowing pension funds to fuel the growth of new firms (Acs and Szerb, 2007). Scholars and intergovernmental organisations have called for entrepreneurship policies to be aligned with the growth paradigm (e.g., Mason and Brown, 2013;OECD, 2010). ...
Currently, entrepreneurship policy equates value and productivity
with economic growth and innovation. However, pressing grand sustainability challenges question this notion of productivity and the types and recipients of the value entrepreneurs should create. In this conceptual article, we argue that entrepreneurship policy should be re-oriented toward a public value framework that better reflects societal goals. This article argues that public value is created when the public (i.e., everyone in society or the majority of actors that constitute it) perceives a specific shared need to be met by an entrepreneurial solution. Based on a distinction between micro-level private and macro-level public value creation, this article proposes four pathways that explain how entrepreneurs can address the needs of the public. These public value creation processes help policymakers with designing entrepreneurship policies that address grand sustainability challenges. Furthermore, sustainable entrepreneurs may orient their solutions to societal challenges according to a public value creation perspective.
... A final contribution with implications for policy and practice are the insights provided here for the investment agencies crafting policies and committing resources to attract mobile international entrepreneurs (Silvanto & Ryan, 2014;Silvanto, Ryan and McNulty, 2015). Could the agencies' ability to 'pick winners' (Buffart et al., 2020) evolve to select entrepreneurs holding a greater propensity to settlement or longer-term expatriation? While Astebro and Thompson, (2011) andFrederiksen, Wennberg &Balachandran (2016) show that past mobility correlates with the likelihood of present and future movement, the continuum of the dual settlerexplorer impulses detailed above holds that a clear-cut separation of explorers and settlers is far too binaristic: explorers can also be subject to settler impulses and actions; settlers are still drawn to exploration and nomadism in different phases of business development. ...
Purpose. International Entrepreneurs (IEs) increasingly cross borders to internationalize their activities, yet the various motives driving them into foreign markets are insufficiently understood vis-à-vis the public agencies striving to attract them. Our study proposes a consideration of their interplay by contrasting the various mobility rationales of IEs with those of the investment agencies striving to capture their talent.
Design/methodology/approach. Empirically, we concentrate on firms selected for funding in the French Tech Ticket, a competitive program designed to incentivize international start-ups to set up business in regional clusters across France. Using a longitudinal qualitative approach, we conducted two separate rounds of semi-structured interviews with IEs, public agency managers, and incubator staff members using thematic analysis of participant narratives on mobility.
Findings. Our findings point to diverging narratives on mobility, with an overarching opportunity-centrism on the part of the entrepreneurs and a general location-centrism emanating from the regional agencies. These contrasting visions of mobility are not mutually exclusive but rather present along a mobility continuum that generates contrasting logics.
Originality. We theorize this incommensurability as an expression of the current complexity of international mobility and policymaking, revealing a ‘next-frontier’ expansionism in cross-border movement that requires more deliberate consideration.
... While some scholars believe that there is less interest in assisting necessitydriven SMEs (Morris et al., 2015), others argue that due to climate change, poverty, and economic issues, there is a growing need for governments to focus their support on necessity-driven SMEs, given their ability to enhance livelihoods (Dung et al., 2021). GSPs can be generic or specifically target necessity-or opportunity-driven SMEs (Buffart et al., 2020;Colombelli et al., 2020). ...
Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are often resource-constrained and motivated by necessity or opportunity. They play an essential role in national economies due to their contributions to employment, human capital development, knowledge spillovers, and social mobility in maintaining diverse entrepreneurial ecosystems. Government support policies (GSP), both financial and nonfinancial, can directly impact SME performance or indirectly by developing an entrepreneurial orientation (EO). Few studies have investigated the important question of how GSP simultaneously may impact both the EO and the performance of an SME. Thus, this paper aims to identify the current understanding of how different forms of GSPs relate to and impact the EO and the performance of SMEs. A systematic literature review was conducted using the PRISMA methodology to synthesize this understanding, resulting in 65 relevant articles from the ABI/INFORM, ScienceDirect, Scopus and Web of Science databases. The relationships between the constructs were analyzed using thematic and semantic analyses, employing computer-assisted data analysis software (NVivo 12 and Leximancer 4.5). This resulted in the categorization of GSPs as direct and indirect support policies, with financial and nonfinancial-subcategories, and depicted their pathways of influence on SMEs’ EO and performance. The study found that GSPs have four different pathways by which they can impact performance. Both direct and indirect policies have moderating effects that can magnify the impact of EO on performance. The review established that the direct effect of GSP on EO varies by sector, SME growth-intention, and type of GSP. Based on the findings, we recommend policymakers develop support policies tailored to SMEs’ specific sector and its intentions to enhance performance.
... This implies that students positively perceived these programs, and most of them have been involved in the entrepreneurial program. These findings corroborate several prior works by Buffart et al. (2020), Kebairi et al. (2018), and Li et al. (2020), who mentioned that such government programs effectively support and provide a business incubator for students. The next hypothesis in this research investigates access to physical infrastructure factors, entrepreneurial intention, and students' preparation for business. ...
Finding the way out for new business creation has been a global issue and the Indonesian government responded to this issue by promoting the entrepreneurship program for students. For this matter, understanding the role of entrepreneurial ecosystem can be used to design and promote business from universities students. This study employed structural equation modeling with partial least square to raise understanding among variables. This study involved entrepreneurial ecosystem to explain the intention for business among university Indonesian students. The findings indicate that entrepreneurial ecosystem robustly links with students’ entrepreneurial intention and new business creation. This study confirms that access to finance, government programs and support, access to physical infrastructure factors, education and training factors are crucial for determining Indonesian university students’ business. The theoretical and practical implications were provided in this research.
... Taking this into consideration, the need arises to form a perfect system of support for small innovative entrepreneurship, as it provides a scientific and instrumental direction of development, as well as a number of strategies and projects for the development and support of small innovative entrepreneurship. Buffart et al. (2020), based on the results of investigations conducted, have come to conclusion about the importance of government programs as determinants of influence on the support of small innovative entrepreneurship. However, at the same time, scientists note that government programs, as a rule, should be based on the criteria of innovative entrepreneurship, as it depends not only on the result of their implementation, but also on the further development of small innovative entrepreneurship. ...
Modern business practice shows that small innovative entrepreneurship needs special support in the context of rapid development of science and technology. To implement the outlined, various business support programs are being developed at a rapid pace, which are being actively implemented in practice. The aim of the article is to present the conceptual features of the development and support of small innovative entrepreneurship in Europe and the United States. The purpose of the academic paper is to present the conceptual features of supporting small innovative entrepreneurship in Europe and the United States of America. A number of research methods have been used to reveal the purpose of the article, including such as: system-structural method, method of description, method of theoretical analysis, method of comparison, method of observation, method of synthesis, experimental method, modeling method, grouping method, generalization method. It has been proved that in European countries and the USA the policy of support of small innovative business is actively pursued. It has been found that the UK has developed and implemented Europe 2020: Scottish national reform program 2017, which provides support for small innovative businesses by promoting innovation in the business environment. It has been established that the Netherlands intends to expand opportunities to increase funding for small innovative entrepreneurships and provide favorable conditions for interaction between the private sector and scientists and researchers. It has been determined that in Germany the support of small innovative enterprises is granted by BVIZ, which provides opportunity and initiates potential entities to conduct small innovative entrepreneurship and activities in the direction of technology transfer and promotion of economic development. It has been established that in the USA support of small innovative entrepreneurships is provided by Small Business Development Centers which operate in various states of this country at local level and provide direct consulting services concerning prospects of business planning, legality (legitimacy) of activity, prospects of development of scientific researches, prospects of development of technics and technologies. It has been found that in addition to states, support for small innovative entrepreneurships is provided by international organizations and institutions, such as European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the European Commission.
... The citation network helps identify themes among groups of journals, Figure 3 displays the three largest groups; the journal "Research Policy" leads the first group and focuses on governmental policy themes for strengthening entrepreneurship (Buffart et al., 2020;Gifford et al., 2021); the second group leans toward the impact of technological development on IE (Dabić et al., 2021); the third group (green) prioritizes innovation processes in entrepreneurship (Elert & Henrekson, 2021). Table 4 presents the most prolific researchers in the field of IE. ...
Innovative entrepreneurship is highly significant for fostering new opportunities that add value to businesses and society; it is a field of study that necessitates regular monitoring of the state of the art. This paper aims to conduct a bibliometric analysis of innovative entrepreneurship to identify its intellectual structure and research trends, sourcing literature from Scopus and Web of Science (WoS) to conduct a bibliometric analysis. Researchers applied the Tree of Science (ToS) algorithm to discern an intellectual structure by drawing an analogy with roots, trunk, and branches, retrieving 1654 documents from Scopus and 680 from WoS, amounting to 1 795 non-duplicate documents; they observed a growing trend in scientific production, complemented by findings regarding countries, journals, authors, and their collaboration networks. Three significant trends emerged in the analysis using ToS: 1) Strategic Entrepreneurship, Digital Transformation, and Higher Education; 2) Technology as a Keystone in Entrepreneurial Innovation Ecosystems; and 3) Public Policy and Innovation Dynamics in Entrepreneurial Development. Researchers concluded that innovative entrepreneurship remains an inexhaustible field requiring further research development.
