Family ties are an important conduit of resources for entrepreneurs, but both positive and negative outcomes can arise. Building upon a family embeddedness perspective, we develop hypotheses about curvilinear relationships between the proportion of family ties in entrepreneurs' networks and venture growth. We test them on entrepreneurs from China, France, Russia, and the United States. These effects appear to be related to the type of entrepreneurs' social network (business advice, emotional support, and business resources). Our results confirm effects specific to each network: an inverted U-shape for advice and emotional support networks but a U-shape for the business resource network, measuring what proportion of kin in each entrepreneurial network type is valuable to or, conversely, undermines new venture growth.

We examine theory and evidence on agents in private-market entrepreneurial financings. After controlling for the endogenous issuer–agent matching and a whole host of other controls, the empirical findings in this paper indicate that agents attract more investors, broaden the geographic investor and capital base, and increase the percentage of investors and capital from investors that are more vulnerable to the costs of information asymmetry. We also find that more capable agents generally provide more valuable benefits to private entrepreneurial firm financings than less capable agents, and that increasing the number of agents in a financing further increases value to issuing firms.

The purpose of this article is to extend the existing research on the relationship between eight different types of marketing capability and social enterprise performance. More specifically, we examine third-sector organizations that have transformed their traditional business model to become more business-like social enterprises and how these marketing capabilities influence the success of this transformation in both the UK and Japan. We identify, among other things, that not all marketing capabilities are positively associated with social enterprise performance. These findings challenge the conventional wisdom that market-driven organizations must develop all types of marketing capability. We suggest that social entrepreneurs should develop their marketing capabilities selectively according to their specific performance objectives.

The family business succession planning literature routinely assumes two main motives on the part of incumbents: family business continuity across generations and family harmony. The cross-tabulation of these motives produces a typology consisting of four distinct combinations of motives for succession planning. In turn, these combinations suggest four outcomes of succession planning, framed as institutionalization, implosion, imposition, and individualization. The first two outcomes—institutionalization and implosion—are fully elucidated in the literature. The other two—imposition and individualization—are routinely overlooked. The proposed typology highlights the repertoire of motives that inform succession planning, and how they promote distinct succession outcomes.

This paper documents a methodology used to assess, for the first time, the costs to the taxpayer of small and medium enterprise (SME) and entrepreneurship policy in Sweden. It then uses that data to compare the resulting expenditure patterns with the focus of policy as expressed by experts. It finds important areas where the two diverge, implying a possible mismatch between expenditure priorities and political rhetoric. This approach is then extended beyond Sweden to include Poland, Austria, and the Flanders region of Belgium to demonstrate the application of the approach to other countries and regions.

Although they represent a sizable occupational group, little is known about family employees. Using utility theory and the theory of compensating wage differentials, we hypothesize that family employees have higher levels of job satisfaction and lower wages relative to regular employees. We present several regressions based on a large cross-country panel data set that support our hypotheses, and we discuss our study's implications for research on family businesses and the labor market.

Lisa and John never envisioned that a luncheon held 20 years ago at their local high school would grow into The Empty Bowls Project, an international grassroots effort to fight hunger. The premise is simple in that potters, educators, students, and others create handcrafted bowls and serve a simple meal of soup and bread. In exchange for cash donations, attendees take home the bowl to recall all the empty bowls in the world. Monies raised are donated to community-based organizations working toward food security. The founders subsequently formed the nonprofit Imagine Render and now are considering their succession and future direction.

This paper investigates how early venture entrepreneurs engage in socially embedded practices to resource their firm. We contribute to an emerging literature that calls for a shift in perspective from “resource” as an object to “resourcing” as a practice. This shift entails a focus away from whom entrepreneurs know toward how they engage with their venture's social contexts. Through the analysis of an in-depth longitudinal case study of a life-science venture, we show that social resourcing practices are more reminiscent of a creative coping with ambiguous and ever-changing environments over time than of “heroic” strategizing. We explore how entrepreneurs mobilize and creatively combine their social resources at hand, seek resources through engaging with other practice nets, negotiate differences between practice nets, and reflectively adapt their resourcing practices toward emerging resource contexts in ways that we describe as “riding the practice waves” of social resourcing.

In this study, we seek to understand how four dimensions of national business systems surrounding the corporate headquarters of multinational firms influence corporate technological entrepreneurship (CTE). After controlling for fairly well-established antecedents of corporate technological entrepreneurship at the firm and industry levels, we find that national-level predictors explain considerable variance above and beyond our control variables. Furthermore, we find that various national-level dimensions influence different measures of CTE. Overall, our study points to the remarkably strong role of home institutional context for understanding two types of technological entrepreneurship pursued by relatively large, multinational firms based in 24 different economies.

