Industry knowledge, prior industry experience and new venture survival

• Recent research suggests that new ventures can overcome threats to their survival by gaining access to technological knowledge from other firms in their industry even without directly transacting with them or joining their networks. This access can be obtained through vicarious learning that allows new ventures to benefit from spillovers of industry knowledge made public through patents. However, absorbing industry knowledge can be difficult for new ventures. On the one hand, new ventures have different absorptive capacities as a result of their organizational members’ prior experience within the current industry and across different industries. On the other hand, industries differ in the characteristics of their public technological knowledge (i.e., intensity and breadth). We propose that the intensity and breadth of an industry’s public technological knowledge interact with organizational members’ prior industry experience to determine the ability of new ventures to learn vicariously, affecting the likelihood of venture survival. Our results show that having prior experience in the same industry is beneficial for new venture survival when the technological knowledge within an industry is high in intensity and breadth, while prior experience across different industries is beneficial when this knowledge is low in intensity and breadth. This study contributes to the literature on prior industry experience, organizational learning, absorptive capacity and new venture survival.

Ämnesord

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Ekonomi och näringsliv -- Företagsekonomi (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Economics and Business -- Business Administration (hsv//eng)

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