... for the development and evaluation of entrepreneurship policy. Policymakers face difficult tradeoffs regarding how to allocate scarce public resources, and it is an ongoing debate whether and how entrepreneurship policy can contribute to fostering high-impact entrepreneurship (Acs et al., 2016a;Audretsch et al., 2020;Autio and Rannikko, 2016;Bradley et al., 2021;Buffart et al., 2020;Lerner, 2021;Shane, 2009;Wennberg and Sandström, 2022). The appropriate design of policy interventions depends on, amongst others, the status quo of countries' entrepreneurial performance and entrepreneurial ecosystem conditions; broader national policies related to, for example, education, health, and im-migration; the rationale for intervention; as well as the desired target, i.e., routine or high-impact entrepreneurship. ...
Comparative international entrepreneurship research has often used measures of high-growth expectations entrepreneurship to proxy for the construct of high-impact entrepreneurship. We revisit this practice by assessing the cross-country association between high-growth expectations and realized high-impact entrepreneurship to speak to construct measurement fit. We find that expectations are not a good proxy for realizations; they are associated with different determinants and outcomes, respectively. We go on to introduce the notion of entrepreneurial projection bias to gauge the misfit between expectations and realizations. Conditioning on entrepreneurial projection bias partially restores the association between realized high-impact entrepreneurship and its determinants (or outcomes) when realizations are proxied using expectations. Furthermore, we show that opportunity-motivated entrepreneurship also does not proxy well for high-impact entrepreneurship. Our analysis brings into question current survey-based approaches to measuring high-impact entrepreneurship and existing rankings of countries’ entrepreneurial performance, with important implications for entrepreneurship theory and policy.
... To achieve this, universities should play a facilitative role in establishing a presence of investors' representatives on their campuses. A successful model from which to draw inspiration is the establishment of Small Business Development Centers (SBDCs) on campus, which has proven effective in supporting entrepreneurial ventures (Buffart et al., 2020). Such an initiative will not only foster symbiotic and synergistic relationships between the UIEE and the REE but also facilitate the seamless progression and scaling-up of commercialization ideas and nascent ventures originating from the university, ensuring their smooth integration with the REE in the long run. ...
Even though many universities have been working toward building a university-wide innovation and entrepreneurial ecosystem (UIEE), these UIEEs tend to remain stand-alone ecosystems that do not integrate very well with the wider regional entrepreneurial ecosystem (REE) existing outside the university’s boundaries. Even if they do, it is believed that their interlinkages are effective in some respects and not in others. Drawing upon the Commitment System Theory, we examine the nature of symbiotic relationships that can and should develop between the two ecosystems for the UIEE to realize its full potential and play its critical role in supporting continued entrepreneurship within a region. Specifically, we deconstruct the nature and implications of UIEE’s commitments operating at two levels—within the UIEE itself and between the UIEE and the REE. We propose that the nature of linkages in these commitment systems is fundamental to shaping the impact of UIEE. This, in turn, influences both the university and the regional ecosystem to give rise to a dynamic university-based innovation and entrepreneurial ecosystem that continuously evolves. We present a conceptual framework and identify a commitment subsystem that emerges at the intersection of two commitment systems—UIEE and REE. By doing so, we unravel the multiple commitments that govern the existence of the UIEE and the wider regional entrepreneurial ecosystem that exists outside the university’s boundaries.
... To create these pairs, we employ propensity score matching as described in Caliendo and Kopeinig (2008) and widely applied in previous studies (e.g. Buffart et al., 2020;Li et al., 2023). Subsequently, we proceed to evaluate whether this has an observable effect by comparing (level of) entrepreneurial interest within each group. ...
A high rate of youth unemployment is one of the toughest problems facing African countries and which threatens the attainment of the sustainable development goals. Entrepreneurship education interventions are thought to be helpful in creating entrepreneurs whose activity will ultimately help to reduce the burden of youth unemployment. However, do such interventions work consistently in the long term? Drawing upon the theory of planned behaviour and a new typology of impacts, we tackle this question in the context of a long-standing entrepreneurship education intervention in Nigeria. We use pooled cross-sectional data from a sample of over 12,000 Nigerian undergraduates and apply an instrumental variable approach in a difference-in-differences (DiD) regression framework to obtain intention-to-treat estimates, thereby avoiding overoptimistic estimates of impact. The results show that despite a strong positive instantaneous impact, the longer the policy has been in place, the weaker its effect. In real life, it means that the policy is unable to continue to generate the desired impact of increased interest in entrepreneurship among repeated student cohorts, all else being equal. We suggest ways to overcome the inconsistency of impact and drive long-term social change; these include differentiating entrepreneurship curriculum to match students’ pre-course profiles. Overall, our study provides the first long-term impact evaluation of an entrepreneurship education intervention in a developing country context. Thus, we advance the policy debate on how to design and implement effective entrepreneurship education interventions that can foster youth entrepreneurship and employment.
... Examples can be cited; the Italian Start-up Act (2012), encompasses different instruments for the subsidisation of both debt and equity of the innovative start-ups, highlights the complementarity of these two types of instruments that flow to different types of young innovative companies (Giraudo et al., 2019). Other developed countries have also established specific policies, such as Spain and Portugal (Fernández et al., 2022), USA (Buffart et al., 2020), Australia, Finland and Israel (OECD, 2013). ...
The article analyses the dynamics of start-up growth in Brazil highlighting the role of government, companies, venture capital and the innovation system in start-up policy. The most significant recent change in the Brazilian start-up ecosystem was the rise of growth-oriented entrepreneurship and start-ups. The 2021 Brazilian Legal Framework of Start-ups and Innovative Entrepreneurship is a milestone as it establishes mechanisms for the acquisition of products/services by the government provided by start-ups.
... The sole discrepancy lies in the fact that only one of the two undergraduates attends a university with compulsory entrepreneurship education (the intervention or treatment). To create these pairs, we employ propensity score matching as described in Caliendo and Kopeinig (2008) and widely applied in previous studies (e.g., Li et al., 2023;Buffart et al., 2020). Subsequently, we proceed to evaluate whether this has an observable effect by comparing (level of) entrepreneurial interest within each group. ...
A high rate of youth unemployment is one of the toughest problems facing African countries and which threatens the attainment of the SDGs. Entrepreneurship education interventions are thought to be helpful in creating entrepreneurs whose activity will ultimately help to reduce the burden of youth unemployment. However, do such interventions work especially consistently in the long term? Using data from a very large cohort of Nigerian undergraduates, this study tackles this question in the context of a long-standing entrepreneurship education intervention. Results show that despite a strong positive instantaneous impact, the intervention fails to deliver consistent impact over the long term. In real life, it means that the policy is unable to continue to generate the desired impact of increased interest in entrepreneurship among repeated student cohorts, all else being equal. The study concludes with a set of suggestions to overcome the inconsistency of impact including creating other interventions additional to the entrepreneurship course, linking the curriculum to entrepreneurship practice or differentiating the curriculum to match students’ pre-course profiles.
Note: This preprint has not undergone peer review or any post-submission improvements or corrections. The Version of Record of this article is published in Entrepreneurship Education, and is available online at https://doi.org/10.1007/s41959-024-00114-9.
... Prior research literature abounds with different forms and manifestations of and contexts for entrepreneurship, such as startup entrepreneurship (Morris et al., 2015), corporate entrepreneurship (Kuratko et al., 2015a(Kuratko et al., , 2015b, social entrepreneurship (Bacq & Lumpkin, 2021), arts entrepreneurship (Preece, 2011), non-profit entrepreneurship (Addicott, 2017, academic entrepreneurship (Wood, 2011), government entrepreneurship (Buffart et al., 2020;Vivona, 2023), community entrepreneurship (Lyons, et al., 2012), tourism entrepreneurship (Ratten, 2020), and now space entrepreneurship (Tchalakov, 2015) among others. It is clear that the field of entrepreneurship has expanded its reach to develop significant contexts for the entrepreneurial mindset. ...
In this paper, we develop a concept of “site entrepreneurship.” Distinct from other forms of entrepreneurship, site entrepreneurship is the transformation of remote desolate sites with low commercial value into profitable destinations. The primary theory used to explain how entrepreneurs draw customers to remote locations is the regulatory engagement theory. The primary driver in our concept is the entrepreneur with a vision of what a remote site could be as well as the entrepreneurial passion and hustle to pursue and develop the idea. The phenomenon that we are interested in is how popular destinations in remote areas are designed, developed, and sustained. The primary causes of mechanisms underlying relationships in our concept are (1) the entrepreneur’s vision, passion, and hustle in establishing customer, human capital, and supplier flows to the destination and (2) the mediators in our concept of legitimation, logistics, and transportation, experience design, and sequence effects that enable destination development. Using examples from actual site entrepreneurs, we delineate how these entrepreneurs transform desolate sites into destinations, provide the key aspects involved in the projects, explain the vital role logistics and transportation play in such development, and emphasize the importance of experience design and promotion in attracting customers to remote locations. We conclude the paper with suggestions for future research to expand and apply the concept.