This study examines the differential application of mechanisms that venture capitalists use to mitigate the risks of portfolio company internationalization. We investigate differences in round size, round interval, and round syndication between new ventures that internationalize (with a fraction of revenue from abroad) and solely domestic new ventures, using longitudinal data of 962 investing rounds in 334 venture capital-backed technology companies. While opportunistic internationalizers (ratio of foreign sales to total sales less than 10%) receive less funding per round by smaller syndicates over longer intervals than domestic ventures, higher intensity strategic internationalizers receive their funding in shorter intervals.

Many studies focus on the relationship between social networks and performance. I study networking behavior as an antecedent of tie formation among entrepreneurs in business incubators. I distinguish between two types of networking behavior: individual networking orientation or building potentially valuable ties for personal gain, and tertius iungens orientation or facilitating tie formation between others. I find that both types of networking behavior are positively related with the number of business partners to whom entrepreneurs give business assignments. Contrary to expectations, I find no relationship between networking behavior and the number of business partners from whom entrepreneurs receive business assignments.

The deal-making process requires entrepreneurial actors to create and maintain wide networks of weak ties while simultaneously developing stronger collaborative ties that will enable opportunities to be realized. We currently lack an adequate account of how these activities are integrated by deal-makers under conditions of risk and uncertainty. In an empirical study of deal making in early-stage technology ventures, we find that deal-makers rely on different forms of trust in the early and later phases. Based on this study, we develop a process model and propositions on the role of trust in integrating strong and weak ties in deal making.

Despite an abundance of research on entrepreneurial orientation and various dimensions of firm financial performance, very little is known about the specific influence of proactiveness on performance. In the current research, we explore the role of proactiveness in firms' interaction with the external environment. In particular, we examine the influence of proactiveness in stakeholder–firm power difference. Further, we investigate the extent to which stakeholder–firm power difference affects product safety and quality. Using a sample of 144 Chinese small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), we found that proactiveness can decrease government– and media–firm power differences. Government–firm power difference reduces product concerns, yet media–firm power difference deteriorates the purported product strengths for Chinese SMEs.

The amount of research conducted on the topic of international entrepreneurial orientation (IEO) has grown exponentially in recent years, thus inviting an analysis of the scholarly conversations taking place. This paper is a review and commentary on how the construct of entrepreneurial orientation (EO) has been leveraged within the international entrepreneurship literature. The possible distinctiveness of the EO and IEO constructs are considered, and the major themes of IEO research are summarized. Several measurement-related issues particularly pertinent to the assessment of EO as a generalizable/universalistic phenomenon are considered. The paper concludes with the identification of research foci whose pursuit promises to advance IEO knowledge along productive paths.

This paper examines the role of negative emotions in the social processes of entrepreneurship. Drawing on a study of Russian entrepreneurs, we develop a model of the emotional effects of social interactions between entrepreneurs and state officials. We found that negative emotions were elicited by these interactions and, in turn, fueled three forms of shame-related corrective appeasement behavior (reactive, anticipatory, and sporadic), which served to corrode entrepreneurial motivation and direct attention and energy away from business growth and development.

In this study we draw on the social network and international entrepreneurship literatures to examine the role of structural and relational embeddedness of international networks in firm internationalization. Based on a sample of 169 small- and medium-sized enterprises in the Czech Republic, we found that firms with chief executive officers who had developed strong and diverse international networks exhibited greater knowledge of foreign markets prior to internationalization. However, contrary to our expectations, no relationship was found between network density and such knowledge. In addition, our findings indicate that foreign market knowledge prior to the first international venture had a positive impact on venture performance.

We develop and examine a framework for the knowledge spillover theory of entrepreneurship in alliances. Our framework regards entrepreneurial opportunity as endogenous, and entrepreneurial firms as heterogeneous. The empirical findings show that partners' knowledge protection, which is regarded as a knowledge filter, can increase knowledge spillovers in an alliance. Moreover, this relationship is contingent on the strength of a focal firm's entrepreneurial orientation and on alliance type (equity joint venture versus nonequity joint venture). Results also reveal that knowledge spillovers in an alliance enhance alliance performance more significantly than they enhance firm performance.

This paper analyzes the factors impacting partnering decisions in venture capital syndicates using a unique data set of 2,373 venture capitalist (VC) transactions in Germany. We employ a signaling perspective to partner-selection strategies within VC syndicates. By including time-varying information about industry experience and cooperation patterns, we explicitly take into account not only the changing social context for partner selection, but also the dynamic nature of signals sent and received. Our analysis documents that the informativeness of investment experience as a signal depends on the existence and frequency of previous joint deals with the lead VC. Experience becomes a much stronger signal if previous invitations to syndicates are bilateral rather than unilateral. The willingness to invite others to deals signals the ability to reciprocate through one's own deal flow. Moreover, we show how the value of signals erodes over time, that is, information from the previous year carries more informational value than signals from more distant years. In sum, the data reveal that different signals carry weight for lead VCs, and that the frequency of signals sent and the stage of development of the portfolio firm positively moderate the value and relevance of signaling behavior. While early stage investments are mainly characterized by need to diversify and to spread risks, value-added advice is necessary in later rounds, and hence, the strength of the signals sent and received gain in relevance and in value.

