Abstract: We identify two venture types based on the type of opportunity that forms the basis for venture creation. Market pull ventures start from an un/underserved market need and identify a technological solution, while tech push ventures start with a technology at hand and seek a market to apply it to. Therefore market-pull and tech-push ventures need to engage in technological and market search. Based on a longitudinal study of 151 technology-based ventures, we found contrasting effects of scanning and founders' experience and personality. Market scanning, in-depth technological experience, broad market experience and key founders high in openness to experience benefit tech push ventures. In contrast, technology scanning, in-depth market experience, broad technological experience, and conscientious key founders foster the initial success of market pull ventures.

Abstract: Creating a Halo Effect through affiliation with high status incumbents by innovative new ventures has been demonstrated to be a successful strategy for increasing legitimacy and increasing capital flows and firm value (Baum and Oliver, 1991; Stuart et al., 1999). But what of the reverse? Can a stigmatized organization use its stigma to decrease an innovative new venture’s status, legitimacy, access to resources and odds of success? Can stigma be used by incumbents as a strategic weapon to deter support and adoption of disruptive innovation or entry by innovative new ventures? This study will attempt to address these questions based on a qualitative study of the battle between big tobacco companies and new ventures in the emerging e-cig industry.

Abstract: Recent research on entrepreneurial entry has begun to challenge the traditional entrepreneurial entry dichotomy where individuals make a distinct choice between entrepreneurship and wage employment by highlighting hybrid or “part-time entrepreneurship”. This literature uses real-options logic, where the worker has the right, but not the obligation to enter into full-time entrepreneurship after an initial investment is made via their engagement in part-time entrepreneurship. We build on this line of research, which has focused on supply-side characteristics driving individuals’ choices to enter into part-time entrepreneurship, and argue that we must also consider demand-side factors when seeking to explain outcomes of entrepreneurial decision processes. In doing so, we develop and test our theory of entrepreneurial entry using longitudinal data from the Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics program, which allows us to concurrently identify entrepreneurial entry decisions, individual wages, and firm performance outcomes.

Abstract: This study reports the results of a new examination of the well-established negative effect of localized density on survival in established industries. In the standard theory, this effect is generically attributed to resource competition, where both “resource” and “competition” are broadly defined. We posit and test the competition story against two alternative mechanisms – associations between local density and the opportunity cost of entrepreneurs’ time, and geographic variations in minimum efficient scale. Using a sample from the confidential geocoded NLSY, we find evidence that consistently points in favor of the opportunity cost mechanism.

Abstract: Drawing upon the theories of real options and affordable loss, this study examines why and how internationalizing entrepreneurs willingly and rationally contend with extreme uncertainty in the pursuit of new market opportunities. Through a transaction-level longitudinal analysis of 1,040 small lumber exporters from 52 countries, we develop and test a framework wherein entrepreneurs pair affordable loss logics (ALL) with real options reasoning (ROR) to internationalize more quickly and profitably than those who employ either alone or neither. By explicating the mechanisms through which export-minded entrepreneurs capture the value-enhancing benefits of uncertainty, this study reinvigorates efforts to apply ROR to the sequential decision-making that uniquely characterizes opportunity exploration among entrepreneurs under conditions of irreducible uncertainty.

Abstract: The entrepreneurial development of regions is driven by factors that stimulate entrepreneurial entry and retard exit. Most research has focused on understanding the regional determinants of local entrepreneurial entry while giving less attention to factors that discourage exit. We draw attention to regional factors that should facilitate the adaptations new firms might pursue to avoid exit. We argue that regional features that favor adaptation will positively moderate the effect of agglomeration densities on exits. In the current study, we focus on the effects of knowledge spillovers and regional industrial diversity. We find that both new knowledge and industry diversity reduce entrepreneurial exit rates, but we also find that the exit-retarding effect of new knowledge is moderated by industry diversity.