... Innovative løsninger og nyskapende virksomheter er sentralt for et velferdssamfunn (Buffart et al., 2020), og det er viktig for samfunnet at studenter opparbeider seg kompetanser knyttet til å bidra til fornying og innovasjon. Ettersom innovasjon kan ha ulike betyninger, er det relevant å forstå hva vi legger i begrepet innovasjon, og vi ønsker her å benytte Van de Vens (1986, s. 591) definisjon for innovasjonsprosesser som utvikling og implemen tering av nye ideer blant personer som over tid engasjerer seg i samhandling med andre i en institusjonell kontekst. ...
Innovative løsninger og nyskapende virksomheter er sentralt for et velferdssamfunn, og for å få til det i tiden fremover må dagens studenter opparbeide seg innovasjonskompetanse. Dessverre er dette kompetanser som ikke nødvendigvis blir vektlagt utviklet i løpet av det formelle studieløpet. Samtidig består studietiden av mer enn det formelle studieløpet, og ved norske universiteter og høyskoler er det mange ulike frivillige organisasjoner drevet av studentene selv. Dette gjør at studenter opparbeider seg mye kompetanse gjennom engasjement i studentdrevne organisasjoner, og denne artikkelen setter søkelys på hvilke innovasjonskompetanser som utvikles, og hvordan dette eventuelt skjer. Først utviklet vi et rammeverk for innovasjonskompetanse bestående av: (1) kreativitet og utforskende aktivitet, (2) problemløsning, (3) strategisk tenkning, samt (4) samarbeids- og kommunikasjonsferdigheter. Deretter gjennomførte vi en studie med dybdeintervjuer med 14 studenter ved ulike utdanningsinstitusjoner i Norge som til sammen enten deltar eller har deltatt i 51 ulike verv. Funnene våre viser hvordan engasjement utover studiene bidrar til at studentene tilegner seg kunnskaper som de ikke får gjennom studiene. Økt kompetanse i å jobbe i tverrfaglige grupper, trygghet i håndtering av konflikter, handlingskompetanse og større nettverk er noen erfaringer studentene sitter igjen med som er i samsvar med innovasjonskompetanse. Vi mener derfor at studentfrivillighet kan gi viktig innovasjonskompetanse for fremtidens arbeidsliv.
... Corporate EID may not be a random event, and thus, our estimation may suffer from selection bias (Liu et al., 2021). To address the sample self-selection and further verify the impact of corporate EID on green innovation, this study uses the Generalized Propensity Score Matching (GPSM) method developed by Hirano and Imbens (2004) (Heckman et al., 1998;Lechner, 2002), the GPSM method presents the relationship between EID level and green innovation in the form of a response function instead of an average effect, allowing the effect of corporate green innovation to be measured at different EID levels (Bartolini et al., 2021;Buffart et al., 2020;Hall et al., 2022;Thapliyal et al., 2019). ...
This study investigates the effect of corporate environmental information disclosure (EID) on green innovation in China's heavily polluting industries during 2009–2020 and the moderating effect of Chief Executive Officer (CEO) visibility. The results show that: (1) corporate EID increases green innovation, and CEO visibility strengthens the positive impact of corporate EID on green innovation. (2) The green innovation fostered by EID comes from the leverage effect, not from the crowding‐out effect at the expense of other existing innovations; EID stimulates green innovation by alleviating financing constraints and increasing R&D expenditures. (3) Corporate EID has a greater impact on substantive green innovation than on strategic green innovation, and hard EID makes a more significant contribution to green innovation than soft EID does. (4) State‐owned, large, and established enterprises benefit more from the promotion effect of EID on green innovation as well as the positive moderating effect of CEO visibility.
... Once a small firm has reached a certain size and established itself with its products and services in a specific market, strategy becomes almost a non-issue and operational tasks the main preoccupation of the managers (Dillen et al., 2019). Lock-in on specific cognitive frames may in turn transfer into organizational and strategic inertia (Nelson and Winter, 1982;Tripsas and Gavetti, 2000;Walsh, 1995), cause firms to miss out on opportunities to exploit their full business potential (Buffart et al., 2020;Fiol and Huff, 1992;Gioia and Chittipeddi 1991), restrain firms from pursuing change and growth strategies (Wiklund et al., 2003), and ultimately threaten firm survival (Kiesler and Sproull, 1982;Oliver, 1997). In any of these cases, societal benefits are lost. ...
Purpose
This study examines the relationship between small-firm managers' propensity to participate in a growth-oriented training program and their subsequent program outcome in terms of strategic reorientation. From a policy perspective, this relates to the important question of what benefit would come from recruiting managers who are normally not easily recruitable for training programs.
Design/methodology/approach
A control group design including pre- and post-training surveys is used to assess the effects of a large-scale management training program. Accounting for selection bias, the difference-in-difference method, together with propensity score matching, was applied to assess average program effects. The matching-smoothing method was used to assess heterogeneity in program effects associated with participation propensity.
Findings
Overall, program participation associated positively with change in strategic orientations. This effect was especially pronounced for managers with either low or medium to high inclinations for program enrollment, while diminishing in the modest to medium range.
Practical implications
The findings have important practical implications for selection of target groups and recruitment strategies in relation to small-firm management training programs. From the results, recruitment strategies may effectively include managers with either high or low participation propensities, rather than aiming to “fill up” with managers with moderately low participation propensity.
Originality/value
Several extant studies have examined average treatment effects from small-firm training programs. Yet there has been a lack of examination of the extent to which participation propensity modifies the effect of training on outcomes. This study brings new knowledge of the direction and magnitude of such heterogeneous training effects.
... In other cases, such as the examples above, governments take a more active approach. This often entails providing tax incentives, subsidizing R&D, and "picking winners" (Autio & Rannikko, 2016;Buffart et al., 2020;Mazzucato, 2018). ...
How can governments attract entrepreneurs and their businesses? The view that new business creation grows with the optimal level of government investment remains appealing to policymakers. In contrast with this active approach, we build a model where governments may adopt a passive approach to stimulating business creation. The insights from this model suggest new business creation depends positively on factors beyond government investments—attracting high-skilled migrants to the region and lower property prices, taxes, and fines on firms in the informal sector. These findings suggest whether entrepreneurs generate business creation in the region does not only depend on government investments. It also depends on location and skilled migration. Our model also provides methodological implications—the relationship between government investments and new business creation is endogenously determined, so unless adjustments are made, econometric estimates will be biased and inconsistent. We conclude with policy and managerial implications.
... The conversion dimension in this study is expressed in terms of R&D funding and the transformation of technological results. The mature practical experience worldwide shows that effective government management models are still the basic support tools for sustainable cities [36], but the realization of the goal also requires sufficient financial support and adequate transformation of knowledge. Although the management approaches and platform are the basic support tools for sustainable cities, the original social system can only change essentially when funds and technology enter the absorption process. ...
The goals and transformation of sustainable urban development require fundamental innovation; however, urban innovation is a cyclical process, the paradigm of innovation itself needs to be dramatically transformed, and all innovation key elements need to be coordinated with each other to achieve sustainable urban outputs. Based on this, this paper uses the absorptive capacity theory to construct a model of the relationships between the acquisition dimension, digestion dimension, conversion dimension, utilization dimension, and sustainable development in the innovation process of smart cities and uses the fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (FSQCA) method to investigate the configuration mechanism in depth to show how the innovation process of these cities affects their sustainable development, taking the top 72 cities in China in terms of innovation capacity in 2020 as the research objects. The results of the study form three complex configuration paths that affect sustainable urban development, centered on the transformation of technological achievements, innovation management drive, and smart cities, and reveal that the economic and market foundations as the dimensions of urban innovation acquisition are not the core conditions for sustainable urban development. Based on this, this study develops a configuration classification for innovative cities that can achieve sustainable development, i.e., industrial paths, governance paths, and technology paths, and proposes strategic directions for sustainable urban innovation development.
... The study demonstrated the features of nascent entrepreneurs' support needs and the value attached to such programmes. Innovation is a key to entrepreneurial success, Buffart et al. (2020) wrote on how government entrepreneurial programmes support innovation ventures. The study evaluated the benefits of such government programmes to innovative entrepreneurial ventures. ...
Objective: The aim of the study is to examine the nexus between entrepreneurial ecosystem and nascent entrepreneurship in sub-Saharan Africa. Research Design & Methods: The study employed a quantitative methodology and consequently, the variables and data were drawn from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) survey ranging from 2004-2019. The sample observations of the study were eight countries across sub-Saharan Africa. The country-level data were analyzed through the application of least square regression to determine the nexus between the financing environment, government support policy, physical and service infrastructure and entrepreneurial start-ups. Findings: The study findings demonstrate that entrepreneurial financing had positive effect on nascent entrepreneurship; government support policy had positive effect on entrepreneurial start-ups; infrastructure had positive effect on early entrepreneurial activity. Implications & Recommendations: The paper recommends that there should be a renewed commitment on the part of governments to support and initiate intervention programmes to build entrepreneurial ecosystem and promote entrepreneurial activity but such programme design and implementation should look into contextual specifics and consider the COVID-19 related factors. Contribution & Value Added: In this paper, we have offered significant contribution to the existing body of scholarship in small business management and entrepreneurship from the prisms of global health emergency and that building a friendly entrepreneurial ecosystem stimulates prevalence and sustainability of nascent entrepreneurship in countries.