We employ the individual-opportunity nexus perspective to conceptualize entrepreneurial commitment of academic scientists as the pursuit and attainment of external grant funding. We develop and test a model of network characteristics and cognitive biases that predict the likelihood that scientists will commit to a grant opportunity and the likelihood of receiving an award. Using data from our national survey of faculty, we find that the illusion of control and overconfidence reduce grant submissions but increase awards. Collaboration network size increases submissions and awards. Strong ties are positively related to submissions and smaller networks of strong, highly capable collaborators receive more awards.

Sprig Toy's mission was to deliver eco-friendly, battery-free, paint-free, kid-powered toys. The company had seen a meteoric rise since its beginning in 2007. Now, however, the founders were at a crossroads. They needed an immediate influx of capital, and on the table was a purchase offer from Wham-O^®. As social entrepreneurs, their decision was not purely financial. They had wanted to start a company that would change both the market (how kids played) and the industry (how toys were manufactured)—but now, they had to make a decision regarding the offer to buy their company, and they worried whether they were “selling out.”

We advance and test an institutional anomie theory of opportunity entrepreneurship for understanding the combinative effects of selected cultural values and social institutions to explain national differences in rates of opportunity entrepreneurship. We theorize opportunity entrepreneurship as a creatively deviant response to anomic conditions in societies, i.e., when social institutions block traditional means of achievement. Using 10 years of data for a pooled time series cross-sectional analysis, we examined a unique mixture of cultural and institutional variables and their interactions as predictors of nation-level opportunity entrepreneurship rates. We found support for most hypotheses showing that specific institutional contexts mitigate or enhance the effects of cultural drivers of opportunity entrepreneurship.

Entrepreneurship is a perilous endeavor. Contextual changes, such as nascent technology emergence or new industry creation, can spawn entrepreneurial opportunities; however, these changes do not instantaneously create the resources and structures that new firms need to survive. This study examines the creation and configuration of the contextual infrastructure necessary for nascent technology entrepreneurship in new industries. Using the case of nanotechnology, I show how the elements of infrastructure emerge and configure through systemic coevolution. The data highlight how boundary crossing and obfuscation induces the configuration of separate elements into a cohesive infrastructure through heightened interaction and interdependence of organizations and institutions, both private and public.

This analysis has evaluated the impact of mergers on new entrepreneurial firm entry in the territories of firms making up the local exchange sector of the United States telecommunications industry. An analysis of first and second mergers undertaken by the local exchange companies has revealed that where mergers occurred there was significantly lower entrepreneurial entry. The results have implications for policy, since the approval of mergers has been shown to lead to lower entrepreneurial entry where mergers occur, and the approval of mergers may serve to impede entrepreneurship. Hence, greater thought should be given to merger approvals so that entrepreneurship and the process of economic growth are not compromised as a result.

We explain why family-centered noneconomic goals and bounded rationality decrease the willingness and ability of small- and medium-sized family firms to hire and provide competitive compensation to nonfamily managers even in a labor market composed of stewards rather than agents. Family-centered noneconomic goals attenuate the ability to attract high-quality, nonfamily managers by promoting inferior total compensation packages, fewer opportunities for advancement, idiosyncratic strategies, and higher performance expectations. Furthermore, bounded rationality limits nonfamily managers' ability to meet performance expectations when hired. The result is the “winner's curse,” where neither the economic nor noneconomic goals of family owners are fully achieved.

This paper analyzes the theory of “entrepreneurial incentives” in the work of Israel Kirzner. It argues that there is a logical problem with the notion of profit opportunities as exogenous causal agents: Without additional assumptions, the existence of opportunities alone does not sufficiently explain the alertness of entrepreneurs. The paper considers both stronger and weaker versions of this problem. It also questions the relation between entrepreneurial incentives and the tendency toward entrepreneurial success. Finally, it provides some commentary on the relevance of entrepreneurial incentives for an overall theory of the entrepreneur, and identifies several potential solutions to the problems discussed.

Drawing on agency and configurations theories, this study examines how perceived level of control over the entrepreneur influences venture capitalist (VC) decision making. We model the direct effects of perceived control and the interactive effects of control with entrepreneurial prestige and opportunity attractiveness to determine how various combinations of factors influence VCs’ willingness to invest. We test our conceptualizations using conjoint analyses of 552 VC investment decisions. The results show that perceived control is directly related to investment likelihood, but different configurations of control, entrepreneur prestige, and opportunity attractiveness result in different outcomes. Our findings support a configurational perspective of VC decision making.

