Volume 3, Issue 2 -

In this editorial, the authors make the case for more research on the subject of social enterprise financing. With an estimated $6 trillion expected to be allocated for social enterprise organizations in the coming decades, the opportunity to explore existing and future financing vehicles, strategies, and challenges present new opportunities for scholars and practitioners alike. Our editorial begins with an accounting of the current opportunities within financing: the rising importance of the field, the challenges it poses, and the issues and options it affords social entrepreneurs. We then discuss research questions that still need to be addressed and examples of promising emerging research that is taking the first steps toward moving the field forward. We conclude with a call to researchers in a variety of fields – social entrepreneurship, business entrepreneurship, finance, and economics, among others – for more knowledge creation within this new frontier in the already trail-blazing field of social entrepreneurship.

Research on angel investment strategies and performance is scarce, but with the availability of data from the Angel Investor Performance Project (AIPP) sponsored by the Kauffman Foundation and from other focus groups organized through the Angel Capital Association (ACA), the research on angel investors is an emerging field in finance and entrepreneurship. We group these research questions from three perspectives, the entrepreneur’s perspective, the investor’s perspective, and the public policy and capital market perspective. We summarize some of the studies published and suggest potential areas for future research.

This study adopts the push-entrepreneurship perspective and develops a conceptual framework grounded in prospect theory, in order to investigate whether source of sunemployment, layoff in particular, and duration of unemployment stimulate entrepreneurial intent. We also propose that fear of failure and risk propensity moderate the source/duration–entrepreneurial intent relationships. We test our hypotheses using survey data from a sample of unemployed individuals. Results show that both layoff and duration of unemployment are stimuli for higher entrepreneurial intent, and the source of unemployment-intent relationship is moderated by fear of failure and risk propensity. We discuss the implications of these results.

We examine a tenuous and intriguing suggestion emerging from qualitative research into passion that entrepreneurs experience venture-related obsession. Responding to this observation, we develop an understanding of obsession in entrepreneurship and clinical and non-clinical populations. We propose that entrepreneurs may experience venture-related obsessions that are similar to obsession as described in the clinical literature and develop a model of entrepreneurial obsession. We suggest that obsession may have a relationship with passion and contribute productively towards desirable entrepreneurial outcomes despite its potential to stimulate negative affect or anxiety. Further research is warranted to explore and define this construct.

Innovative ventures aiming for rapid growth will require substantial financial capital. Accessing external financial capital requires a high business model transparency, potentially weakening the competitive advantages of the venture. The transparency of the business model can be better understood in terms of two complementary research paradigms: resource-based theory and agency theory. The theories drive transparency in opposite directions and produce a business model transparency paradox that explains the challenges of achieving growth.Acknowledging the implications from one theory can lead to harmful practical implications regarding the challenge of business model transparency and cause a risk of unintended consequence and in the worst case venture failure. A conceptual model and aligned propositions are outlined for comprehensive understanding of the trade-offs suggested by the two theories for ongoing venture exploitation of innovation and growth. An inverted u-shaped function on business model transparency based on a combination of the two theories is proposed for achieving optimal opportunities for venture growth. This conceptual article contributes with implications on financial gaps, business model management, and entrepreneurship education.