... Specifically, we examine whether Singapore-based entrepreneurs operating early-growth ventures from a broad range of sectors benefit from structured training. We study early-growth entrepreneurs because prior research shows that crossing the chasm from a nascent startup with barely any revenue to an early-growth stage venture with greater stability of cash flows is a daunting challenge (Aldrich, 1999;Buffart et al., 2020). Our focus on the early-growth stage of the entrepreneurship process thus complements Camuffo et al. (2020) whose study focused on the prior stage (the idea evaluation stage). ...
Research Summary
Does growth training help entrepreneurs scale‐up new ventures? Our field experiment answers this question using data from 181 Singapore‐based, early‐growth entrepreneurs drawn from a broad range of industry sectors. Treatment content focused on three growth‐catalyst tools relevant for formulating and executing innovation‐led growth: business‐model design, leveraging external networks, and building internal teams. Treatment format comprised interactive lecture sessions and workshops on these tools supplemented by personalized coaching in applying the tools to entrepreneurs' specific challenges. We find that ventures led by entrepreneurs that received training experienced sales growth of 72.5% compared to 30.3% for those in the control condition. Furthermore, ventures led by entrepreneurs with more ambitious growth expectations experienced sales growth of about 100% compared to 10% for those in the control condition.
Managerial Summary
We study how training in growth‐catalyst tools help entrepreneurs scale‐up new ventures. We focused on three tools relevant for formulating and executing innovation‐led growth: business‐model design, leveraging external networks, and building internal teams. The training format comprised lecture workshops and personalized coaching in applying the tools. Our quantitative findings confirm that entrepreneurs who attended the training increased their venture's sales revenue, and the more ambitious entrepreneurs increased their venture's sales revenue to a much greater degree. Illustrative interviews suggest these tools help entrepreneurs to reimagine their business, successfully access influential resource‐holders such as potential investors or customers, and persuade them by representing their business in a credible and succinct fashion. Our findings inform policymakers designing entrepreneurial training interventions on how participants' ambitions shapes intervention success.
... We believe research on the efficacy of ESOs would benefit from taking a similar view. Finally, we suggest that attention should be given to nonincubator assistance programs, such as the Small Business Development Center and Service Corps of Retired Executives funded by the Small Business Administration, which are designed to facilitate self-learning by their entrepreneur-clients (Buffart et al., 2020). We also see a need for comparative reviews of ESOs and support programs from different policy/country contexts. ...
As the field of entrepreneurship has grown, so has the accumulated knowledge about individual entrepreneurs, entrepreneurial ventures, and the entrepreneurial environment. The purpose of this special issue is to offer a forum for articles that used different approaches to examine the literature for the purpose of accumulating knowledge on various facets of entrepreneurship. We first provide context for the special issue and then attempt to extend the contributions of the eight articles it contains. We conclude by calling for further knowledge accumulation efforts and discussing the kinds of efforts needed to advance the state of knowledge of the field.
... From a structural point of view, policy innovation through projects requires that personnel at multiple levels in public agencies engage project ideas and build relationships with the project team, and this can be difficult to achieve in a bureaucratic, hierarchical organization (see Young-Hyman 2017). Several interfaces derive directly from program design, stressing the importance of policy input to the functioning of innovative projects (Buffart et al. 2020). How to integrate bureaucratic procedural controls with post-bureaucratic principles is an open puzzle (D. ...
Our analysis addresses innovation processes that shape public policy and the engagement of state and non-state actors in environmental management. Public sector organizations increasingly invest resources in collaborative temporary endeavors – i.e. projects – to explore new ideas and exploit the results. We analyze the environmental project portfolio of the European Commission LIFE program in Estonia for the period 2008-2018 from the viewpoint of interfaces between project teams and permanent organizations. Our analysis of project design, administration, and practices reveals that project interfaces structure opportunities for achieving technical and institutional change through temporary organizations. Adaptive strategies of actors inside projects and in the established organizational fields producse shifts in interfaces across the project life cycle. These shifts enable and constrain knowledge production and application.
... It allows entrepreneurs to pick appropriate resources for their project. Recent research indicates that treatment design is more crucial than selection for innovative firms to achieve growth (Buffart et al., 2020), meaning that in the EE context, natural selection rather than forced selection among entrepreneurial projects produces higher entrepreneurial dynamics. However, to produce its full effect, this approach must be supported by a highly collaborative EE, which allows entrepreneurs find more accurate resources for their project, within a shorter duration. ...
What makes one type of entrepreneurial ecosystem (EE) more conducive to entrepreneurial dynamics than another? EE research is a hot topic, and considerable progress has been made as regards its elements, network, and actors’ components. However, some scholars regret the absence of an empirical analysis of EE as a whole to understand how EE configuration operates. To introduce this perspective, we propose an unexplored inter-organizational ties analysis among all EE actors, at a country-level scale. Based on the network theory perspective, we conduct an exploratory research in five low-income African countries, using innovative research methods (the quantitative graph theory, web scraping, the fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis) to understand the organizational patterns in these EEs, and their impact on entrepreneurial outcomes. At the core of this perspective lie inter-organizational ties measures of closeness, cohesiveness, and inter-connectedness, which are key causal conditions for high entrepreneurial dynamics levels and rates in low-income countries. This research underlines the importance of EE network attributes to facilitate the easy distribution of entrepreneurial nurturing components to entrepreneurs. It also highlights the importance of ease of information and knowledge flow, as well as a strong collaborative and coopetitive environment to make an EE more conducive to entrepreneurial dynamics.
Organizational growth has been studied extensively, leading to a growing reference to the concept of entrepreneurial growth (EG). However, the construct of EG is unclear, leading us to conduct a systematic literature review. Utilizing Organizational Change Framework, we reviewed and categorized articles on this subject. Aligning with the Four Disciplines of Execution, we found that when EG is used as a process, it is unique and robust for building a strategy used by both new and established firms and facilitating future entrepreneurship research. Implications and future research directions are discussed.
Qu’est-ce qui rend un écosystème entrepreneurial (EE) plus conducteur de dynamiques entrepreneuriales qu’un autre ? Si les EE constituent un sujet de premier plan, certains chercheurs regrettent l’absence de recherches empiriques permettant de saisir le fonctionnement d’ensemble des EE. Pour introduire cette perspective, nous proposons une recherche originale sous l’angle théorique et méthodologique des liens inter-organisationnels entre acteurs de l'EE, à l'échelle d'un pays. Sur la base de la théorie des réseaux, une recherche exploratoire est menée dans cinq pays africains à faible revenus, en utilisant des méthodes de recherche innovantes (la théorie quantitative des graphes, le web scraping, l'analyse comparative qualitative) pour comprendre les modèles organisationnels de ces EE et leur impact sur les entreprises et les territoires. Au cœur de cette perspective se trouvent les mesures des liens inter-organisationnels de proximité, de cohésion et d'inter-connectivité, qui sont des conditions causales clés pour comprendre l’origine des taux élevés de dynamique entrepreneuriale dans ces pays à faible revenus. Ce travail souligne l'importance des attributs des réseaux des EE – et ainsi des relations entre acteurs – pour faciliter la distribution des composants de soutien à l'entrepreneuriat et aux entrepreneurs. Elle met également en évidence l'importance du flux de circulation de l'information et des connaissances, ainsi qu'un environnement collaboratif et coopératif fort pour rendre une EE plus propice à la dynamique entrepreneuriale. Ainsi, une meilleure compréhension des EE permet d’appréhender les conditions plus ou moins propices aux développements de jeux d’alliances et à la coopétition sur un territoire.
What distinguishes an entrepreneurial ecosystem (EE) that supports entrepreneurial dynamics from one that does not? Despite being a hot issue, several scholars address the paucity of empirical studies that attempt to explain the overall functioning of EEs. To provide this perspective, we present a novel study of the theoretical and methodological facets of the interorganizational network among EE actors at the national level. Exploratory research based on network theory is conducted in five low-income African nations to better understand the organizational models of these EEs and their effects on businesses and regions. Innovative research techniques such as web scraping, quantitative graph theory, and qualitative comparative analysis are used in this study. Metrics of interorganizational ties such as closeness, cohesiveness, and interconnectivity are crucial to this viewpoint because they are fundamental causal factors for understanding the genesis of high rates of entrepreneurial dynamics in these low-income countries. To facilitate the spread of entrepreneurial support components to entrepreneurs, this study emphasizes the importance of the characteristics of EE networks and, consequently, of the interactions between their actors. It also emphasizes how crucial it is for knowledge and information to move freely inside an EE, as well as how important it is to have a strong collaborative and cooperative environment. Thus, a deeper comprehension of EEs helps us identify the circumstances that are generally favorable for alliance games and coopetition to flourish in a given region.