Entrepreneurs are expected to profit from network relationships. Research addressing the link between entrepreneurs' network characteristics and their performance, however, has so far produced inconclusive results. In an attempt to explain these inconsistencies, we investigate the resource returns connected to network size and relationship quality. Based on a sample of 379 nascent entrepreneurs, we find that increasing network size and relationship quality results in diminishing marginal returns in terms of access to financial capital, knowledge and information, and additional business contacts. Additionally, we observe that the returns vary strongly by resource type.

This case takes place in Russia in 2008, not quite 20 years into the post-Soviet developing economy. DiPaul was an authorized dealer of electronic instruments, equipment, and materials for the production and assembly of printed circuit boards as well as soldering equipment. Its core business was supplying measurement instruments and process equipment. In the summer of 2008, the chief executive officer, who was also the majority stockholder, decided to reassign authority in a formal organizational transition so that he could become more engaged in policy and leadership of the Association of Russian Producers of Electronic Appliances and Instruments. The protagonist's concerns were as follows: How to carry out such a management transition? Who among the top management team could fit the position best? How must the organizational structure of the company be changed to accommodate the shift in leadership? And importantly, what should his own future role be?

Access to resources is a key challenge facing entrepreneurs during early venture development. Entrepreneurs' networks serve as a principal means of identifying and acquiring needed resources. However, different stages of venture development may address different resource dependencies, suggesting entrepreneurs' networks may need to change to meet changing resource requirements. By employing network theory and resource-dependence theory, we investigate how entrepreneurs may use networks to address changing resource needs during early venture development. Results illustrate how structural characteristics of entrepreneurs' networks at venture launch are associated with network structure and content in early venture development in ways that may promote access to newly needed resources.

Agency theory is the dominant explanation for entrepreneurs' decisions about how much to grow through franchising vis-à-vis company ownership. We introduce a resource-based explanation and submit that the proportion franchised is influenced by efforts to organize franchisor-owned and relational strategic assets so that their value can be best leveraged to meet key strategic goals. Using data from 168 franchisors, we found that relational (i.e., interfirm trust and knowledge-sharing routines), but not franchisor-owned (i.e., brand reputation and operating routines), strategic assets influence the proportion franchised. The study offers preliminary evidence that resource-based theory has merit as a complementary explanation for franchising.

This paper studies the role of entrepreneurs in investment tie formation in science-based entrepreneurial firms. Specifically, we address why investment tie formation is path dependent for some firms but more amenable to intentional management for others. Using longitudinal case studies, our evidence suggests that early investment tie formation is path dependent because scientific entrepreneurs typically approach only one or a few prospective investors from within their institutional context. Differences in experience between early investors affect the professionalization of entrepreneurial teams (or lack thereof), which influences the extent to which subsequent investment tie formation becomes more amenable to intentional management or remains path dependent.

Little is known about the drivers of entrepreneurial decisions during war. We empirically examine the effects of perceived danger, entrepreneurial self-efficacy, and resilience on entrepreneurial intentions in adverse conditions with primary survey data from Afghanistan. Our findings suggest that perceived danger is negatively related to an individual's entrepreneurial intentions, but marginally less so among highly resilient individuals. Our findings also suggest that even under conditions of war, individuals develop entrepreneurial intentions if they are able to grow from adversity (resilience) and believe in their entrepreneurial abilities (entrepreneurial self-efficacy). Practical implications for role modeling and entrepreneurship training are then discussed.

This paper examines the return on recent venture capital (VC) investment and its impact on the long-run stock market performance of initial public offerings (IPOs). Firms with higher return on recent VC investment underperform firms with lower return on recent VC investment by 32 to 43% in the 3-year period following the offer. This effect is robust to various risk-adjustment procedures. Market conditions at the time of the VC valuation and changes in these market conditions thereafter are the main drivers of this result, suggesting that investors are too optimistic or do not properly understand the informational content of the recent return on VC investment.

Metaphors are powerful tools for sensemaking, sensegiving, and theory development, but they are often concealed in academic writing. This paper uncovers two metaphors underlying entrepreneurship discourse and research—elixir and mutagen. The elixir metaphor is uncovered by examining critiques of entrepreneurship research, and serves as a compact description of problematic aspects entrepreneurship scholars should be mindful of. The mutagen metaphor is uncovered by examining evolutionary frameworks, focusing on the role entrepreneurship plays in them. The paper illustrates how the mutagen metaphor can be used to reframe entrepreneurship, and uses the metaphors to interest, inform, and provoke.

The case focuses on Ken Powers, cofounder and chief executive officer of Sparrow Therapeutics, whose young biotechnology company has reached a critical stage where he has to decide whether or not to sell. The company's three main sets of investors have different priorities: (1) a quick cash sale now, (2) delay sale for about a year if returns are greater, and (3) delay sale for 2 years, build company value, and retain autonomy. What choice would be best for the company, for its investors—and for Ken himself? And when would be the best time to implement the exit strategy?

