Corporate entrepreneurship programmes as mechanisms to accelerate product innovations

This paper explores how firms engage in corporate entrepreneurship through programmes, and what kind of outcomes they achieve in terms of innovations. Insights are drawn from four cases of organisations that engaged in corporate entrepreneurial activities. The paper identifies two dimensions of corporate entrepreneurship programmes as idea themes, indicating whether programmes are designed with specific themes in mind, and idea ownership, indicating whether there is a dedicated team to focus on new ideas, or not. These dimensions are under the direct control of management. Based on these two dimensions, four models of corporate entrepreneurial activities are presented linking each of these models to one of the four cases of product innovations (product line extensions, product improvements, new products, start-up businesses). By drawing on the insights of the effectuation and causation logics, the paper provides a fresh perspective of corporate entrepreneurship programmes in an emerging, non-Western cultural setup and the product innovation context. This is primarily done by introducing a 2 × 2 matrix regarding corporate entrepreneurship idea themes and idea ownership in an emerging context.

Entrepreneurs’ Networking Styles and Normative Underpinnings during Institutional Transition

Existing network research has mainly adopted functional and/or structural approaches to study the instrumental goals behind entrepreneurs’ networking as well as the influence of personal position on access to resources and eventual performance. The variety of entrepreneurs’ networking styles and their normative underpinnings have not been adequately explored. Contextualized in China, this study asks: How do entrepreneurs’ understandings of social norms shape their networking styles? Through an inductive comparison of two entrepreneur generations in China, we identify three networking styles: guanxi-oriented networking, market-based networking, and mixed networking. We theorize that three types of norms shape these styles: market-inferred norms, dyadically formed norms, and identity-induced norms. This study provides new insights into the understanding of Chinese entrepreneurs’ distinctive networking styles and their normative underpinnings. Further, it suggests implications both for the wider study of entrepreneurs’ networking behaviors in transition economies, and for practitioners wishing to enhance their network building in China.

Team Ventures and Acquisition Exits: Are Team-Founded Ventures More Likely to be Acquired?

We investigate whether team ventures are more likely to be acquired than single-founder ventures, and if so, attempt to determine what number of founders results in the highest acquisition likelihood. Using the Kauffman Firm Survey (KFS) of US businesses started in 2004, our results indicate that team-founded new ventures are more likely to be acquired, and that there is a positive and diminishing relationship between team size and acquisition likelihood. This study contributes to the understanding of drivers of exit for new ventures, and opens up the new venture exit literature to future contributions of a team demography approach.

Effect of the Social and Cultural Control on Young Eastern Ethnic Minority Groups’ Online-Startup Motivation

This study is developed based on particular social and cultural backgrounds and discovers young Eastern ethnic minority groups’ (EMGs) online-startup motivation on live streaming platforms. Drawing on the Hofstede cultural dimensions, this paper explores various influencing factors, including peers’ support, conservative thinking and family support. It analyses young Eastern EMGs’ entrepreneurial motivation and behaviour based on the Stimulus, Organism and Response (S-O-R) model. Compared with traditional research models, the combination of the Hofstede cultural theory and the S-O-R model could be conducive to make the research model reflect influencing factors and present their specific relationships. By analysing 531 valid online questionnaires based on the partial least squares path modelling and variance-based structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM), the paper proves that peers’ support and family support can reduce young EMGs’ conservative thinking and positively affect young people EMGs’ online-startup motivation. Based on the analysis results, some suggestions are provided for related departments, aiming to enhance young EMGs’ online-startup confidence.

The Connections Between Founders’ Social Network and Human Capital in Technology-Based New Ventures

This research examines the relationship between a founding team’s social network and the acquisition of its critical human capital. First, explicitly dealing with technology-based firms, we disaggregate the founder(s) social network into four sub-networks: academic, industry, finance, and personal (family and community). Then, we detail the relationship between these individual sub-networks and the acquisition of both technical and business skilled human capital. Our results confirm that individual sub-networks have a differential effect on acquiring both technical and business human capital.