One of the key challenges for innovative companies is reducing innovation failures and the loss of scarce resources. This study investigates two under-explored aspects of innovation failure: training for innovative activities and public support for innovation. It uses data from five waves of the Community Innovation Survey (2008–2018) on more than 29,000 firms in seven emerging European innovation systems known for their weak innovation capacity, information asymmetries, and systemic failures, which increase the risk of innovation failure. We employ a matching treatment analysis method and assess the robustness of our findings with the help of multi-valued treatment, the lasso machine learning treatment technique, and entropy balancing. This study identifies the diverse effects of training for innovative activities and national and EU public support for innovation on groups of innovation incumbents and entrants. The findings show that a combination of training for innovative activities and EU innovation support helps firms reduce their chances of innovation failure. The results reaffirm the strong reliance of firms in these economies on EU funding and the limitations of national innovation policies. The findings can inform the design and implementation of innovation policies in emerging innovation systems and multi-level contexts, such as the EU.
Through one‐way analysis of variance (ANOVA), it is found that monthly salary and academic entrepreneurial intention have a “U‐shaped” relationship. In qualitative comparative analysis (QCA), single‐factor necessity analysis found that self‐emotional support and family emotional support constitute the necessary conditions. Through multifactor configuration analysis, four paths are summarized as follows: “internal drive type,” “resource utilization type,” “relationship infection type,” and “opportunity capture type.” Through cross‐configuration comparative analysis, it is found that different support subjects have a substitution effect, the strong linkage relationship between self and family becomes a necessary condition, and emotional support is better than instrumental support.
Purpose
COVID-19 has made businesses increasingly dependent on technology to be competitive and efficient. Small and medium enterprises (SME) digitalisation and innovation research are widespread. SME digital transformation and innovation require government policies, initiatives and assistance. How the government can help SMEs achieve these goals is unclear. So, this paper aims to investigate how government policy may assist Vietnamese SMEs to boost innovation performance and digital transformation.
Design/methodology/approach
The study will take a quantitative approach, with questionnaires distributed to 659 respondents from SMEs in Vietnam through snowball and convenience sampling procedures. The structural equational modelling method is used for data analysis.
Findings
The study indicated that government policies supported Vietnamese SMEs’ innovation and information technology (IT) capabilities. Government policy assistance also boosted IT capabilities and innovation. Furthermore, mediation effects show that digital transformation fully mediates the relationship between innovativeness and firm performance, whereas IT capabilities partially mediate this relationship.
Research limitations/implications
Further research that replicates the findings and analyses contextual heterogeneities between nations is advised because Vietnam’s pandemic setting was both similar and dissimilar.
Practical implications
The study demonstrated government-company interactions through supportive policy. It investigated whether SMEs seeking digital transformation and innovativeness might gain competitive benefits by implementing effective knowledge management and enhancing their IT capabilities.
Originality/value
A resource-based theoretical framework is extended to study how innovation, public policy and digital transformation for SMEs interact. The study confirms government policy strongly influences enterprises’ digital development. Specifically, the new mediating effects of IT capabilities and digital transformation are explored and provide new insights into the existing literature.
A growing number of studies report findings on FDI's impacts on entrepreneurship activities in the host country, but less attention is given to the question of how FDI spills over to different types of entrepreneurship. This study empirically tests how FDI innovation activities influence innovative entrepreneurship entry and growth. Fixed-effect panel data analysis was applied to examine original field data from multiple official databases in China in 31 provinces from 1998 to 2007. The study shows that FDI innovation activities increase innovative entrepreneurship entry. The relationship is positively moderated by IPR protection. Moreover, FDI innovation activities also promote entrepreneurial growth. These findings contribute to a better understanding of dissimilar FDI spillovers to different entrepreneurship types. Such insights help expand the theoretical and practical research of FDI spillover on entrepreneurship from entrepreneurship as a whole to the attributes and processes of entrepreneurship.
Drawing on organizational learning theory, we investigate the technological performance implications of acquiring one's alliance partners. We do so using a sample of 252 firms in four high tech industries, who jointly announced 2,398 acquisitions and filed 125,440 new patent applications, in the period of our analysis. We argue a history of collaboration will allow the acquirer to more easily identify and absorb the target's knowledge, and show that the share of ‘alliance-to-acquisition transitions’, in the total set of the firm's acquisitions, increases the firm's inventive quantity. We also argue that a history of collaboration reduces the opportunity to encounter unknown and unexpected knowledge, which will affect both the type and quality of invention. We find support for the former, and show that the share of alliance-to-acquisition transitions increases the firms exploitative tendencies. In terms of the latter, we find a weak relationship between the share of transitions and overall patent quality, but find that the share of transitions does not affect the number of high quality breakthrough inventions. In so doing, we provide new insights, relevant to the acquisition literature, the literature on transitional governance, and the literature on organisational learning, and position alliance-to-acquisition transitions as a mechanism for altering the firm's technology production function.
Entrepreneurship is a critical driver of economic health, industrial rejuvenation, social change, and technological progress. In an attempt to determine how to best support such an important component of society, researchers and practitioners alike continue to ask why some countries, regions, and cities have more entrepreneurship than others. Unfortunately, the answer is not clear. This question is addressed by focusing on location-based support or infrastructure for entrepreneurship. A framework based on a social systems perspective guides this examination by concentrating on three main categories of infrastructure: resource endowments, institutional arrangements, and proprietary functions. Work from the knowledge-based perspective of entrepreneurship, systems of innovation, entrepreneurial ecosystems, and resource dependence literatures is integrated into this framework.
Successfully developed academic inventions have the potential to spawn new technological domains, form the basis of thriving business ventures, and improve the well-being of society. However, evaluating whether an early-stage scientific invention truly has such potential is extremely difficult, and financially backing such inventions is highly risky. And yet, organizations and their evaluators still back some of these inventions with resources for further development. We investigate this puzzle to pinpoint how and why evaluators decide to offer resource commitments at early stages, despite the red flags raised using standard evaluation criteria. Many academic inventions need these initial resources to dispel concerns regarding their commercial feasibility, so evaluators need to take a leap of faith with their support to prematurely avoid eliminating high-potential opportunities. We tested our theory using text analysis on nearly 700 invention evaluation reports written by a university's technology transfer experts. Our results revealed that evaluators backed inventions based on their feasibility (overcoming doubt and assessing maturity) and desirability (background familiarity and scientific complexity). Using the context of the research laboratory, our study insights can be applied to many management situations in which early-stage opportunities are assessed for resource commitments under high uncertainty.
Research Summary
Strategy research addresses endogeneity by incorporating econometric techniques, including Heckman’s two‐step method. The economics literature theorizes regarding optimal usage of Heckman’s method, emphasizing the valid exclusion condition necessary in the first stage. However, our meta‐analysis reveals that only 54 of 165 relevant papers published in the top strategy and organizational theory journals during 1995‐2016 claim a valid exclusion restriction. Without this condition being met, our simulation shows that results using the Heckman method are often less reliable than OLS results. Even where Heckman is not possible, we recommend that other rigorous identification approaches be used. We illustrate our recommendation to use a triangulation of identification approaches by revisiting the classic global strategy question of the performance implications of cross‐border market entry through greenfield or acquisition.
Managerial Summary
Managers make strategic decisions by choosing the best option given the particular circumstances of their firm. However, researchers had previously not taken into consideration these circumstances when evaluating the outcome of that choice. The Heckman method importantly addresses this situation, but requires that the researcher have some variable that effects the best option for the firm, but not the outcome. We show that researchers frequently do not utilize such a variable, and demonstrate that the Heckman method can exacerbate estimation issues in the case. We then provide an approach that researchers can use to address the challenge of determining the outcome of a strategic decision, and illustrate with an empirical examination of the performance implications of cross‐border market entry through greenfield or acquisition.
Using a nested multiple-case study of participating ventures, directors, and mentors of eight of the original U.S. accelerators, we explore how accelerators’ program designs influence new ventures’ ability to access, interpret, and process the external information needed to survive and grow. Through our inductive process, we illuminate the bounded-rationality challenges that may plague all ventures and entrepreneurs—not just those in accelerators—and identify the particular organizational designs that accelerators use to help address these challenges, which left unabated can result in suboptimal performance or even venture failure. Our analysis revealed three key design choices made by accelerators—(1) whether to space out or concentrate consultations with mentors and customers, (2) whether to foster privacy or transparency between peer ventures participating in the same program, and (3) whether to tailor or standardize the program for each venture—and suggests a particular set of choices is associated with improved venture development. Collectively, our findings provide evidence that bounded rationality challenges new ventures differently than it does established firms. We find that entrepreneurs appear to systematically satisfice prematurely across many decisions and thus broadly benefit from increasing the amount of external information searched, often by reigniting search for problems that they already view as solved. Our study also contributes to research on organizational sponsors by revealing practices that help or hinder new venture development and to emerging research on the lean start-up methodology by suggesting that startups benefit from engaging in deep consultative learning prior to experimentation.