Applying insights from the generational perspective, this study explores when strategic planning and succession planning are most conducive to privately held family firm growth. The results show that the degree to which strategic planning and succession planning are associated with family firm growth depends on the generation managing the firm. Both forms of planning are most conducive to the growth of first-generation firms; however, neither form of planning confers much growth for second-generation firms. For third-and-beyond-generation firms, the benefits of succession planning appear to reemerge. However, strategic planning is negatively associated with their level of growth.

Research on organization slack has focused mainly on its effect in large publicly traded firms, but little work exists on the value of slack resources for other firms. Therefore, here, we address the question: Do slack resources matter in the case of initial public offerings (IPOs)? We argue that firms that possess financial, innovational, and managerial slack resources are sending a positive signal to potential investors regarding the quality of the IPO. Using a sample of high-tech IPOs, we find support for that contention.

This multicountry study empirically explores the institutional determinants of macro-level entrepreneurship. Findings suggest that a society's normative, cultural-cognitive, and regulative institutions are related to entrepreneurial activity. Normative and cultural-cognitive institutions’ descriptive power in explaining entrepreneurial activity is higher than regulative institutions' or per capita gross domestic product. This suggests that differences in values, beliefs, and abilities may play a greater role than purely economic considerations of opportunity and transaction costs. Specific attention is given to opportunity- and necessity-motivated entrepreneurship due to their relationship to economic development.

Drawing on previous literature proposing that entrepreneurial orientation (EO) reflects a disposition toward, rather than actual involvement in, entrepreneurial activity, and on the resource-based view of the firm, we complement the literature concerning the EO–performance relationship with the introduction of exploratory innovation and exploitative innovation as mediating variables accounting for entrepreneurial behavior. Data from 228 adolescent companies indicate the existence of an EO–entrepreneurial behavior gap and support the predicted mediating effects. In this context, the constituent dimensions of EO differ in their effects on exploration and exploitation, and performance, calling for an exacting consideration of the interplay of orientation, activity, and performance.

Entrepreneurial ventures need frequently to adapt. Yet their adaptive capacity is often limited by the legacies of imprinted founding characteristics. The question then arises whether it is possible to explain and manage the imprinting process so that the capacity to adapt is enhanced, rather than diminished. I address this question by developing a model of the microfoundations of imprinting based in collective memory. I argue that entrepreneurial founding teams naturally develop transactive autobiographical memory systems. By partially managing the design and imprinting of these memory systems, I argue that founders may improve their venture's long-term capacity to adapt.

As the global economic downturn entered the last quarter of 2009, Jordan Baltimore, a young but experienced entrepreneur, had to consider alternative funding for his start-up company, Oyster Digital Media. He had planned for venture capital to develop his “Oysters”—electronic shelf tags for retail stores. He was ready to launch his business just as funding became scarce and uncertain. Should he continue to try for venture capital? Angel investors or Friends-and-Family were alternatives, but they could involve less money and delay.

This article investigates how prior corporate venture capital (CVC) relationships between two firms affect the likelihood of their subsequently entering a strategic alliance. Creating a portfolio of CVC investments provides the investing firm with a set of opportunities that can be pursued once the technological and market uncertainty have been reduced. If the technology appears to be promising, a follow-on investment, such as a strategic alliance, is made to ensure the transfer of the technological knowledge. This article shows that prior CVC investments can play a role in the formation of strategic alliances and investigates the conditions under which they are most likely to do so.

We examine the dynamics of the positive sorting in the venture capital industry. Our findings indicate that switching lead venture capitalists (VCs) is not uncommon during the course of entrepreneurial firms' development. Companies with upwardly revised perceived quality are more likely to switch to more reputable VCs. Further, companies that switch lead VCs obtain larger capital infusion and higher pre-money valuation. However, companies that switch to more reputable VCs accept smaller investment size and lower pre-money valuation in follow-on rounds. In addition, it takes significantly more time for switchers with downwardly revised perceived quality to obtain subsequent financing.

This study examines how small-business owners'/managers' perceptions about their banking relationships are influenced by the gender of both the small-business owner/manager and the bank manager. This study draws from social network theory and status expectations state theory to test how gender influences key perceptions about the bank–firm relationship. Using 696 matched firm owner/manager–bank manager pairs, our results show that male–male pairs of business owner/managers and bankers had the highest levels of trust, satisfaction with credit access, and bank knowledge, while female–female pairs had the lowest levels for each measure; with mixed pairs in the middle on all accounts.

Given the increasing attention to traditionally less “rational” entrepreneurial behaviors, such as bricolage, we used grounded theory techniques to study 23 diverse entrepreneurs. From this, we developed a five-category typology of entrepreneurial behavior that includes art, craft, engineering, bricolage, and brokerage. Themes such as self-perceived identity, organization of space, integration of materials, sense of personal limits, and responsiveness to changing market conditions were observed along categorical lines. We discuss the significance of the typology and each category's associations with venture longevity and financial performance for practitioners and for the study of entrepreneurship.