A Systematic Literature Review and Meta-Analysis of Entrepreneurial Personality

Entrepreneurial Personality (EP) is a collection of personality traits that broadly and strongly relate to entrepreneurial outcomes across most contexts. The goal of the current article is to address present uncertainties surrounding EP by identifying its dimensions and assessing their relations with entrepreneurial outcomes. Our systematic literature review demonstrates that seven dimensions are commonly used to represent EP: innovativeness, risk-taking, achievement orientation, locus of control, proactiveness, self-efficacy, and autonomy orientation. Via meta-analytic structural equation modeling, we find support for a one-factor model composed of these seven dimensions, suggesting that they indeed represent a unitary construct. Our meta-analysis also supports that EP and its dimensions consistently produce significant relations with entrepreneurial attitudes, intent, status, and performance. EP is thereby supported as an important component of successful entrepreneurial endeavors, and our meta-analytic results provide clear criteria for determining the inclusion of dimensions within the construct of EP – which our seven identified dimensions satisfy.

The Curvilinear Relationship Between Collective Team Identification and New Venture Performance: The Moderating Effect of Environmental Uncertainty

Many new ventures are founded and developed by teams rather than solo entrepreneurs. Therefore, the extent to which entrepreneurs identify with their teams is likely to have an important impact on the process and outcome of new venture creation in new venture teams. However, most of the relevant studies focus on entrepreneurs’ individual identity, and the identity at the team level has been overlooked. This study seeks to fill this gap by exploring the effect of collective team identification on new venture performance. The relationship between collective team identification and new venture performance was examined using a sample of 54 new venture teams in Internet Technology (IT) industry. The results show that the relationship between collective team identification and new venture performance is inverted U-shaped. Moreover, environmental uncertainty may moderate this curvilinear effect, such that this inverted U-shaped relationship is more salient at a low level of environmental uncertainty rather than at a high level of environmental uncertainty.

Tacking into the Wind: How Women Entrepreneurs can Sail Through Family-to-Work Conflict to Ensure their Firms’ Entrepreneurial Orientation

When women entrepreneurs experience family-to-work conflict, it may discourage them from adopting an entrepreneurial orientation, an effect mediated by work-related emotional exhaustion and moderated by both family-to-work enrichment and family support at home. According to survey data collected among women entrepreneurs in Ghana, negative interferences of family with work can steer women entrepreneurs away from adopting an entrepreneurial orientation for their company, largely because they feel emotionally overextended by their work. However, enrichment of their work, attained through family involvement, can buffer this detrimental effect. The buffering role of family-to-work enrichment in turn is particularly effective when women entrepreneurs receive help on household tasks from other family members. This study accordingly identifies a key mechanism by which family-induced work strain can hamper bold strategic actions by women entrepreneurs—because they feel emotionally drained at work—and details when this mechanism is less prominent, namely, in the presence of relevant family resources.

Understanding Imagination in Entrepreneurship

Using interviews to explore the role imagination plays in the South American Nikkei phenomenon (a fusion of Japanese haute cuisine with Peruvian ingredients) and employing the alternate templates research strategy to analytically compare three entrepreneurial behaviors (adaptive bricolage, strategic planning, and transformative effectuation), this case study found that the current theoretical boundary conditions are insufficient to separate the three archetypes. Therefore, based on data, new concepts are proposed to explain entrepreneurial behaviors where they overlap (e.g., creative imagination as a bridging construct of the entrepreneurial process). A novel entrepreneurial trilemma and a behavioral model focused on the conceptual overlaps are introduced to frame the new concepts and to visually depict the relationships between them.

Examining the Creative Self-Efficacy, Goal Interdependence, and Satisfaction of New Venture Teams in the Board Game Industry

This study theoretically and empirically examines the important role that goal structures play in new venture teams. Specifically, we examine how creative self-efficacy affects the satisfaction of team members through cooperative and competitive goal interdependence. Relying on social cognitive and social interdependence theories, we contend that new venture teams’ creative self-efficacy leads to higher team satisfaction because it promotes the perception of cooperative goal structures among team members. We test our theory on new venture teams in the independent board game industry. Results generally support our hypotheses and we discuss the implications for entrepreneurship research and practice.