Volume 13, Issue 4

New product development (NPD) performance is a key determinant of a new venture’s success. However, compared with established firms, new ventures often suffer from resource constraints when developing new products. Entrepreneurial bricolage is reported in the literature as an alternative strategic option that enables managers to overcome resource constraints when developing new products. However, because new ventures are often founded by an entrepreneurial team, the effectiveness and efficiency of using bricolage to improve NPD performance might be contingent on how the founding team plays its roles in this process. Using data from 323 new ventures in China, we find support for the critical role of entrepreneurial bricolage in improving NPD success under resource constraints. More importantly, our results reveal that the bricolage strategy is more likely to benefit a venture when the founding team is composed of members with diverse functional backgrounds and is not heavily involved in strategic decision-making.

Entrepreneurial innovation and its link to performance are attracting increasing attention among academics, entrepreneurs, and innovators alike. Our purpose is to prioritise and investigate the relative impact of distinct categories and types of innovation on multidimensional performance areas of new ventures. Accordingly, we relate the recently developed 10 Types of Innovation model to a comprehensive performance measurement framework specific to entrepreneurial new ventures and conduct empirical validation of the model for performance impacts. The 10 Types model shows reasonable psychometric properties and appears to effectively portray the innovation outcome conundrum. Our empirical evidence shows that the influence of innovation categories – configuration, offering, and experience – is substantively different across various performance criteria. Conversely, the effects of innovation types on different performance areas (financial, customer, process, and learning) do not present important variations, and thus do not seem to be contingent upon the nature of the performance measures considered.

This paper examines self-employed individuals in the UK Labour market. We use an amalgamated dataset, the British Household Panel Survey, from the years 1991 to 2008, and its successor the United Kingdom Longitudinal Study, from years 2010 to 2014, following 11,657 respondents in the UK for 23 years. We explore the characteristics of different self-employed groups and create a new division that differentiates those who sustain in self-employment from those who move between self-employment and employee jobs. The sample size consists of 1146 sustained self-employed, 1149 dabbled self-employed and 9362 paid workers. We found that dabblers exhibit unique set of attributes that place them in a distinct position compared to sustained self-employed and/or employees. Dabblers seem to be ‘pulled’ rather than ‘pushed’ into self-employment, reflecting a labour market ‘power’ instead of deficiency. Thus, bringing key insight into a group who have not been separately identified in the labour market to date, the self-employed dabblers.

Drawing on the resource-based view, we propose a model to understand the roles of human capital, market and entrepreneurial orientation, absorptive capacity and ways to improve performance with an effective innovation strategy for hospitality development. We combine the Fuzzy Delphi Method, Decision-Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory and analytic network process to demonstrate the interactions and relations among critical criteria by using data from 20 Taiwanese restaurant entrepreneurs obtained in 2015–2017. The positive effects of human capital, market orientation, entrepreneurial orientation and absorptive capacity on innovation performance are confirmed. These findings advance resource-based scholarship and highlight the value of understanding the relationship between a restaurant’s tangible and intangible resources for hospitality development.

The relationship between entrepreneurial orientation and firm performance has been the object of a number of studies, but the literature has not yet reached a consensus about the true relationship between the two variables. Previous research attributes this lack of consensus to the moderating effect of numerous variables, including those related to the firm’s environment. While the literature evaluates the direct and moderating effects of uncertainty and hostility on the relationship between entrepreneurial orientation and firm performance, no one has investigated how these environmental variables simultaneously affect this relationship. To fill this gap, we use a configurational approach to clarify the nature of the relationship between entrepreneurial orientation and firm performance and investigate how hostility and uncertainty jointly moderate this relationship. Our arguments are tested using a sample of 140 Brazilian start-ups, and we conclude that there is a positive relationship between entrepreneurial orientation and firm performance. Nevertheless, this relationship is jointly conditioned by the level of environmental hostility and uncertainty.

Despite numerous calls for integrating entrepreneurship research and firm theory, there has been relatively little work done in this direction. Likewise, despite many discussions, controversy continues to surround core theoretical frameworks in strategic management such as the resource-based view and capabilities theory. This paper uses insights from early research in Austrian economics to resolve both issues. We focus on Viktor Mataja, whose work provides an original, integrated framework for understanding the relationship between entrepreneurs and firms using the judgment-based approach to entrepreneurship, strategic use of resources in the firm, and dynamic capabilities. We show how this view answers various criticisms that have been raised against the resource- and capabilities-based views. This lays a foundation for a more thoroughgoing integration of research in entrepreneurship and strategic management.

Entrepreneurship is recognized as one of the factors stimulating economic growth and increasing economic competitiveness. In addition, the Europe 2020 Strategy has focused its attention on entrepreneurship as a key factor of economic growth, social progress, and employment. In this context, our study examines the role of entrepreneurial performance for sustaining the development of countries, focusing on a sample of European countries. We attempt to reveal if increasing entrepreneurial performance would have significant influence on improving the economic position of countries and their future economic development. Starting from the OECD-Eurostat Entrepreneurship Indicators Programme we use a set of entrepreneurial performance indicators as independent variables and examine to what extent they can influence competitiveness and economic growth, seen as dependent variables of the models. We focus on a period of 10 years (2008–2017) and we apply panel-data estimation techniques. Because the period considered includes the period of the last international financial crisis, we also include in our analysis a dummy variable. Our results emphasize that the changes in entrepreneurial performance play a significant role in enhancing national competitiveness and economic growth. Our findings contribute to the expansion of literature in the field by providing evidence on the correlation of indicators that measure entrepreneurial performance with national competitiveness and economic growth. Moreover, our findings point out the need of the policy makers to adopt measures and policies that help and stimulate entrepreneurs to become more performant because they can generate positive effects to the economy as a whole.