Social entrepreneurs are celebrated as transformational leaders whose accomplishments create opportunities for those less fortunate. However, little is known about the early stages of social enterprise development. This study focuses on how a nascent entrepreneur's prosocial motivation affects the progress in building a new venture. Results show that prosocial motivation decreases the likelihood of firm emergence within a 4-year follow-up period, and even more so when the product offering of the emerging venture is new to the markets. These findings are discussed in the light of previous research on prosocial motivation, social entrepreneurship, market novelty, and nascent entrepreneurship.

Whereas the determinants of entrepreneurial choice have been thoroughly analyzed in the literature, little is known about the preferred mode of entry into entrepreneurship, such as taking over an existing business or starting a new venture. Using a large international data set, this study reports considerable differences in takeover preferences across 33 countries. Hierarchical (multilevel) regressions are performed to explore individual-level and country-level determinants of the preferred mode of entry. At the individual level, a person's human capital, risk attitude, and inventiveness influence the preference for starting a new venture versus taking over an existing business. At the country level, the culture-inherent level of risk tolerance, the country's level of innovation output, and the administrative difficulty of starting a new business are found to explain the between-country variation in the preferred mode of entry. Implications of our findings for research and practice are also discussed.

Beyond internal exploration and exploitation, firms increasingly explore and exploit knowledge outside their boundaries in corporate entrepreneurship activities with external partners. We provide new theoretical arguments and use data from a multi-informant survey of 97 medium-sized firms to show that the interactions of intraorganizational and interorganizational processes allow for simultaneous exploration and exploitation in open innovation. While the positive effects of all interactions of exploration and exploitation on product development performance are limited under stable conditions, they are particularly pronounced at high levels of technological turbulence. These findings have implications for research into strategic entrepreneurship, corporate entrepreneurship, organizational learning, ambidexterity, and technological turbulence.

Innovation ecosystems have emerged as an important context for entrepreneurship. Ecosystem entrepreneurs, however, face a unique set of challenges associated with the need to balance the goals and priorities set by the ecosystem leader with the goals and priorities of the new venture. We focus on ecosystem entrepreneurs' self-regulatory processes and the potential role of these processes in entrepreneurs' efforts to successfully balance requirements set by the ecosystem leader with the goals of their own ventures.

Although previous research shows that corporate spin-offs contribute to economic growth, few studies link growth to the type of corporate spin-off. We distinguish between three types of corporate spin-offs: incumbent-backed, opportunity, and necessity spin-offs. Using empirical data on 46 corporate spin-offs in Flanders, we find that opportunity spin-offs outperform the other two types. By identifying the type of corporate spin-offs, this study aims to add to our knowledge on the relationship between spin-off type and firm growth.

This paper reports the findings of the first academic study in Latin America, and one of the few in any emerging economy, to explore entrepreneurial perceptions and activity in peripheral geographic locations. A survey of experts included 139 respondents from three peripheral regions and two core regions in Chile. A key finding is that those located at the periphery perceived critical entrepreneurial resources and access to markets less favorably than their counterparts at the core, but surprisingly, they perceived greater business opportunity in their area. A further survey of 2,200 respondents concerning actual entrepreneurial activities among the total adult population revealed no differences between peripheral and core regions. This study revives the debate about specific regional policies for fostering the growth of local business, and the entrepreneurial framework conditions required at the regional level in emerging economies.

How does the temporal distance between the phases of evaluation and exploitation alter entrepreneurs' opportunity evaluation? Building on construal level theory, we argue that the impact of an opportunity's desirability and feasibility on evaluation and exploitation intentions varies systematically with temporal distance. We experimentally demonstrate stronger influences of desirability on evaluation when the exploitation phase is temporally distant rather than near, whereas feasibility more strongly affects evaluation when exploitation is near rather than distant. Using construal level theory, we explain empirical inconsistencies in previous research and demonstrate the usefulness of integrating the concept of temporal distance in entrepreneurship research and education.

Legal rules and the economic environment play an important role in the decision to become an entrepreneur. Many studies examine the effect of such institutions at the national or state level. The metropolitan area may be a more appropriate geography to examine, since entrepreneurs often serve a more localized market and there is wide variation in both the environment for and incidence of proprietorship among metropolitan areas. We find that proprietorship increases with home equity, intangible wealth, unemployment, relative earnings of proprietors, and population. It decreases with higher state income tax rates and minimum wages.

This study conceptualizes founding team human capital with three multi-item scales that are related to critical functional areas in new service ventures: marketing capabilities, market-linking capabilities, and service design capabilities. We develop and empirically test a theoretical framework linking founding team capabilities to service venture performance through two strategic positional advantages: scalability and protectability. Our results provide insight into previous inconsistent findings regarding founding teams' impact on new venture performance, offer important managerial implications, and point to future research directions.