Dazed and confused by the wild hype surrounding gazelles and unicorns, entrepreneurship researchers have focused on the black swans of the entrepreneurial world, even though IPOs and venture capital financing of firms are extremely rare events. Despite their rarity, entrepreneurship conferences and journals have been filled with papers on various aspects of the process of “going public” and “VC networks.” Fortunately, in the middle of the Silicon Valley mania, other scholars have been paying attention to the mundane aspects of business startups – – the ordinary business starts, numbering in the hundreds of thousands each year in the United States for businesses with employees. We point out what we believe to be scholars’ misplaced attention to the extreme and their corresponding neglect of the mundane. Correcting the misperception that has been introduced into the literature by selection biases favoring growing and profitable firms will give scholars and policymakers a more accurate and policy-relevant picture of entrepreneurship in the 21st century.
This article investigates whether high-growth firms grow in different ways from other firms. Specifically, we analyze how firms grow along several dimensions (growth of sales, employment, assets, and operating profits) using Structural Vector Autoregressions. Causal relations are identified by using information contained in the (non-Gaussian) growth rate distributions. For most firms, the growth process starts with employment growth, which is then followed by sales growth, then growth of operating profits, and finally growth of assets. In contrast, high growth firms put more emphasis on growth of operating profits driving other dimensions of growth, with employment growth occurring at the end.
Research Summary: Governments in emerging economies often use institutional intermediaries to promote entrepreneurship, and bridge the void between ventures and public funding. While prior literature describes what institutional intermediaries do, it leaves open how intermediaries support different types of entrepreneurs. By comparing science park and non-science park firms in Beijing and across China, we distinguish which entrepreneurs benefit from certification v. capability-building through the introduction of two new constructs: skill adequacy and context relevance. Broadly, our study adds insights at the nexus of emerging economies and entrepreneurship research, and to the tie formation and institutional intermediaries literatures.
Managerial Summary: A key dilemma facing entrepreneurs is how to finance their ventures. While entrepreneurs in developed economies can seek VC or angel investment, entrepreneurs in emerging economies often need to pursue potential government funding opportunities. Our study highlights three strategies for acquiring government funding. Well-connected entrepreneurs can leverage their political ties to acquire such funding. Less-connected entrepreneurs can leverage science parks that in emerging markets are designed to help governments to identify promising ventures. For returnees whose ample experience abroad may not fit with local ways of doing business, gaining science park admission can certify quality and so ease the path to government funding. For technically skilled local entrepreneurs who lack business skills, science parks can help build such skills which then ease the path to government funding.
We outline and test a decision-making theory of new venture growth and survival. Building upon research in entrepreneurship and decision making under risk, we hypothesize that entrepreneurs' attention to survival and aspiration reference points changes based on venture age (experience-based learning), size (differences in decision complexity), and performance decision domain. Examining a panel of 14,760 new ventures in the professional services sector, our findings show how risk preferences change as a venture ages and increases in size. This approach offers a more nuanced view of decision making under risk and provides a theoretical explanation for the common patterns of new ventures' probability of exit and growth diminishing with age and size.
'This comprehensive academic study will have most relevance for researchers, teachers and students interested in business management in general and entrepreneurship in particular. The book contains a wealth of empirical detail and many suggestions for further research.' © Per Davidsson, Frédéric Delmar and Johan Wiklund 2006. All rights reserved.
This paper aimed at investigating the relationship between the features of local knowledge bases and the creation of innovative start-ups in Italy. The knowledge spillover theory of entrepreneurship has here been combined with the recombinant knowledge hypothesis in order to derive a theoretical framework that could emphasize the heterogeneous nature of knowledge and identify some key dimensions. The empirical analysis has been focused on the patterns of new firm formation in Italian NUTS 3 regions using data on the creation of innovative start-ups that have followed the implementation of a new Italian regulation. The results of the analysis confirm that not only does the size of the knowledge stock play a key role in shaping the creation of innovative start-ups, but also the characteristics of such knowledge, in terms of variety and similarity.
This paper investigates the reasons why entry per se is not necessarily good and the evidence showing that innovative start-ups survive longer than their non-innovative counterparts. In this framework, our own empirical analysis shows that greater survival is achieved when start-ups engage successfully in both product innovation and process innovation, with a key role of the latter. Moreover, this study goes beyond a purely microeconomic perspective and discusses the key role of the environment within which innovative entries occur. What shown and discussed in this contribution strongly supports the proposal that the creation and survival of innovative start-ups should become one qualifying point of the economic policy agenda.
Purpose
– The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the state funded business counselling on firm growth.
Design/methodology/approach
– A quasi-experimental difference-in-difference estimation of treatment effects, using a matched sample of comparable untreated firms.
Findings
– Firms that have been granted counselling vouchers have a higher growth in value added than comparable untreated firms. This effect is mainly due to increased use of labour and capital, rather than increased efficiency. Results are upwardly biased due to sample selection among treated firms.
Research limitations/implications
– An improved strategy for identifying potential comparison firms from the pool of all firms may be necessary for further impact evaluations on business development programmes.
Social implications
– Policy makers may have to reconsider the programme design, since the programme currently suffer from a large potential for crowding-out, and low additional value of business counselling.
Originality/value
– The paper uses a matching procedure in order to infer causal effects of business counselling and compares the effect of, respectively, contamination and selection on estimated impact on firm growth and survival. The data used are an original, rich micro-level data set on state investment support to businesses.
Using an inductive theory-development study, a field experiment, and a longitudinal field test, we examine early-stage entrepreneurial investment decision making under conditions of extreme uncertainty. Building on existing literature on decision making and risk in organizations, intuition, and theories of entrepreneurial financing, we test the effectiveness of angel investors’ criteria for making investment decisions. We found that angel investors’ decisions have several characteristics that have not been adequately captured in existing theory: angel investors have clear objectives—risking small stakes to find extraordinarily profitable investments, fully expecting to lose their entire investment in most cases—and they rely on a combination of expertise-based intuition and formal analysis in which intuition trumps analysis, contrary to reports in other investment contexts. We also found that their reported emphasis on assessments of the entrepreneur accurately predicts extraordinarily profitable venture success four years later. We develop this theory by examining situations in which uncertainty is so extreme that it qualifies as unknowable, using the term “gut feel” to describe their dynamic emotion-cognitions in which they blend analysis and intuition in ways that do not impair intuitive processes and that effectively predict extraordinarily profitable investments.
We analysed the growth impact delivered by a high-growth entrepreneurship policy initiative over a six-year period. Using an eight-year panel that started two years before the initiative was launched and propensity score matching to control selection bias, we found that the initiative had more than doubled the growth rates of treated firms. The initiative had delivered a strong impact also on value-for-money basis. In addition to producing the first robust evidence on the growth impact delivered by a high-growth entrepreneurship initiative, we contribute to public sponsorship theory with the notion of capacity-boosting activities to complement previously discussed buffering and bridging activities.
High-growth firms (HGFs) have attracted considerable attention recently, as academics and policymakers have increasingly recognized the highly skewed nature of many metrics of firm performance. A small number of HGFs drives a disproportionately large amount of job creation, while the average firm has a limited impact on the economy. This article explores the reasons for this increased interest, summarizes the existing literature, and highlights the methodological considerations that constrain and bias research. This special section draws attention to the importance of HGFs for future industrial performance, explores their unusual growth trajectories and strategies, and highlights the lack of persistence of high growth. Consequently, while HGFs are important for understanding the economy and developing public policy, they are unlikely to be useful vehicles for public policy given the difficulties involved in predicting which firms will grow, the lack of persistence in high growth levels, and the complex and often indirect relationship between firm capability, high growth, and macro-economic performance. © The Author 2014. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Associazione ICC. All rights reserved.
Governments around the world have set up governmental venture capital (GVC) funds, and are increasingly doing so, with the aims of fostering the development of a private venture capital industry and to alleviate the equity capital gap of young innovative firms. The rationale and the appropriateness of these programs is controversial. In this paper, we borrow from the recent literature on entrepreneurial finance to document the evolution and to compare the effects of the different types of governmental support. In contrast with a lack of success in some countries, there have been successful GVC initiatives, such as the Australian Innovation Investment Fund. Consequently, the proper design of the investment processes of GVC funds is an urgent topic for scholars and policy makers.
Drawing on the chain-of-effects model as a unifying framework, this meta-analysis indicates that firm innovativeness indirectly affects firm value through its effects on market position and financial position. In addition, the findings suggest that innovativeness has direct positive effects on financial position and firm value. Moreover, the metaanalysis provides evidence of reverse causality in the innovativeness-firm value relationship. Importantly, the results also reveal that the positive effects of firm innovativeness on market position and financial position are stronger for larger firms, for firms that invest more in advertising, for firms in high-tech industries, for innovativeness outputs and for radical innovations. Finally, the meta-analytic evidence also indicates that the relationship between innovativeness and firm value is stronger for smaller firms, for firms that invest more in advertising, for firms in lowtech industries, for innovativeness inputs, for innovativeness culture, and for radical innovations.
We discuss a method for improving causal inferences called "Coarsened Exact Matching" (CEM), and the new "Monotonie Imbalance Bounding" (MIB) class of matching methods from which CEM is derived. We summarize what is known about CEM and MIB, derive and illustrate several new desirable statistical properties of CEM,and then propose a variety of useful extensions. We show that CEM possesses a wide range of statistical properties not available in most other matching methods but is at the same time exceptionally easy to comprehend and use. We focus on the connection between theoretical properties and practical applications. We also make available easy-to-use open source software for R, Stata, and SPSS that implement all our suggestions.
