Vivien Procher’s research while affiliated with Philipps University of Marburg and other places

When funding innovations, policy makers often prioritize explorative innovations because of their novelty, overlooking the varied newness within exploitative innovations. By focusing on the imitative nature of exploitative innovations, we distinguish between local imitation — simple replication — and interregional imitation, which involves cross-regional knowledge transfer that is critical for industry renewal and national competitiveness. Examining 4,093 startups, we advocate for a nuanced approach to grantmaking that is tailored to a firm’s industry and strategic position as defined by its entrepreneurial orientation (EO). Our results show that grants foster explorative innovation in high EO startups, while low EO startups contribute through interregional knowledge transfer. This highlights the importance of recognizing high and low EO as different strategic approaches in innovation policy and emphasizing interregional knowledge transfer as an important source of market novelty.

Heterogeneity among Hybrid Entrepreneurs-Typology of Motives and Performance Entrepreneurship research identifies various motives for individuals to combine employment with self-employment. Based on the interdependencies between decisions and outcomes, we provide a new typology of these hybrid entrepreneurs' motives, separating them into myopic, intertemporal (time-related), and interactive (involving others) motives. Using a sample of 8,113 pure and 356 hybrid entrepreneurs, cluster and regression analyses reveal distinct clusters aligning with the typology and revealing cluster-specific associations with strategy, innovation, and financial performance. By combining the new typology with theories of entrepreneurial cognition and innovation, the findings provide a basis for new predictions and explanations for hybrid entrepreneurship.

In this paper, we examine the relationship between terrorism and exports at the firm-level. We use a panel data of 301 firms listed on the Pakistan Stock Exchange and records of terrorist attacks in Pakistani cities from 1999 to 2014. By calculating city-level terrorism indices, the study reveals significant variations in the frequency of terrorist incidents both between cities and within cities over different time periods. Our panel regressions show that firm exports are correlated with terrorist attacks in the cities where the firms are located, and these correlations are statistically significant even when terrorism is lagged up to six years. Interregional spillover effects of terrorism are less pronounced. While a negative correlation can be found between firm exports and our terrorism indices, the correlation with domestic sales tends to be statistically insignificant. The findings shed light on the persistent link between local terrorism and firms’ international and domestic operations.

Only a few scholars examined downsides of EO and suggest it may negatively affect survival. Previous research, which mainly focuses on mature companies, assumes that the relationship between EO and survival is constant. However, because firm characteristics and causal mechanisms change as young venture survive and grow into mature firms, the relationships between EO and survival could also change over time. We extend the EO literature by considering changing EO effects when venture grow into mature firms and by employing a multidimensional view on EO and identify isolating independent mechanisms for the influence of each dimension (i.e. innovativeness, proactiveness and risk-taking) on the survival of young ventures. While the nature of proactiveness on performance is rathe positive, risk-taking and innovativeness increases the variance of firm performance and thus the chances of failure. However, the latter can be separated according to whether the increase in variance occurs at a single point in time (risk-taking) or over time (innovation) and whether the survivors have more money or more innovations. For young firms, innovativeness and risk-taking inhibit survival, while proactiveness promotes it, so the dimensions have divergent effects. As a consequence of the attrition of young ventures, the associations of innovativeness and risk-taking reverse when they grow older. Our empirical analyses are based on panel data of 8,518 young firms.

Emerging market multinational enterprises (EMNEs) increasingly access foreign technology and knowledge by internationalizing their R&D activities. Since technological laggardness hinders efficient knowledge transfer, a successful catch-up with advanced-economy multinational enterprises (AMNEs) requires EMNEs to transfer foreign knowledge across national boundaries more effectively. However, we lack a clear understanding of how EMNEs manage this knowledge transfer and integration and to what extent the employment and effectiveness of corresponding facilitation mechanisms may differ from AMNEs. Adopting a sender-recipient model and drawing on arguments from learning theory and transaction costs economics, we suggest that EMNEs benefit more from and, consequently, are more likely to engage in mechanisms to increase recipient capabilities and sender motivation. In a comparative analysis of Chinese, Indian, German, and U.S. MNEs and focusing on frequent international exchange of R&D personnel regarding recipient capabilities and the governance of foreign R&D activities regarding sender motivation, we observe positive relationships with home-market innovation for EMNEs, but not for AMNEs. Moreover, we observe that EMNEs exploit this positive effect and are more likely to use these mechanisms when focusing on technology-than on market-seeking.

We study firm-level and country-level antecedents of R&D internationalization strategies, focusing on differences between emerging economy (EMNEs) and advanced economy multinational enterprises (AMNEs). Previous research often focuses on the relative importance of home-base-exploiting versus home-base-augmenting knowledge transfer strategies. We suggest that country-level and firm-level effects differ for the two strategies and, hence, examine each strategy independently. Collecting data in China, India, the U.S., and Germany, we demonstrate that firms' relative technological positions as a firm-level characteristic can explain EMNE-AMNE differences in home-base-exploiting strategies. In contrast, home-base-augmenting is more strongly related to exploratory institutional environments, a country-level factor. Thus, either firm-or country-level antecedents may gain a dominant role depending on the strategy considered.