Opportunity evaluation represents a core aspect of the entrepreneurial process. Prior research suggests that evaluation of new opportunities is influenced by biases rooted in subjective beliefs, values, and assumptions. In the present study, we used stereotype activation theory to propose that respondent gender (men–women), content of stereotype (masculine–feminine), and the manner in which stereotype information is presented (subtle–blatant) interact to influence evaluations of a new business opportunity. We found that both masculine and feminine stereotype activation influenced men and women's evaluation of a business opportunity differently depending upon whether the stereotype was blatantly or subtly activated. Our results indicate that gender stereotype activation can both boost and impede men and women's subsequent actions on entrepreneurial tasks such as opportunity evaluation, depending on the content of the stereotype and the manner in which it is presented. Implications and directions for future research are discussed.

The research project described in this paper began as an inductive field study of entrepreneurship education in two very different settings—a university in war-torn Eastern Croatia and an entrepreneurship program in inner-city high schools in the United States. It evolved into a study of the two unlikely entrepreneurs who founded these education initiatives. Through a detailed counterfactual analysis of the narratives on the programs' founding and evolution, we offer compelling evidence for the role of contingency in the entrepreneurial process. We present an inductive conceptual framework of responses to contingency based on entrepreneurs' beliefs about agency and environment and conclude with implications of this research for entrepreneurship education.

This case concerns Biohit, a family-owned biotechnology company established in Finland in 1988, selling liquid handling and diagnostics products in the global market. The case also describes the entrepreneurial career of Biohit's CEO Osmo Suovaniemi, since the company is mainly based on the know-how that Osmo gained as owner-manager of his two earlier companies, Labsystems and Eflab, during the 1970s and 1980s. Hence, this case describes the prior and initial phases of Biohit, examining also its commitment to innovation and its management practices. The case ends with the situation as of March 2010 and includes the reflections of Biohit's managers on the future of the company. At this point, Osmo was intending to hand over his executive position to someone from outside the family, on the grounds that none of his three sons was able or willing to take up the position. However, he planned to continue as owner, inventor, and full-time board member of Biohit. The managers of Biohit had high hopes of making a breakthrough with diagnostics products that had been under intensive development over a long period.

The model developed in this paper draws on human capital theory to explain how newly founded business ventures achieve long-term growth and reduce their chances of failure. Using a sample of 201 business start-ups and assessing growth and venture failure over a period of 12 years, we found that general and specific human capital lead to growth and failure in different ways. More specifically, we found that the effect of general human capital on failure was mediated by growth. Unexpectedly, specific human capital was not related to growth and had direct negative effects on business failure.

This paper uses a three-dimensional perspective on social capital to investigate how entrepreneurs develop their social capital when relying on bootstrapping strategies becomes insufficient and financing needs to be acquired from external debt and equity financiers. Findings from six case studies of entrepreneurs in the fashion industry show that to acquire funding, due to perceived deficiency in the existing network, entrepreneurs develop the structural dimension by adding relationships based on function. However, when seeking financial information that is perceived as sufficient in the existing network, they do so by developing cognitive and relational dimensions to preexisting network ties.

Within the phenomenon of entrepreneurship, the extant literature suggests that the normative actor is embodied by and through stereotypical masculinized characteristics. In this paper, we contextualize entrepreneurship as self-employment in order to explore how such stereotypical characterizations might influence women's attitudes toward this activity. However, rather than analyzing the confirmatory effects of stereotypes, we critically evaluate the effect of counterstereotypical characterizations upon women's propensity for self-employment. Drawing upon life-span data, we explore whether self-employed mothers disconfirm masculinized stereotypes and so act as positive role models for their daughters. As hypothesized, we found that maternal self-employment has a counterstereotypical effect and so positively influences daughters to become self-employed. These data indicate, however, that this effect is tempered by personal stereotypes held by daughters; moreover, it is shaped by significant life events (marriage, parenthood, education, and prior managerial experience). By using a robust data set, this paper contributes to our understanding of how stereotypes and role expectations influence women's propensity toward entrepreneurial activity.

We investigate how an entrepreneur's behaviors during an initial interaction with a business angel can build, damage, or violate trust, and how the investor's level of trust (prompted by the entrepreneur's behavior) can affect his/her decision to make an investment offer. Our empirical analysis shows that entrepreneurs who receive offers from business angels exhibit a larger number of trust-building behaviors during the initial interaction and a smaller number of unintentional trust-damaging behaviors than those who do not receive an offer, and display few deliberate trust-violating behaviors. We further observe that the investor's deployment of a control mechanism is a prerequisite for receiving an investment offer for all entrepreneurs who damage or violate trust.