Innovative entrepreneurship is at the heart of economic development in all modern economic systems. However, we observe in several developed countries - especially Europe - a languishing in the capacity to foster creative destruction (i.e. Schumpeter Mark 1, SM1) dynamics and to create young innovative companies (YICs), capable to establish themselves as leaders in markets or become successful innovators. One key issue that is often advocated in this respect is the deficit suffered from YICs in fully protecting their innovations and appropriating (at least in part) returns from them. The usage of formal (e.g., intellectual property rights) and informal (e.g., secrecy, lead time, access to complementary assets) instruments to protect intellectual property assets has the potential to overcome this difficulty. Different types of policy mechanisms have been put in place to help YICs. However, high implicit and explicit costs and barriers prevent YICs’ use of protection strategies, limiting the ability to generate SM1 dynamics or accessing market for ideas, even upon policy support. By relying on the resource-based view of the firm, our paper investigates to what extent a comprehensive set of policy measures recently introduced in the Italian context and focused on alleviating the hurdles suffered by YICs is associated with the choice of YICs to protect their innovations. The econometric analyses based on more than 1,600 Italian YICs show how the use of financial policy measures are associated to both formal and informal instruments, while labour policy measures are only related to formal ones.
Quantitative performance ratings are ubiquitous in modern organizations—from businesses to universities—yet there is substantial evidence of bias against women in such ratings. This study examines how gender inequalities in evaluations depend on the design of the tools used to judge merit. Exploiting a quasi-natural experiment at a large North American university, we found that the number of scale points used in faculty teaching evaluations—whether instructors were rated on a scale of 6 versus a scale of 10—significantly affected the size of the gender gap in evaluations in the most male-dominated fields. A survey experiment, which presented all participants with an identical lecture transcript but randomly varied instructor gender and the number of scale points, replicated this finding and suggested that the number of scale points affects the extent to which gender stereotypes of brilliance are expressed in quantitative ratings. These results highlight how seemingly minor technical aspects of performance ratings can have a major effect on the evaluation of men and women. Our findings thus contribute to a growing body of work on organizational practices that reduce workplace inequalities and the sociological literature on how rating systems—rather than being neutral instruments—shape the distribution of rewards in organizations.
Why do some entrepreneurs thrive while others fail? We explore whether the advice entrepreneurs receive about managing their employees influences their startup’s performance. We conducted a randomized field experiment in India with 100 high‐growth technology firms whose founders received in‐person advice from other entrepreneurs who varied in their managerial style. We find that entrepreneurs who received advice from peers with a formal approach to managing people—instituting regular meetings, setting goals consistently, and providing frequent feedback to employees—grew 28% larger and were 10 percentage points less likely to fail than those who got advice from peers with an informal approach to managing people, two years after our intervention. Entrepreneurs with MBAs or accelerator experience did not respond to this intervention, suggesting that formal training can limit the spread of peer advice.
This paper proposes a simple technique for assessing the range of plausible causal conclusions from observational studies with a binary outcome and an observed categorical covariate. The technique assesses the sensitivity of conclusions to assumptions about an unobserved binary covariate relevant to both treatment assignment and response. A medical study of coronary artery disease is used to illustrate the technique.
We study the employment and sales growth of entrepreneurial ventures that have received a government-sponsored participative loan (PL), a hybrid form of financing between debt and equity. We use propensity-score matching (PSM) and instrumental variable analysis (2SLS) to study a sample of 512 entrepreneurial ventures that received a PL from a Spanish government agency between 2005 and 2011. We find evidence that PLs significantly boosted their beneficiaries’ employment and sales. In the two years following loan issuance, a 1-million-Euro PL generated an increase in average employment of between 12.1 (PSM) and 14.7 (2SLS) units and an increase in sales of between 1.09 and 1.97 million Euro relative to the average for the two years prior to loan issuance. The effect is larger for high-tech, young and small entrepreneurial ventures and for those that received a PL during the global financial crisis. The effect on growth is significant and stable, and PLs increase their beneficiaries’ annual growth by 10.6% for employment and by 18.0% for sales. We do not find evidence of industry or regional spillovers, nor do we find differences in the probability of survival of PL beneficiaries after we control for their characteristics.
Securing financial resources from investors is a key challenge for many early-stage entrepreneurial ventures. Given the inherent uncertainty surrounding a decision to invest in these ventures, prior research has found that experienced investors rely heavily on their investor gut feel—that is, dynamic expertise-based emotion-cognitions specific to the entrepreneurship context. In this paper, I inductively find that rather than being based on rapid, nonconscious impulse, as much of prior literature would suggest, what investors call their “gut feel” is an elaborate “intuiting process.” This process serves a distinct purpose: it emboldens investors to make investments that would otherwise be considered overly risky and likely to lead to failure. In the theoretical model I present, I delineate how investors are guided by a predisposed stance on risk and uncertainty, which dictates the approach investors take toward managing the complexity of an investment opportunity—and how they cognitively and emotionally reframe investment risk into a compelling narrative that transcends avoidance behavior and leads investors to invest. These findings expand our overall understanding of the complex ways in which investors contend with the risks and uncertainties in entrepreneurial finance.
The objective of this study is to compare the effect of different types of public direct support for R&D projects on firms’ technological capabilities. We distinguish between low-interest loans and national and European subsidies. Using data on 4407 Spanish firms during the period 2002–2005, we estimate a multivariate probit to analyse the determinants of firms’ participation in public R&D programmes and, later, the impact of this participation on firms’ R&D activities using two different procedures. Regardless of the methodology employed for the analysis, the results suggest that being awarded any type of direct aid clearly increases the probability of conducting R&D activities. In terms of being supported through a unique instrument, the greatest effect corresponds to the case of European grants, where the impact is more than three times larger than the one of loans. As for R&D intensity, the hypothesis of full crowding-out of private R&D is rejected for all types of support. In addition, we find that the impacts of subsidies and loans reinforce each other when they are jointly awarded to SMEs. However, for large firms we cannot rule out the existence of crowding-out effect between subsidies and loans.
The main concern for many evaluation studies is that controlling for individuals' observed characteristics may not be enough to obtain valid treatment effects. We exploit a unique dataset that contains a rich set of administrative information on individuals newly entering unemployment in Germany, as well as several usually unobserved characteristics like personality traits, attitudes, expectations, social networks and intergenerational information. This allows us to empirically assess the effect of including these usually unobserved variables on the propensity score distribution, the matching quality, and the treatment effects obtained using uncounfoundedness-based estimators. Our findings indicate that these variables play a significant role for selection into active labor market programs (ALMP), but do not make a significant difference in estimating treatment effects on wages and employment prospects. This suggests that the usually unobserved variables we analyze are not a threat to the validity of the estimated treatment effects, if comprehensive control variables of the type usually used in modern ALMP evaluations (which include labor market histories) are available. Our results also suggest that rich administrative data may be good enough to draw policy conclusions on the effectiveness of ALMPs.
We analyze linked databases on all Small Business Administration (SBA) loans, on all SBA lenders, and on all U.S. employers to estimate the effects of financial access on employment growth. Our methods combine regressions with matching on firm age, size, industry, year, and employment history, and with instrumental variables capturing ease of access to SBA lenders. The estimation results imply an increase of 3-4 jobs for each million dollars of loans, suggesting that credit constraints impede small business growth prior to loan receipt. We also investigate the variation in estimated employment effects for the SBA 504 versus 7(a) programs, and with respect to the business cycle, local credit conditions, and within-county versus non-SBA county-industry control firms. Finally, for loans issued over the 1992-2007 period, we estimate total job creation of 1.0-2.1 million and the government's cost per job of 18,000 measured five years after the loan year.
We analyze linked databases on all SBA loans and lenders and on all U.S. employers to estimate the effects of financial access on employment growth. Estimation exploits the long panels and variation in local availability of SBA-intensive lenders. The results imply an increase of 3-3.5 jobs for each million dollars of loans, suggesting real effects of credit constraints. Estimated impacts are stronger for younger and larger firms and when local credit conditions are weak, but we find no clear evidence of cyclical variation. We estimate taxpayer costs per job created in the range of 25,000.
We use a randomized control trial to evaluate the impact of a business training for female clients of a microfinance institution in northern Vietnam, and we consider the impact on (i) business knowledge, (ii) practices, and (ii) outcomes, as well as (iv) firm entry and exit decisions. In addition, we vary the nature of the intervention by inviting husbands to participate in the trainings for a subsample of our respondents. To gauge both short-term and medium-term effects, we combine data from two separate postintervention surveys. We find evidence of economically substantive impacts on knowledge, practices, and outcomes, and on the extensive margin (entry and exit). We also document that it takes time for the “downstream” outcomes of the trainings to materialize; although we find evidence of medium-term effects, no such evidence exists for the short term. Inviting husbands to participate in the trainings does not affect any of our knowledge or practice measures, but we document weak evidence for differential impact on (agricultural) sales and profits.