Entrepreneurial activities require thoughtful and cumbersome efforts, positive and forward-looking upward spiral, and strong entrepreneurial intentions. Drawing from the work-family interface model, this study aims at investigating the impact of entrepreneurial self-efficacy (ESE) on venturing intentions through moderated mediation mechanisms of family support and regret. The data were collected from 335 male graduate students of business schools through questionnaires from public sector universities of Pakistan in two lags, because the participation of the labor force in Pakistan is primarily influenced by the demographical composition (i.e., Males), which is linked with cultural traits of the nation. The study used Hayes Macros to test the hypotheses. The findings of the study reveal that ESE positively influences intentions, while low family support reduces the effects of ESE. Low family support also increases the regret of not starting a business for those individuals who had high self-efficacy. A Moderated-mediation mechanism also exists among the variables of the interest. This study reports the effects of low family support and regrets on intentions in the short-run (i.e., four months interval), future studies should conduct longitudinal studies to understand the long-term relationship. Increasing unemployment in developing countries requires unique and timely solutions and entrepreneurship is the most viable one. But this study highlights an important considerations of family support while making policy decisions. The findings highlight that mere entrepreneurial self-efficacy is not enough, and due to collectivist culture the family norms have great impact on the entrepreneurial choices and intentions. This study examines the mechanism between ESE and entrepreneurial intentions considering anticipated regret as a mediating variable and family support as a conditional variable. This study is first of its kind that has linked family support, ESE, regret, and entrepreneurial intentions using the work-family interface. It explains how family support can enhance regret and the relationship between self-efficacy and intentions.

This paper addresses nascent entrepreneurs’ intention-action gap by examining the predictive and the moderating role of different types of motivations. We draw on the theory of planned behavior and on action theory to explain the entrepreneurial action of 205 student nascent entrepreneurs operating in academic incubators within the French higher education system. Our results demonstrate an indirect influence of extrinsic and intrinsic motivation on entrepreneurial action. When referring to motivation as moderating the relationship between intention and action, we show that mid-levels of extrinsic and intrinsic motivation reinforce the positive association between nascent entrepreneurs’ intentions and actions. Our study demonstrates the importance of distinguishing between motivational and volitional phases of the entrepreneurial process, and provides new insights for academic institutions seeking to incubate businesses created by student nascent entrepreneurs.

Previous research has found that entrepreneurs’ empathy promotes personal opportunity identification. However, the role that entrepreneurs’ empathy plays at the firm level in new ventures is still unclear. This study explores this question by investigating how perspective taking and empathic concern, which respectively represent the cognitive and affective component of entrepreneurs’ empathy, influence new venture performance with the mediating effects of entrepreneurial orientation (EO). Based on an empirical study with 341 new ventures, this research finds a positive relationship between perspective taking and new venture performance and a curvilinear relationship between empathic concern and new venture performance. In addition, both of these relationships are mediated by EO. This study sheds light on distinct impacts of the entrepreneur’s perspective taking and empathic concern at the firm level, enriches the antecedents of EO from the cognitive and affective factors of the entrepreneur, and extends the implications of the entrepreneur’s altruistic dispositions in commercial start-ups.

A firm’s participation in an innovation ecosystem can increase its competitiveness and potentiality in turbulent circumstances. From a resource-based view (RBV) and the value proposition perspective, this study explored how participation in heterogeneous innovation ecosystems affects the innovative performances (IPs) of start-ups. We studied the adaptability between innovation ecosystem models and open innovation (OI) strategies, as well as examined their effects on new ventures. Specifically, innovation ecosystem models were classified into platform- and product-based innovation ecosystems according to the structural logic of accessing resources. Then, we examined the effects of these ecosystems on the IPs of start-ups and analyzed the moderating effects of the breadth and depth of OI on these ecosystems. The findings revealed that the participation of start-ups in such ecosystems had positive effects on their IPs and OI breadth’s inverted U-shape moderated the relationships between product-based innovation ecosystems and the IPs while strengthening the positive relationships between platform-based innovation ecosystems and the IPs. In addition, OI depth enhanced the positive effects of both ecosystems on the IPs of start-ups. This study has enlightening implications for research on innovation ecosystems, OI, and entrepreneurs.

Since entrepreneurship was conceptualised as a panacea for achieving inclusive growth in the “base of the pyramid” (BoP) regions, various ways have been explored to leverage this powerful tool, such as helping potential entrepreneurs build the resource base and capabilities. However, given the severe resources constraints in the BoP regions, such a goal is difficult to achieve. Besides, due to the high demands on personal competence, only a few people can benefit from this method, which fails to solve the problem of social exclusion in the BoP regions. Therefore, we aim to find a better way to leverage entrepreneurship to tackle the problem of the BoP regions by calling for more attention to the inclusiveness of entrepreneurship. Based on data of inclusive entrepreneurs in Zhejiang, China, we construct a three-stage model for inclusive entrepreneurship. We also apply Transaction Cost Economics to look for determinants that foster inclusive entrepreneurship and validate our main assertion that decreasing transaction cost significantly helps to increase the inclusiveness of entrepreneurship, and different phases of inclusive entrepreneurship (i.e., opportunity inclusiveness, participation inclusiveness, and sharing inclusiveness) are influenced by different sets of determinants of transaction costs.