We examine network relationships, particularly the type and strength of these relationships and how firms use them in order to commercialize different types of innovations. We conduct an in-depth case study of four small firms to provide insight on how and why a portfolio of network relationships (e.g., suppliers, distributors, customers, and research institutes) helps small new innovative firms to gain resources. We develop a framework of four innovation types and expand on how successful commercialization for each innovation type requires certain types and strength of relationships. Both types (systemic and autonomous) of radical innovations require strong collaborative ties with customers, whereas incremental innovations are commercialized through different types of downstream networks.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology environmental engineer and social entrepreneur Susan Murcott has worked for more than two decades to deliver clean drinking water to the world's poorest citizens. The stakes are high: polluted water is one of the world's leading causes of disease and death, particularly for children under the age of five. In this case, Murcott launches a new social enterprise in the West African nation of Ghana. The demanding leadership role of the entrepreneur is highlighted as Murcott and her team face many standard start-up challenges around venture mission, market definition, and product pricing and quality within a culturally rich, global setting.

This case focuses on the decisions confronting Marc van der Bilt and his family. At the age of 59, Marc had been a franchisee of the Dutch DA drugstore chain for 23 years and had always planned to remain one until his retirement. In the spring of 2003, however, a change of management at the DA headquarters sparked major strategic changes to the DA chain that placed Marc and his family in a difficult position. They must decide on the future of their family business; should they go along with their franchisor's new plans or not?

This introduction to the special issue considers past and current research on “Social Capital and Entrepreneurship” to develop a schema and an associated research agenda. With the general goal of establishing social capital as a foundational theory of entrepreneurship, we discuss how future research can utilize social capital perspectives across levels of analysis and contexts to explain a wide variety of entrepreneurship phenomena.

We model and test the relationship between social and commercial entrepreneurship drawing on social capital theory. We propose that the country prevalence rate of social entrepreneurship is an indicator of constructible nation-level social capital and enhances the likelihood of individual commercial entry. We further posit that both social and commercial entrepreneurial entry is facilitated by certain formal institutions, namely strong property rights and (low) government activism, albeit the latter impacts each of these types of entrepreneurship differently. We apply bivariate discrete choice multilevel modeling to population-representative samples in 47 countries and find support for these hypotheses.

This study considers the mediating role of internal knowledge sharing in the relationship between two critical aspects of organizational social capital (trust and goal congruence) and entrepreneurial orientation (EO), as well as how this role might be moderated by the firm's level of formalization. It shows that higher levels of internal knowledge sharing relate to stronger EO, and such knowledge sharing in turn results from higher levels of trust and goal congruence. This study further provides a nuanced picture of the role of formalization in this process. The authors discuss both the study's implications and future research directions.

This study examines how founders can manage changes in their network ties during firm founding. We find that an increase in tie strength is negatively associated with founding activities, whereas an increase in the number of ties is positively associated with founding activities. Furthermore, entrepreneurial intensity mitigates the negative relationship between an increase in tie strength and founding activities; and social competence reinforces the positive relationship between an increase in the number of ties and founding activities. Our study contributes to the social capital literature by theorizing and testing how changes in a founder's network structure can be beneficial to founding activities.

Focusing on a firm's signaling of social capital through their alliances, we explore how socially constructed signals convey legitimacy and enable greater initial public offering (IPO) proceeds. We examine the concepts of absolute and relative social capital signals with a sample of 266 biotechnology IPOs from 1980 through 2006. Leveraging a dynamic framework, we uncover that the interpretations of quality signals vary over time and are nonadditive; rather, affiliating with prestigious underwriters limits the positive reward of signaling alliance-based social capital. These relationships vary according to whether social capital is evaluated relative to the industry norms and according to the alliance's vertical position.

Our research begins with a theoretical critique of the social capital literature, and then focuses on Old Harbor, Alaska. In this remote outpost, mainly populated by Alutiiq people, all entrepreneurs self-identified as Euro-Americans or multi-ethnic, not Alutiiq. Although Alutiiq people have abundant social capital, which they employed for economic purposes, they did not employ their social capital for commercial entrepreneurship. Our findings suggest that social capital promotes entrepreneurship only when supportive cultural capital is in place.

This study demonstrates how banks' bureaucratic systems (i.e., formalization, management continuity, customer orientation) are associated with social capital's relational and cognitive dimensions. We collected survey data from a matched sample of 884 small- and medium-sized enterprises (SME) executives and 217 bank managers across 22 banks to test hypothesized relationships. Our results showed that formalization is negatively associated with both dimensions of social capital, while management continuity and customer orientation are positively associated with them. These results are a first step in answering calls in the literature to study bureaucratic systems' influence on social capital. Theoretical and future research implications are discussed.

La Vida Local is a small organic food delivery business which was started with an investment of under $1,000. In 2008, less than 2 years after its inception, the company is grossing over $80,000. Profits, however, are minimal. Although Julie LaPorte, the owner/operator, is more interested in facilitating the consumption of organic foods than making money, she is exhausted. She wants to hire an employee to help out, but to do so she needs to find a way to generate more profits and to overcome her own desire to keep tight control over operations.