Data, as supplemental material, are available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2016.2472 .
This paper was accepted by Uri Gneezy, behavioral economics.
We discuss a method for improving causal inferences called ‘‘Coarsened Exact Matching’’ (CEM), and the new ‘‘Monotonic Imbalance Bounding’’ (MIB) class of matching methods from which CEM is derived. We summarize what is known about CEM and MIB, derive and illustrate several new desirable statistical properties of CEM, and then propose a variety of useful extensions. We show that CEM possesses a wide range of statistical properties not available in most other matching methods but is at the same time exceptionally easy to comprehend and use. We focus on the connection between theoretical properties and practical applications. We also make available easy-to-use open source software for R, Stata, and SPSS that implement all our suggestions.
The propensity score is the conditional probability of assignment to a particular treatment given a vector of observed covariates. Previous theoretical arguments have shown that subclassification on the propensity score will balance all observed covariates. Subclassification on an estimated propensity score is illustrated, using observational data on treatments for coronary artery disease. Five subclasses defined by the estimated propensity score are constructed that balance 74 covariates, and thereby provide estimates of treatment effects using direct adjustment. These subclasses are applied within sub-populations, and model-based adjustments are then used to provide estimates of treatment effects within these sub-populations. Two appendixes address theoretical issues related to the application: the effectiveness of subclassification on the propensity score in removing bias, and balancing properties of propensity scores with incomplete data.
An observational study is biased if the treated and control groups differ prior to treatment in ways that matter for the outcomes under study. An overt bias is one that can be seen in the data at hand-for instance, prior to treatment, treated subjects are observed to have lower incomes than controls. A hidden bias is similar but cannot be seen because the required information was not observed or recorded. Overt biases are controlled using adjustments, such as matching or stratification. In other words, treated and control subjects may be seen to differ in terms of certain observed covariates, but these visible differences may be removed by comparing treated and control subjects with the same values of the observed covariates, that is, subjects in the same matched set or stratum defined by the observed covariates. It is natural to ask when the standard methods for randomized experiments may be applied to matched or stratified data from an observational study. This chapter discusses a model for an observational study in which there is overt bias but no hidden bias. The model is, at best, one of many plausible models, but it does clarify when methods for randomized experiments may be used in observational studies, and so it becomes the starting point for thinking about hidden biases. Dealing with hidden bias is the focus of most of the later chapters.
The intelligence failures surrounding the invasion of Iraq dramatically illustrate the necessity of developing standards for evaluating expert opinion. This book fills that need. Here, Philip E. Tetlock explores what constitutes good judgment in predicting future events, and looks at why experts are often wrong in their forecasts. Tetlock first discusses arguments about whether the world is too complex for people to find the tools to understand political phenomena, let alone predict the future. He evaluates predictions from experts in different fields, comparing them to predictions by well-informed laity or those based on simple extrapolation from current trends. He goes on to analyze which styles of thinking are more successful in forecasting. Classifying thinking styles using Isaiah Berlin's prototypes of the fox and the hedgehog, Tetlock contends that the fox--the thinker who knows many little things, draws from an eclectic array of traditions, and is better able to improvise in response to changing events--is more successful in predicting the future than the hedgehog, who knows one big thing, toils devotedly within one tradition, and imposes formulaic solutions on ill-defined problems. He notes a perversely inverse relationship between the best scientific indicators of good judgement and the qualities that the media most prizes in pundits--the single-minded determination required to prevail in ideological combat. Clearly written and impeccably researched, the book fills a huge void in the literature on evaluating expert opinion. It will appeal across many academic disciplines as well as to corporations seeking to develop standards for judging expert decision-making.
We analysed the growth impact delivered by a high-growth entrepreneurship policy initiative over a six-year period. Using an eight-year panel that started two years before the initiative was launched and propensity score matching to control selection bias, we found that the initiative had more than doubled the growth rates of treated firms. The initiative had delivered a strong impact also on value-for-money basis. In addition to producing the first robust evidence on the growth impact delivered by a high-growth entrepreneurship initiative, we contribute to public sponsorship theory with the notion of capacity-boosting activities to complement previously discussed buffering and bridging activities.
Recent surveys show that more than half of American entrepreneurs share ownership in their business startups rather than going it alone, and experts in international entrepreneurship have likewise noted the importance of groups in securing microcredit and advancing entrepreneurial initiatives in the developing world. Yet the media and many scholars continue to perpetuate the myth of the lone visionary who single-handedly revolutionizes the marketplace.The Entrepreneurial Groupshatters this myth, demonstrating that teams, not individuals, are the leading force behind entrepreneurial startups.This is the first book to provide an in-depth sociological analysis of entrepreneurial groups, and to put forward a theoretical framework--called relational demography--for understanding activities and outcomes within them. Martin Ruef looks at entrepreneurial teams in the United States during the boom years of the late 1990s and the recent recessionary bust. He identifies four mechanisms for explaining the dynamics of entrepreneurial groups: in-group biases on salient demographic dimensions; intimate relationships to spouses, cohabiting partners, and kin; a tendency to organize activities in residential or "virtual" spaces; and entrepreneurial goals that prioritize social and psychological fulfillment over material well-being. Ruef provides evidence showing when favorable outcomes--with respect to group formalization, equality, effort, innovation, and survival--follow from these mechanisms.The Entrepreneurial Groupreveals how studying the social structure of entrepreneurial action can shed light on the creation of new organizations.
In this paper we examine the innovation performance of hybrid alliances, that is, alliances that combine exploration and exploitation activities. While previous research has emphasized the tensions engendered by the combination of exploration and exploitation, we claim that the integration of these two types of activities can generate synergies as well. We argue that, in the case of alliances involving academic spin-offs (ASOs), these synergies may outweigh the tensions under specific conditions, and thus improve alliance innovation performance. Specifically, we hypothesize that the relative performance of exploitation activities is greater in hybrid alliances when the alliance has radical innovation outcomes. Conversely, the relative performance of exploration activities is greater in hybrid alliances when the alliance has incremental innovation outcomes. These hypotheses are tested using fine-grained data on a sample of 149 alliances involving European ASOs.
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to apply the theory of guided preparation to investigate the relative impact of outside counseling assistance and entrepreneurship courses on new venture creation and performance.
Design/methodology/approach
To attain a sample of nascent entrepreneurs who had been impacted by entrepreneurship education and entrepreneurial counseling, 256 individuals who received counseling from the Pennsylvania Small Business Development Center in 1996 or 1998 were surveyed. The authors ran a logistic regression model using venture start‐up as the categorical dependent variable to investigate whether entrepreneurial education and counseling had an influence on the creation of new ventures. To test whether entrepreneurial education or counseling had a long‐term impact on the growth of new ventures, hierarchical regression analyses were run using employment in 2003 as the dependent variable. Various control variables were used for both sets of analyses.
Findings
Findings indicate that counseling has a significant impact on venture performance but entrepreneurship courses do not. In contrast, entrepreneurship courses are related to venture creation while counseling is not.
Research limitations/implications
Consistent with theory, the results suggest that counseling programs allow entrepreneurs to develop context‐specific tacit knowledge about their ventures and are best delivered immediately prior to venture start‐up. Entrepreneurship courses appear to indirectly influence new venture performance by increasing the odds of start up.
Originality/value
This comparative test of the theory of guided preparation contributes to the understanding of the effects of education and counseling on the creation and long‐term performance of new ventures, informing how the delivery of such programs can be improved.
Problems involving causal inference have dogged at the heels of statistics since its earliest days. Correlation does not imply causation, and yet causal conclusions drawn from a carefully designed experiment are often valid. What can a statistical model say about causation? This question is addressed by using a particular model for causal inference (Holland and Rubin 1983; Rubin 1974) to critique the discussions of other writers on causation and causal inference. These include selected philosophers, medical researchers, statisticians, econometricians, and proponents of causal modeling.
This paper analyzes the emergence of new technology-based sectors at the regional level focusing on nanotechnology, an infant technology whose evolution can be traced on the basis of patent application filings. We employ a methodological framework based on the ‘product-space’ approach, to investigate whether the development of new technologies is linked to the structure of the existing local knowledge base. We conduct a 15 EU country analysis at NUTS 2 level using patent data for 1986–2006. The results of the descriptive and econometric analysis support the idea that history matters in the spatial development of a sector, and that the technological competences accumulated at the local level are likely to shape the future patterns of technological diversification.
Innovative new ventures are at the heart of economic development, particularly when these startups are created by employee, academic, and user innovators. We synthesize across literature streams examining each phenomena to document distinctions between firms originating from different “knowledge contexts.” We then integrate the knowledge context into Teece's (1986) theoretical framework identifying factors that impact a firm's ability to profit from innovation. Doing so allows us to develop stylized facts and predictive propositions pertaining to differences in the innovative contributions, roles played in shaping industrial dynamics and evolution, and performance outcomes for startups stemming from the three entrepreneurial origins. These propositions provide unique insights into the causes of patterns of industry evolution, contribute to theory in the areas of entrepreneurship and industry evolution, and yield important policy and managerial implications.